It's safe to say that Marcia Lucas, who edited the original Star Wars trilogy and was married to Star Wars creator George Lucas for over a decade, isn't a fan of Disney and Lucasfilm's sequel trilogy.
“I like [Lucasfilm President] Kathleen [Kennedy]. I always liked her,” said Marcia Lucas when interviewed for J.W. Rinzler's newly-published book about The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi producer Howard G. Kazanjian. "She was full of beans. She was really smart and really bright. Really wonderful woman. And I liked her husband, Frank [Marshall]. I liked them a lot. Now that she’s running Lucasfilm and making movies, it seems to me that Kathy Kennedy and [The Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker director] J.J. Abrams don’t have a clue about ‘Star Wars.’"
For the uninitiated, Marcia Lucas received an Academy Award nomination for her editing on American Graffiti before winning the Oscar for her work on Star Wars: A New Hope. In addition to her work on The Empire Strikes Back (for which she went uncredited) and Return of the Jedi, Lucas edited Martin Scorsese's 1974 drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and was a supervising editor on Taxi Driver and New York, New York.
"They don’t get it," Lucas continued. "And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories -- when I saw [The Force Awakens] where they kill Han Solo, I was furious. I was furious when they killed Han Solo. Absolutely, positively there was no rhyme or reason to it. I thought, You don’t get the Jedi story. You don’t get the magic of ‘Star Wars.’ You’re getting rid of Han Solo?”
Marcia Lucas was also critical of The Last Jedi -- which, unlike the other two films in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, was directed by Rian Johnson -- and the decision to kill off Luke and Leia Skywalker, as well as Han Solo. "And they’re spitting out movies every year," she added. "And they think it’s important to appeal to a woman’s audience, so now their main character [Rey] is this female, who’s supposed to have Jedi powers, but we don’t know how she got Jedi powers, or who she is. It sucks. The storylines are terrible. Just terrible. Awful. You can quote me... J.J. Abrams, Kathy Kennedy -- talk to me.'”
All nine films in the Star Wars Skywalker Saga are streaming on Disney+. The franchise will return to the big screen with Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron on Dec. 22, 2023.