Star Wars
1977
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4, including Amanda and Katie. George Walton Lucas Jr. [1] (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker and philanthropist. He created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founded Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairman of Lucasfilm before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. [2]
- Marcia Griffin
Marcia Lou Lucas (née Griffin; born October 4, 1945) is an...
- George Lucas Filmography
George Lucas filmography. George Lucas (born 1944) is an...
- Katie Lucas
Katie Rose Lucas (born April 13, 1988) is an American...
- Amanda Lucas
Amanda and her younger sister Katie appeared in Star Wars:...
- Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera media franchise...
- Marcia Griffin
- Overview
- Biography
- Foundations of Star Wars
- Works
- Appearances in Star Wars
- External links
"The movie's in there—it's in the marble. I'm just the sculptor setting it free."
―George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. The creator of Star Wars, he executive-produced its first six films. Close friends with fellow filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas worked on the Indiana Jones franchise with Spielberg after meeting him through his own directoral debut, THX 1138, and the films The Rain People and Apocalypse Now, directed by Coppola. With the latter's backing, Lucas made American Graffiti, and subsequently relied on its success to create Star Wars. Although it suffered significant setbacks and failed to achieve what Lucas wanted, the film was an immense success. George Lucas thus continued to tell his mythology, producing the third saga film in 1983.
However, Lucas was then divorced by his wife, Marcia, and was left with a three-year-old daughter. Lucas thus decided to prioritize raising his family, leaving his company, Lucasfilm Ltd., to manage the popular Star Wars franchise. In the 1980s, filming technology developed under Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic division, whose employee John Knoll co-created Photoshop and whose computer division spawned EditDroid and Avid and developed into Pixar. George Lucas also became close acquaintances with mythologist Joseph Campbell, often speaking with his "Yoda" at Skywalker Ranch up until Campbell's death. In the 1990s, Lucas resumed active participation in the film industry, working on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and joining fellow film directors such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, and Stanley Kubrick alongside Spielberg, and Coppola on the Film Foundation's board of directors. Lucas also founded Edutopia, an education organization, and continued to push the boundaries of filmmaking technology to create the Special Editions. Faced with a decision to either go back to directing films that are more pure cinema and more visually-oriented and possibly never return to Star Wars, or to finish Star Wars by telling the backstory, which was never intended to be done, was not written as a movie, and yet was now a feasible project with new technology. From the late 1990s to 2005, Lucas returned with much of the film crew from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles to complete the Star Wars saga with the prequel trilogy, where he would be able to tell the story of Darth Vader, as intended at first with the original trilogy, without any frustrations with technology.
Early life
George Walton Lucas Jr. was born in Modesto, California to George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991) and Dorothy Bomberger Lucas on May 14, 1944. His father was mainly of British and Swiss-German heritage, and his mother was a member of a prominent Modesto family (one of her cousins is the mother of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and director of UNICEF Ann Veneman) and was mainly of German and Scots-Irish heritage.
American Zoetrope and Star Wars
"I thought it was too wacky for the general public." ―George Lucas on Star Wars Lucas co-founded the studio American Zoetrope with Francis Ford Coppola—whom he met during his internship at Warner Brothers—hoping to create a liberating environment for filmmakers to direct outside the perceived oppressive control of the Hollywood studio system. Following the success of American Graffiti, Lucas proposed a new Flash Gordon film adaptation, but the rights were not available. Under the American Zoetrope banner Lucas developed Apocalypse Now to direct following work on Star Wars. As work on Star Wars dragged on, Coppola took over directing Apocalypse Now, leading to the breakdown of the American Zoetrope partnership. In 1976, Lucas published a novelization of A New Hope, which was initially (like the film) titled just Star Wars. Although Lucas was credited as author of the book, it was later revealed that the book was actually ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster, who would also write Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the first original Star Wars novel and, in many respects, the first Star Wars sequel. On a return-on-investment basis, Star Wars proved to be one of the most successful films of all time. During the filming of Star Wars, Lucas waived his up-front fee as director and negotiated to own the licensing rights—rights which the studio thought were nearly worthless. This decision earned him hundreds of millions of dollars, as he was able to directly profit from all the licensed derived products created for the franchise. In 2006 Forbes Magazine estimated Lucas's personal wealth at U.S. $3.5 billion. In 2005 Forbes.com estimated the lifetime revenue generated by the Star Wars franchise at nearly $20 billion. Some considered Star Wars to be the first "high concept" film, while others feel the first was Steven Spielberg's Jaws, released two years prior. In fact, Lucas and Spielberg had been acquaintances for some time and eventually worked together on several films, notably the first Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in 1981. Along with Spielberg, Lucas is credited with (and even blamed for) establishing the blockbuster approach to filmmaking. The Directors Guild of America fined Lucas for refusing to have a standard title sequence in his Star Wars films. After paying the fine, he quit the guild. This made it hard for him to find a director for some of his later projects. According to some, he wanted his friend Spielberg to direct some of the later Star Wars movies, but as a member of the guild Spielberg may have been unable to do so. Other directors Lucas pursued to aid him were David Lynch and David Cronenberg, both of whom declined. While offered the role of director for what would become Return of the Jedi, Lynch had no interest in directing Star Wars, and urged Lucas to direct his own film.
