George Lucas: A Life

by Brian Jay Jones

Lucas took it all personally. “Critics are the vandals of our time, like spray painters who mess up walls,” he complained. He vowed to stop caring what critics thought; he lumped them in with those passionless film executives who knew nothing about filmmaking and told him to Put the freaks up front! Who were they to criticize anyway?

For a moment they considered using a monkey in a costume and a mask—a suggestion that test footage revealed as unconvincing, and the monkey was nearly impossible to manage.

Aw, we could have had a monkey as Yoda.

Lucas, who stood at the cutting edge of digital technology, thought the problem went beyond mere colorizing. “Current and future technology,” he warned, “will alter, mutilate and destroy” films and other works of art for future generations. “Tomorrow more advanced technologies will be able to replace actors,” Lucas continued, “or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actors’ lips to match.”

That is some eerie foresight, about how modern tech can replace actors, as Rogue One and Rise of Skywalker has shown. Though there is the irony that Lucas said all that and fans criticize his continued alterations to Star Wars.