“Star Wars” creator George Lucas once said in an interview that a teen love story for Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala would have been more marketable, according to an excerpt from a 1999 edition of Empire Magazine.
What’s going on?
Lucas told Empire Magazine just weeks after “The Phantom Menace” debuted that the prequel trilogy would have been more marketable if he had made it a teen love story.
- “I kept it as it was originally intended,” he said. “You can’t play too much to the marketplace. It’s the same thing with the fans. The fans’ expectations had gotten way high and they wanted a film that was going to change their lives and be the Second Coming. You know, I can’t do that, it’s just a movie. And I can’t say, now I gotta market it to a whole different audience. I tell the story.”
- “I knew if I’d made Anakin 15 instead of nine, then it would have been more marketable,” he continued. “If I’d made the Queen 18 instead of 14, then it would have been more marketable.”
Lucas said he made the decision to start Anakin at a younger age because that was his story, IGN reports.
- “But that isn’t the story. It is important that he be young, that he be at an age where leaving his mother is more of a drama than it would have been at 15. So you just have to do what’s right for the movie, not what’s right for the market.”
Flashback:
Lucas’ comments about the prequels have surfaced recently. The “Star Wars” creator said the prequel trilogy’s first film’s villain Darth Maul would have reappeared in the sequel trilogy as a villain, too, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.
- “Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because as the Empire fails, he takes over,” according to an older “Star Wars” book “Star Wars Archives Episode 1-3 The Prequels.”