Return to Star Wars
On October 3, 1994, Lucas started to write the three Star Wars prequels, and on November 1 that year, he left the day-to-day operations of his filmmaking business and started a sabbatical to finish the prequels. At some point, he wanted to produce a TV series about Star Wars, which would take place between episodes III and IV. Lucas purportedly also announced that he plans on making two additional Star Wars films that will take place after Return of the Jedi, but this rumor was debunked at Celebration IV in Los Angeles, California, in May 2007. When Stephen J. Sansweet, Director of Content Management and Head of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm, was asked about the proposed two films post–Return of the Jedi, he stated that it was a misunderstanding of what Lucas was explaining. According to Sansweet, Lucas was referring to the two Star Wars television projects then in production: Star Wars: Clone Wars, which is a CG animated show that debuted October 3, 2008, and a yet-to-be-titled Star Wars live-action show that was set to premiere in 2009, the development status of which is currently uncertain.
Encapsulation of psychological motifs in mythology Love, life, and letting go
"The core thing to pass on is, you know, in talking about religion, is, you know, all religions say one thing—basically—which is love is the secret to the universe, which is compassion, which is love others, take care of others, help each other." ―George Lucas George Lucas explained one of the the core values of Star Wars, one of the problems of the struggle in Star Wars, is about passion against compassion; which is greed against giving and letting go. Compassion is defined by Lucas as joy, an everlasting emotion attained from being selfless—the light side of the Force—and is one of two components of happiness. Compassion is love, the core of all religions and spiritual traditions, and the Force is the amalgamation of the essence of all such beliefs. All humans have a compassionate side and a selfish side, asserts Lucas, and the main idea is to keep the two in balance by recognizing their coexistance, reject the dominance of selfishness, and be compassionate in order for a person to do good things. In the legal, financial, and political systems of the American society, Lucas sees that they are based on a flawed, "winner-take-all" culture that arose from a "cave-man" mentality. Instead, Lucas wants a society based on compassion, where every person in society is cared for and everything is done for the best of all of society. Anakin Skywalker lusted for power over all life and thus became evil in his greed—inability to let go of the inevitable death of his lover. As said through Lucas' works, death is a natural part of life, and that which maintains the harmonious, symbiotic relationship between all life and reality—the Force. Skywalker violates the natural order of the Force in choosing to pursue immortality, becoming consumed by his own hatred and selfishness, the dark side. The son, Luke Skywalker, later confronts the father, who pities the self-sacrifice of Luke in affirming his stance as a Jedi in service to the Force and the galaxy and atones for his sins by letting go of himself to fulfill the will of the Force and bring balance to it.
FilmographyBibliographyGameographyLucas also served as a producer on the video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and many Expanded Universe and fan productions have one form or another of the credit "Special thanks to George Lucas."In addition to his cameo role as Baron Papanoida, Lucas has made two Expanded Universe appearances. His name was modified for Egroeg Sacul, a character paged on the Star Tours ride, and his likeness was used for a 2002 limited-edition action figure of a character called Jorg Sacul; Sacul was the first of several Lucas action figures, including two 2006 figures (a stormtrooper from The Saga Collections and Papanoida as part of The Lucas Collection), and a 2021 figure.
Lucas also appears twice in the Tag & Bink comics. He appears in Tag & Bink: Revenge of the Clone Menace in Dex's Diner and is depicted among the many characters chasing Tag Greenley and Bink Otauna on the back of the Tag & Bink Were Here trade paperback. Lucas also appears in the third part of the Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron: The Phantom Affair comic.
On June 5, 2005, Lucas was named the 100th "Greatest American" by the Discovery Channel.
In Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones, a bust of George Lucas is in the Jedi Archives.
•George Lucas on Lucasfilm.com (backup link)
•Edutopia, The George Lucas Educational Foundation
•George Lucas on Wikipedia
•George Lucas at the Internet Movie Database
In other languages
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Oct 14, 2020 · For Lucas, Star Wars was finally coming into focus. On January 1, 1976, he finished the fourth draft of the script, the one eventually used when production began in Tunisia on March 25, 1976.
In 1992, George Lucas was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his lifetime achievement. He reentered the directing chair with the production of the highly-anticipated Star Wars prequel trilogy beginning with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999 ...
George Lucas. Writer: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings. During his late teen years, he went to Thomas Downey High School and was very much interested in drag racing. He planned to become a professional racecar driver. However, a terrible car ...
