In the late 1980s, Lucasfilm began working to see if there was still life in the franchise, and licensed out a series of novels, the first of which, Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, hit the top of the bestseller lists in 1991. Lucas once largely walked away from the franchise that built his career, although he had sometimes referred to a larger plan for two additional trilogies.
Star Wars’ return to theaters seems almost inevitable now, but its resurrection wasn’t always a sure thing. In 2019, we live in a world where massive, interconnected cinematic universes rule the box office, and where films that we’re most nostalgic for end up getting their own big-budget remakes with fresh faces, CGI budgets, and capabilities that the original directors could never have imagined.
It was a special effects revolution, the first inkling that stories might never end, and a film where the director and cast faced enormous pushback from fans. Looking back at the film two decades later, The Phantom Menace proved to be a precursor for the cinematic environment that we now find ourselves in. For some, excitement turned to confusion, puzzlement, and outright anger by the time the credits rolled, and Lucas’s grand cinematic experiment was off to a rocky start. The long-anticipated Star Wars prequel Episode I: The Phantom Menace hit theaters, returning to a world that fans had thought they’d never see again. On May 19th, 1999, George Lucas changed movies forever.
0 kommentar(er)
