Marcia Lucas, the Oscar-winning editor of the original Star Wars franchise, slammed Disney‘s sequel trilogy, stating that producer Kathleen Kennedy and director J.J. Abrams “don’t have a clue.”
Lucas made the claims in an interview for J.W. Rinzler’s new book Howard Kazanjian: A Producer’s Life, which delves into the producer’s life and examines his work on the Star Wars franchise.
“I like Kathleen,” Lucas says in the book. “I always liked her. She was full of beans. She was really smart and really bright. Really wonderful woman. And I liked her husband, Frank. I liked them a lot. Now that she’s running Lucasfilm and making movies, it seems to me that Kathy Kennedy and J.J. Abrams don’t have a clue about Star Wars. They don’t get it.”
“And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories — when I saw that movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious,” she continued. “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?’”
Lucas, who was married to creator George Lucas from 1969 to 1983, took home the Oscar for Best Film Editing in 1977 for her work on the original Star Wars, alongside Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew. Having worked on that film, Lucas disagreed with Kennedy and Abrams’ decision to kill off Han Solo and Luke Skywalker for Disney’s trilogy of sequels.
“They have Luke disintegrate,” she added. “They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don’t have Princess Leia anymore. And they’re spitting out movies every year. 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. The storylines are terrible. Just terrible. Awful. You can quote me — ‘J.J. Abrams, Kathy Kennedy — talk to me.’”
Elsewhere, Fast & Furious director Justin Lin has confirmed that the last two films will tell one chapter.
