Word: phantoms
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...Extra-Terrestrial as an all-time top grosser. But the writer-producer-director-megamind--who in his spare time runs a film conglomerate that includes the Lucasfilm production outfit, the ILM visual-effects house and Skywalker Sound--says he was always aware of at least one Phantom risk: that Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi knight in training who would evolve into the sinister Darth Vader, was a kid. "I said, 'They're gonna hate this. They're gonna get really upset that I have a 9-year-old as the hero.' But what can I do? That's the story...
Lucas, who will turn 58 two days before the movie opens, is given to fretting; he even worried that Phantom Menace would tank at the b.o. "There's only one issue for a filmmaker," he says. "Will this make its money back so I can make the next one? With Phantom Menace, we didn't know. It didn't have Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher. It was not a slam dunk." Well, maybe, but even so, the new picture looks like Shaquille O'Neal standing three feet from the basket. Though it faces sticky competition from Spider...
Clones is populated with hundreds of computer-generated creatures, from new digital stars like the four-armed diner chef Dexter Jettster to familiars like Yoda, Watto the Junkman--and that vexing critter Jar Jar Binks, around whom the disappointment in Phantom Menace crystallized. Lucas blames the anti-Jar Jar sentiment on "37-year-old guys who spend all their time on the Internet. But you have to remember that when we did The Empire Strikes Back, some people hated C-3PO. When we did Jedi, they just loathed the Ewoks. There was no Internet to jazz it up, but there...
Underlying the three strains of action, romance and character is a sense of political drama, prefigured in Phantom Menace. If that movie had a message, it was: Take a meeting. The film often went logy from all its earnest senatorial harrumphing, which was every bit as compelling as a lazy committee hearing on C-SPAN. Politics is important in Clones too, but as a running three-cornered debate: Padme's idealism colliding with Obi-Wan's cynicism and Anakin's budding realpolitik...
...extension of Raiders' Indiana Jones character into two more features and a TV series--he was, and remains, a doting, full-time dad. But he had a neglected child, the Star Wars saga, that needed his help in growing up. Lucas began writing the new trilogy, starting with Phantom Menace, in 1994. This time, he would direct...