George Lucas Explains Why He's Done with 'Star Wars'

George Lucas is opening up about why he hasn’t been involved with the new Star Wars movies.

“You go to make a movie and all you do is get criticized,” the 71-year-old director, who created the franchise, told Vanity Fair. “People try to make decisions about what you’re going to do before you do it. It’s not much fun. You can’t experiment. You have to do it a certain way.”

George expanded on his comments in a CBS News interview.

“The issue was ultimately, they looked at the stories and they said, ‘We want to make something for the fans,’” George said. “People don’t actually realize it’s actually a soap opera and it’s all about family problems – it’s not about spaceships. So they decided they didn’t want to use those stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing so I decided, ‘fine…. I’ll go my way and I let them go their way.’”

“When you break up with somebody, the first rule is no phone calls. The second rule, you don’t go over to their house and drive by to see what they’re doing,” George added. “The third one is you don’t show up at their coffee shop and say you are going to burn it… You just say ‘Nope, gone, history, I’m moving forward.’”