Simon Pegg is a self-confessed Star Wars fanatic, and whilst he tends to enjoy most of geek culture as we do, his first love definitely seems to have been the original Star Wars trilogy. I suppose this is also similar to my own immersion into geek culture which started primarily as Star Wars based.

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Pegg however, had been very critical of the prequel movies when they were released, and let’s face it, Pegg was not alone in the criticism of those movies. I find it quite rare these days to come across fans who genuinely consider the Star Wars prequels to be good films. They may be a guilty pleasure of some fans, and that’s fine, but it’s really hard to argue that they were well-made movies.

So you’d think Pegg was pleased that Lucas was out for the sequel trilogy right? Actually no, in a recent interview on Adam Buxton’s Podcast Pegg said the following.

“I must admit, watching the last Star Wars film, the overriding feeling I got when I came out was, ‘I miss George Lucas’. For all the complaining that I’d done about him in the prequels, there was something amazing about his imagination. I do feel like his voice is missing from the current ones.”

Mr Pegg, I couldn’t agree more, Like you, I was not a fan of the prequels, they were pretty garbage in all honesty and yet, at the same time, I could watch one showing on TV and get more enjoyment out of it than I did last years The Last Jedi. Clearly either The Last Jedi or Solo was the film Pegg had just watched when he thought this, which, I don’t know?

The prequels were badly made movies, and this is what happens when Lucas believed his own hype and decided to make them on his own with his own money and his own staff. That’s not a particularly creative environment to work in. In all honesty, the original Star Wars movies were a far more collaborative affair.

For me, the sequel trilogy has done many things right, but allowing Lucas to step out completely instead of having him as an executive producer giving input was a bad move. I feel like Lucas would be telling JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson a few rules which are fundamental to maintaining the cohesion of the Universe, which were ignored by both directors. Lucas cannot write dialogue and I’m not convinced he’s even a good director at all. But he was a storyteller, a yarn spinner and he knew how to make it all feel like one story, whether it was conceived that way initially or not.

Do I want to see Lucas write or direct another Star Wars film? Hell no. But better filmmakers working off of a Lucas outline is what made the Original Trilogy have a bit of magic and soul. I feel there’s something soulless about these sequel movies so far and that’s a shame.

And when it comes to the design, there’s simply no way Lucas would have made the FO and the Rebels/Resistance look exactly the same as the OT from 30 years ago. Lucas would have asked his artists to advance the designs forward into something unique but familiar, the one aspect of the prequel he actually took an interest in and pulled off.

What do you think of Pegg’s comments, do you agree that Star Wars is missing Lucas for all his faults or are you glad the beard is no longer running the Star Wars Empire? Shoot us any comments you have in the usual place below.

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SOURCE: Simon Pegg (via Adam Buxton’s Podcast)

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