Star Wars Original Trilogy Editor Explains Why Sequels Made Her "Furious"

The book Howard Kazanjian: A Producer's Life, the final publication from the author and editor J. W. Rinzler, features a foreword from Lucas who won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for Star Wars in 1977. Suffice to say that she's not a fan of the unconventional approach that J. J. Abrams and Rian Johnson took on the next chapter of the series.

"They don't get it," said Lucas. "When I saw the movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious... 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?"

Check out this showcase for Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a unique immersive experience offered in Galaxy's Edge at the Walt Disney World Resort!

"And then at the end of this last one, they have Luke disintegrate. They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don't have Princess Leia anymore. And they're spitting out movies every year," continued the criticism. While the death of General Leia Organa was born of the actor's passing in 2016, Han Solo's death at Kylo Ren's hand was extremely shocking to Star Wars fans.

Furthermore, the characterisation of Luke as a jaded Jedi who wanted nothing to do with the Order anymore was a stark change from the optimistic young Knight in the original trilogy. Lucas also found issue with Rey's origin story... or alternatively, her lack of an origin story.

"And they think it's important to appeal to a woman's audience, so now their main character 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," said the editor. "The storylines are terrible. Terrible. Just awful."

Yikes. I saw the merit in Rey having no connection to the dynasties of the first set of films, however, given the story structure of the originals, plenty of people were waiting for her to be a Skywalker or a Kenobi. I think a fair amount of fans weren't overly pleased with the reveal that she was a Palpatine all along.

Yet, Lucas was clear to air her aggravations with the prequel trilogy, too. "I remember going out to the parking lot, sitting in my car and crying," she said about The Phantom Menace. "I cried. I cried because I didn't think it was very good. And I thought [George] had such a rich vein to mine, a rich palette to tell stories with... There were things I didn't like about the casting, and things I didn't like about the story, and things I didn't like - it was a lot of eye candy. CG."

So she likes the original trilogy, but the prequels and sequels didn't impress. Sounds a little biased to me, but hey, what does a womp rat like me know?