MUBI Notebook Launches 5-Part Star Wars Series Written by Me, Chelsea Phillips-Carr, Neil Bahadur, Isaac Goes and Isiah Medina

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and writing about George Lucas’s work, especially his Star Wars films; I hold this six-part series in extremely high regard, especially the prequel trilogy. In my Bright Lights Film Journal article Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: George Lucas’s Greatest Artistic Statement?, I discuss the breadth of Lucas’s extratextual reference and his brazenly unique sensibility. In George Lucas’s Wildest Vision: Retrofuturist Auteurism in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), I pay serious mind to Lucas’s interest in cinematic form and his avant-garde background, unpacking the ways in which his early experimental projects inform his later work.

For the purpose of this dialogue I wanted to hear input from several of my favorite film critics. I categorize Disney’s spin-off entries separately from Lucas’s work, given the corporation’s decision to disregard his existing outlines, but some of the contributors acknowledged the new films’ relation to (or distance from) the existing saga. I decided to pose broad, open-ended questions about these films, hoping to open up the possibilities for conversation as much as possible.”