Currently on the shelves in the UK is the September issue of Empire Magazine. It features a candid interview with George Lucas, conducted from his hotel suite the day after the glitzy TPM premiere in London. Numerous readers brought the interview to our attention. Here are some of the highlights.

Interviewed by Ian Freer

Portrait by Mark Seliger

Is it true that you had a wager with Steve Spielberg about The Phantom Menace's opening weekend gross?

Ah... yes.

Who won?

He won. Mine was way too low.

You've often said that Star Wars movies are primarily meant for children, but The Phantom Menace was always going to be a film that was going to be significant for twenty/thirtysomethings. How did you address this problem?

Basicly I didn't. I kept it as it was originally intended. You can't play too much to the marketplace. It's the same thing with the fans. The fans' expectations had gotten way high and they wanted a film that was going to change their lives and be the Second Coming. You know, I can't do that, it's just a movie. And I can't say, now I gotta market it to a whole different audience. I tell the story. I knew if I'd made Anakin 15 instead of nine, then it would have been more marketable. If I'd made the Queen 18 instead of 14, then it would have been more marketable. But that isn't the story. It is important that he be young, that he be at an age where leaving his mother is more of a drama than is would have been at 15. So you just have to do what's right for the movie, not what's right for the market.

The next film is a love story and I don't know how that's going to be taken by fans. They think of Star Wars as one kind of movie. And it's drifting a little more -- by the nature of it being a love story, it's less of a kids' movie because they don't like to sit through all that yucky stuff. But it's still aimed at the same age level, so it's going to be a real challenge for me to get through that part. And then the third film is very, very, very dark. It's not a happy movie by any stretch of the imagination. It's a tragedy. People think of Star Wars movies as happy movies. What they're going to do about a tragedy, I don't know. It will probably be the least successful of all the Star Wars movies - but I know that.

How does the process for writing Episodes II and III work?

It's mostly storylines, they've not got that much detail in them. I know the characters, where they go and what they do, but the details - who the characters interact with, the plot devices and the dialogue - are not set yet. It shaves down, as time goes on, things are eliminated. Ultimately the finally story is between Yoda, Obi-Wan, Anakin and the Queen. It's really their story. Those four characters.

Speaking of Jar Jar Binks, certain sections of the fan base and audience have violently taken against him. Can you see where they are coming from?

Yeah. It's always been there. There's a group of fans who don't like comic sidekicks. They wanna see The Terminator, they wanna see a different kind of movie. But this isn't that movie. That same group of fans absolutely hated R2 and 3PO in the first film; in the second film they hated Yoda, he was not a well-like character - "We can't understand what he's talking about, he's green, he's a muppet." In the third film, they hated the Ewoks, couldn't stand the cute little sidekick creatures - "We don't like it. It makes it beyond a children's film." They can't stand it that there is this aspect to these movies, but comic sidekick characters have been in every single movie.

And will they continue to be?

And they will continue. I'm sorry if they don't like it. They should go back and see The Matrix or something. These are PG movies. I'm not gonna take those kinds of characters out. Obviously when you get a small group of fans who hate something, it becomes compounded by the internet. The press picks up the internet like it's a source. They don't realize it is just one person typing out their opinion. It's been my experience, and the experience of 20th Century Fox, that most of the people who go to the movie, at least 95 per cent, love Jar Jar. He's extremely popular with kids. He's popular with women. It's funny that the five percent of the audience - even less probably - who don't like Jar Jar are the ones that get written about. In the toy world, Darth Maul is the biggest seller, but Jar Jar is up there. Part of it is an ageism thing. "I'm coo, I'm hip, I'm embarrassed I'm liking a movie that appeals to young kids." You have to get over the fear of being declared unhip of not tough.

You mentioned Darth Maul. A common reaction of audiences is "Maul is so cool." So why isn't he in it more?

(Risignedly) It's not about him...ha, ha, ha. Obviously everyone likes the villain better than they like the heroes, that's sort of a tradition. And obviously I was trying to make a villain who was sufficient to replace Darth Vader, because Vader was such a great villain, I needed something to stop people saying, "Ah what a whimpy villain next to Darth Vader." I wanted something that revealed a little more understanding of what an apprentice is, because this is obviously where this is all going. At one point, when Obi-Wan kills Darth Maul, he just fell in the pit. I looked at it and thought this isn't going to work because, if people like him enough, they're going to want him to come back and they're going to assume somehow he gets out of it. So I had to cut him in half to say that this guy's gone, he's history, he ain't coming back. I'll come up with another apprentice. The whole issue of having apprentices, poor Darth Sidious trying to replenish his apprentice supply, is one of the main plot points.

In Episode IV, R2D2 and C-3PO land on Tatooine and haven't got a clue where they are. Yet in The Phantom Menace, R2 travels to Tatooine and C-3PO was built there. How so?

How so? That will be coming up. (laughs) There's a lot of little things that'll be cleared up. The other one that gets asked a lot is why doesn't Qui-Gon disappear like everybody else. That's a plot point that centres around Obi-Wan saying to Vader/Anakin in the first one, "If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." There is an issue about The Force and that will be revealed.

Does this sort of retro reading get on your nerves?

A lot of it is just nitpicky. Most people don't care about that stuff. There's a lot of things that will be explained more. Some of it is important plot stuff - the Qui-Gon one is, 3PO isn't.

Do you think Empire and Jedi would have been a lot different if you had directed them yourself?

To be very honest with you, no I don't. I was very close on those movies. If anything, Irvin Kershner (director, Empire Strikes Back) gave it a different patina that I wouldn't have done. I don't think you would have noticed it if you compared the two. His personality is there in a way that, to me, makes it a nicer movie. The movie itself is in essence the same thing. It's a hard thing to describe; it's like seeing a rough cut of the movie and a fine cut of a movie - they're sort of the same movie, but just a little bit different. I don't think there would have been major shifts.

Francis Copolla often says about you that the day Star Wars became successful, Americas was deprived of one of its most challenging filmmakers. Fair comment?

Well... I ended up going off in a different direction. Life sends you down funny paths. And you get many opportunities to keep you eyes open. In that group, I was the most far out and I ended up making children's films. (laughs) How do you figure that? I was more of a cinema verite documentary underground filmmaker. I had no interest in doing theatrical films at all. It's really Francis' influence that sent me into theatrical films, that taught me working with actors, writing screenplays and doing all that stuff. And I spent a lot of my time writing screenplays, which was the thing I hated most. I just hated my writing classes because I didn't believe that's what cinema was. And I went off in this other direction. Well who know? Because Star Wars was successful, it was easier for me to survive. I can actually build a survival unit - build up ILM, build up Skywalker Sound - and create an organization to make the kind of movies I wanted to make.

Finally, if you were to pick one image from your movies to stand for your body of work, which would you pick?

Oh God...Um, maybe the last shot in THX when the guy is standing against the sinking sun. I don't know why.