Lucas turned marketing into fine art

He has spent half a life creating a blockbuster cinema franchise documenting love, war and extraterrestrial bad haircuts a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

So please forgive George Lucas if -- just days before the May 19 release of the final installment of the “Star Wars” six-pack -- he waxes a bit wistful. While insisting he’s far too busy marketing “Episode III Revenge of the Sith” to become mired in mere nostalgia, the 61-year-old director couldn’t help reflecting back a bit and peering into the future. Lucas contemplated the legacy question one recent day during a media round table at rain-soaked Skywalker Ranch, his company hideaway tucked in a Marin County valley awash this spring with wildflowers.

His hope, Lucas admitted, is that this apocryphal series, which some critics contend has grown a bit wizened since the smashing 1977 debut film sparked a worldwide phenomenon, might yet survive as a sort of “Wizard of Oz” for the Space Age, “something that would last more than 20 or 30 years after I’m gone.”

Only time will tell.

What remains assured is that the films’ detailing of the decline and rebirth of the Skywalker clan will go down as a seminal business venture. The first five combined for a worldwide box-office gross of nearly $3.5 billion and played a pivotal role in reshaping the way commercial movies are made and marketed. They also helped revolutionize the use of special effects and turned crossover marketing of video games, toys and other merchandise into a fine art.

In short, we’ve seen the man behind the green curtain, and his name is George.

Lucas, who will be honored with a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute during a televised gala in Los Angeles next month, vows he is ready now to finally step across one of life’s thresholds, leaving behind big-budget, special-effects laden extravaganzas to finally make “my own little personal artsy nonlinear movies.”

“Revenge of the Sith” is anything but that.

The last of three “prequels” telling the story of Anakin Skywalker’s transformation into legendary screen villain Darth Vader, the movie has more of everything -- more aliens, more galactic fights, more multi-syllabic planets, enough visual effects (2,151, compared with 360 in the first “Star Wars” film) to satisfy the most sophisticated tweener.

Almost everyone is back from the first two films of “Star Wars” redux -- Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Natalie Portman as Padme, Ian McDiarmid in a diabolic turn as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. Frank Oz again supplies the voice of Yoda. The syntax-challenged Jedi master is now so authentically realized by the digital genies of Industrial Light and Magic that multiplex patrons might expect to find him in the popcorn line.

Lucas has long been warning that this final turn by Anakin to the dark side of the force is indeed quite dark in tone and texture. “Going to the dark side was fun,” Christensen said, adding that he has no regrets in taking a role that likely will top his resume forever. “It’s been a privilege to be a part of George’s world.”

As usual, Lucas had a firm hand in the post-production process, playing the role of master painter and using digital effects to manipulate scenes at will.

If camera movement didn’t suit him, Lucas ordered up digital re-creations of actors to give the director the sweep he wanted. Rob Coleman, the film’s animation director, said almost every single shot had been digitally manipulated, in some cases creating a big stunt like Yoda’s three-dimensional joust with Palpatine, in others sweating the little stuff by adjusting shadowing or lighting.

But there are also plenty of live actors playing oddball aliens, a throwback to the early films, Coleman said.

“George wanted to put people in rubber heads in this movie so that there’s some continuity there,” Coleman said.

The special-effects crew also took pains to build a bridge between the new film’s digital sophistication and the stop-motion animatronics of the original trilogy.

For instance, Coleman said, some of the Imperial walkers of the new film are purposefully made to appear a bit skippy, replicating the lurching feel of those from two decades ago.

The film marks the fourth “Star Wars” venture for McDiarmid, a British stage veteran who served as artistic director of the acclaimed Almeida Theater in north London for a dozen years ending in 2002. Lucas hired McDiarmid to play the evil Emperor for 1983’s “Return of the Jedi,” and he returned for all three prequels.

With a keen eye on the classics, McDiarmid hesitated a bit when considering the legacy of the Lucas movies. Then he dove in.

“I don’t think Shakespeare knew he was writing lasting art,” McDiarmid allowed. While “Star Wars” is firmly ensconced in movie history as a cultural phenomenon of the 20th century’s last decades, “whether they will continue to be of excitement and interest and value to future generations, I don’t know. I rather think they might.”

At $113 million, “Revenge” proved to be the least expensive of the three recent films to make. But the producer, Rick McCallum, said the sheer volume of digital images made it the toughest.

While big at the box office, none of the “Star Wars” films ever copped an Oscar for picture, director, acting or screenplay. And the most critically acclaimed, “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980, was directed by veteran Irvin Kershner, not Lucas.

But the shy billionaire always kept a firm hand on the wheel as the series cut a wide swath through the last quarter century.

“You tap into the motherlode” with films like “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings” or “Star Wars,” McCallum said. “There’s never been anything in the history of capitalism, not even software, not even Windows, that can return the same kind of extraordinary investment, cash, in such a short time and have still such an impact.”

Lucas is just happy to have a bit of closure on this epic filmmaking venture. He still considers “Star Wars” a sort of pleasant accident that just happened to come along at the right time to capture the public imagination during the late 1970s and early ‘80s.

Sitting in the “tech center” at Skywalker Ranch, Lucas can look back and smile behind his ever-present beard, grown decidedly gray now, over the improbability of it all.

A self-described “reluctant writer,” he wrote each script and made each film in large part because “I wanted to see what it was like to make a Hollywood movie with sets and work on stages and stuff.”

One key turning point, Lucas said, was the introduction of the original Yoda in 1980, who then went on to become perhaps the franchise’s most beloved character.

Back then, the 800-year-old Jedi was played by a rubber puppet, and “we just barely got away with him,” Lucas said. It was “probably the biggest risk in the whole series. The whole thing would have died right there. That would have been the end of ‘Star Wars’ ” if Yoda hadn’t been believable.

But the biggest experiment, he said, was retelling a story that had been kicking around for 3,000 years or so -- a tale of good and evil, of a father’s fall from grace and his salvation.

“I think emotionally we haven’t changed much in the last 2,000 or 3,000 years,” Lucas said.

We retain “deep-seated feelings about family, our place in society,” he added. “And that’s why people relate to it.”