George Lucas Explains Why He Would Never Want to Make Another ‘Star Wars’ Movie

If we’re being realistic, George Lucas probably spends his days jetting from commitment to commitment, scrambling with full-day schedules of business meetings, public appearances, and speaking engagements — a normal life for a successful Hollywood player. But if we’re not being realistic, we might imagine that the man whiles away the days luxuriating in a Millennium Falcon-shaped swimming pool full of doubloons, Scrooge McDuck-style, as a harem of concubines gently feed him pre-peeled grapes one by one. Which is to say that, as far as finances go, the man would never have to direct another motion picture again in his life and he’d be more than set for several lifetimes. But, it’s not just about money: Lucas recently commented about why he walked away from Star Wars and it’s all your fault.

In a new video interview for Vanity Fair, the Star Wars creator voiced some of his frustrations with the past of the franchise and his hopes for the future, yielding some uncharacteristically candid soundbites. “You make a movie and all you do is get criticized,” Lucas said, “and it’s not much fun. You can’t experiment.” In all fairness, criticism is what happens when you make a movie that doesn’t adhere to any coherent plot structure and works from a hilariously bad script, but we see what he means. The devoted Star Wars faithful picked through the prequel trilogy with the finest-tooth combs on the market, and nobody likes to be nitpicked to death.

Another of Lucas’ comments was even richer. He expressed a hope for Star Wars: The Force Awakens that under new director J.J. Abrams, “the Force doesn’t get muddled into a bunch of gobbledygook.” The implied part of that sentence is, “…like I did.” Lucas drew perhaps the most heat for explaining away the magic of the Force through some bogus blood-borne symbiotic organisms called midichlorians in the prequel trilogy, and so it’s pretty big talk for him to go on about preserving the sanctity of his original vision. (On the more exciting side, he indicates a desire to get back to working in an experimental mode, more in the vein of his outstanding debut feature THX 1138.)

And of course, Lucas had to troll his audience just a little bit. When asked which character from the Star Wars universe he’d most like to be? “Jar Jar Binks.” Lucas, you cad.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters on December 18.