Our new prequel sleuth Dark Ocean provides you with the following interview with George, which has a little bit of info. about the prequels:

The following texts are excerpts from a 1992-93 interview of George Lucas conducted at Skywalker Ranch.

This interview can be seen in it's entirety on The Star Wars Trilogy: The Definitive Collection Videodisc box set.

This is mandatory reading for all Star Wars fans. If you got a laserdisc player, GET ONE!!! This interview is about how Mr. Lucas created and developed the origins and storylines of the most popular film trilogy in history.

Just sit back, relax, read and enjoy. This section is dedicated with much respect to George Lucas, for creating some of my favorite films, and to David Prowse, and James Earl Jones, to making the Dark Lord of the Sith a reality on the big screen.

Dark Ocean

Transcripts from "War Stories, an Interview with George Lucas".

George: "The Star Wars Series started out as a movie that ended up being so big, so I took each act and cut it into it's own movie. But, in order to create that movie I had to create a back story, and there's this very elaborate back story that was created in order to get to the point of the first part of Star Wars, the first film and it's the back story that hasn't been told yet. This story, the one that we have seen, pays off in a much larger way, because it's thee, you get a sense that it's the son vindicating the father, but we are doing this in a context in that we don't know where the father came from, or what made him be what he is, or what needs to be vindicated(laughs)! So were just sort of seeing the vindication without, you know, the act being seen, so it's very interesting. And we don't really understand clearly what the conflict is at this point."

George Lucas on the Original Concepts for Star Wars

George: " The original concept really related to a father, and a son, and twins. I mean a son and a daughter. And it was that relationship that was really the core of the story, and it went through a lot of mechanations before I even got to the first draft of the screenplay, and various characters changed shapes and sizes. And it isn't really until it evolved into what is close to what Star Wars is now, and then I began to go back and deal with the Stories that evolved to get us to that point, and then, you know it's hard to say really where the, you know how it evolved into a piece, because with various scenes and moments and when your creating something like that, the story itself takes over, and the characters take over and they begin to tell the story apart from what you're doing, and you kind of go with it. And you have to go with it and it sends you down some funny paths, and you have to figure out how to break that apart and put the puzzle back together so it makes sense and it's cohesive. But that's the adventure of writing, your not sure where it's going to go. And I think it took a while and I worked on Star Wars for a couple of years before it evolved into what it is."

George Lucas on why he chose James Earl Jones as Darth Vader's voice:

George: "It really takes a top class actor to pull off that kind of an idea, to be able to get into a part, where you're putting your voice over an animated character , in this case it's not even an animated character, it's a character that has already been shot. It's a reverse of what you get to do in animation, in animation you get to sort of act it, and create it. In this case you're working within the confines of what somebody else has created. The movement and the timing and all that sort of thing has been determined for you. And to be able come up with an excellent performance if you are not the one that's doing it is extremely difficult".

George Lucas on the premise for the first three Star Wars movies

George: "When I do the next three Star Wars films, I want to make sure I show where Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker) came from. He wasn't born evil so I have to show what turned him into such a monster. What I can tell you is that Anakin had very humble origins on Tatooine with his mother. He's poor, very poor, but he has been given a very special gift: mechanical-engineering prowess and an ability to harness the Force in tremendous ways. The origins of the Force will be more fully developed and Luke and Leia's mother will be an extremely important character in all three films."

It would be nice if we could give you George's e-mail address, but we can't. Instead, you can contact George via snail mail at the following postal address:

George Lucas
c/o Lucasfilm Ltd.
P.O. Box 2009
San Rafael, CA 94912-2009