TIME Cover: FIRST LOOK AT THE LAST STAR WARS MOVIE: Q&A With Director George Lucas

New

York – “The long-awaited conclusion to the Star Wars saga, Revenge of the Sith, with 90 minutes of animation, is less ostentatiously revolutionary than its predecessors. Rather, it’s a consolidation of earlier breakthroughs,” writes TIME’s Richard Corliss in his review of the last Star Wars movie. “The climactic face-off between Sidious and Yoda is a potent, visually plausible merging of a human actor and a digital one. When an audience takes for granted the integration of live action and animation, the revolution Lucas pioneered can be said to have triumphed. If he has his way, soon all movie theaters will be junking film projectors and going digital,” writes Corliss.

And in an interview with TIME magazine’s Richard Schickel, who has known him since 1977, director George Lucas opens up about how he works, his fear of failure and the sort of movies he really wants to make. The TIME cover package includes a 2-page graphic of the Star Wars family tree guide that will help keep everything straight after 6 films, a list of 5 ‘Thing to Watch For’ without giving anything away, an essay by TIME’s John Cloud on falling in love with Star Wars as a child and exclusive pictures from the movie (on newsstands Monday, May 2).

Highlights from TIME’s Interview with George Lucas:

On Revenge of the Sith: “I have a feeling this one is going to be sort of like the last one in terms of some people like it, some people hate it. And like everyone who makes movies, I’m always convinced the next one will be a flop. So right now I’m thinking it probably won’t make any money and will be considered a failure.”

On His Shyness: “People think of me as a sort of pathological, Howard Hughes–type guy sitting in a hotel room, which is definitely not so…It ain’t even close to that.”

On His Future: “I’m going to go off in the direction that I was really interested in going off in when I was in film school—films like Koyaanisqatsi, films that are a little more abstract in nature. It’s vaguely in the land of music videos, I guess, but I don’t even know how to describe them…How they’re gonna turn out, I don’t know. I know they won’t be mainstream movies…I’m sure they’ll be just as criticized as Star Wars films are. I’m sure some people will be just as devoted to them as the Star Wars films.”

“I’m also going to do some TV shows. I love television because it’s not important. You get to do really great work, you really get to focus on the work, and all this megillah that goes on around it is gone. And you get to explore your interests, and it doesn’t have to be that important. I want to get out of doing anything important.”

On Visual Effects: “Jurassic Park showed that you could create things using a computer that were so realistic, you could insert them into a movie seamlessly. It offered infinite manipulation of the image, as opposed to before, when you photographed something and were kind of stuck with that image. And it’s infinitely cheaper.”

“On May 19th, you’ll see where they got: back, finally, to the beginning. Sith will surely start a stampede to re-see the 1977 film as a reminder of how the 13-hr. tale proceeds. Lucas is nothing if not an expert extender of his franchise. In two weeks, lots of people will fill movie houses around the world to judge the latest and last Star Wars episode,” writes Corliss.

Entire cover package is available on TIME.com:

www.time.com/starwars

TIME ONLINE STAR WARS ARCHIVE: Check out digital versions of the May 30th, 1977 TIME magazine that contained coverage of the first Star Wars movie and the May 19th, 1980 issue on The Empire Strikes Back. Flip through every page for free on Time.com: www.time.com/starwars

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Contact: Nadine_Ferber@timeinc.com 212-522-4714 or Nicole_Willner@timeinc.com 212-522-0613