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Just wanted to discuss this interesting change between the public perception of Lucas in the early 80s to late 80s. Nowadays we have this idea of the “Sequel Crazy Hollywood Exec” who just wants to keep pumping out sequels, milking the franchise until it’s dry. It’s a ubiquitous cliché, especially in the age of Marvel and all that. But when applied to Star Wars, it’s a bit less of a cliché. In fact, my personal recollection from the late 80s/early 90s is that Lucas seemed like the exact OPPOSITE. Everyone WANTED him to make sequels, but it was like PULLING TEETH to ever get a new Star Wars movie. He was uniquely somehow the exact OPPOSITE of the “Sequel Crazy Hollywood Exec” cliché. The perception was that Lucas COULD just keep printing money and giving us more awesome movies, but he didn’t WANT to. This was the “reluctant Lucas” era. I realize historically this involved exhaustion from his divorce, but nonetheless this is a unique situation for a profitable franchise. Although arguably, few franchise films in the 80s went beyond 3 films, but usually that limitation was a result of poor box-office performance or critical backlash eventually, which doesn’t really apply to ROTJ per se.
What’s even more interesting is that immediately before the “reluctant Lucas” era, Lucas actually WAS considered a “Sequel Crazy Hollywood Exec”. In the early 80s, the general public looked at Lucas in the same way we now see Disney/Marvel: a “Sequel Crazy Hollywood Machine” that wants to keep pumping out sequels and keep printing money. This era was before my living memory, so I can only infer its existence indirectly. But a strong piece of evidence for this as a widespread perception in the early 80s appears in the lyrics of the Weird Al Yankovic song “Yoda”, a parody of “Lola”, and released in the mid-80s. It has lyrics like this (paraphrasing):
I know Darth Vader’s really got you annoyed,
But remember if you kill him then you’ll be unemployed,
Oh my Yoda… (chorus)
The long term contract I had to sign,
Says I’ll be making these movies to the end of time!
Oh my Yoda… (chorus)
But alas, Lucas/Hamill did NOT ever continue making these movies til the end of time, and those lyrics seem weirdly off now, unless you reinterpret them to mean Prequels/Disney stuff. But the idea that the general public perceived Lucas as a sequel-making machine tracks with early 80s Lucas-hype about possibly 9 or 12 movies in the future. But it’s funny how quickly the perception went from “Sequel-crazy exec” to “we need to kidnap Lucas and force him to make more movies at gunpoint.” And it’s even funnier how the narrative changed AGAIN after that to “go back in time and prevent Lucas from making more movies after ROTJ”.
