The One Star Wars Movie That George Lucas' Ex-Wife Can't Stand

Well, to be fair, George Lucas' ex-wife Marcia Lucas, who served as an editor on the original trilogy of Star Wars and got divorced in 1983, on the same year Return of the Jedi appeared on the big screen, can't stand quite a number of Star Wars movies by now. She blasted the Disney sequel trilogy, calling it "just terrible."

And she said that she cried after watching The Phantom Menace for the first time, because she disliked the movie to that extent.

So we should clarify – she's talking about one movie from the original Star Wars trilogy, on which Marcia collaborated closely with George. Unsurprisingly for fans, who are interested in the history of filming Star Wars, that is Return of the Jedi.

She said that Episode VI caused so many editorial problems that she had to leave another project to fix it:

"The third film was the most problematic editorially. It went through several English editors and we weren't happy with any of the assembled footage. I had to beg off another movie to stay and fix this one." (via)

No surprise that by the end of that job Marcia ended up exhausted and with no interest in any more projects like this.

As for specific problematic scenes, she mentioned the battle above the Sarlaac Pit on Tattooine in the first part of the movie:

"The battle in the desert over the monster hole – I spent two months cutting that into something intelligible. I worked with Rose at ILM for the entire time. She probably hates me to this day I was always on her to get finished effects shots so I could cut them in."

Interesting, as the final cut of that battle is still considered to be an iconic action scene.

Marcia also said that initial cuts of Yoda's death scene were too dry due to lack of emotion from Mark Hamill 's Luke Skywalker:

"I cut Yoda's death scene together – in the first cuts it was too dry – no emotion from Luke and by extension the audience."

Again, if her interpretation correct, she managed to salvage the scene and avoid adding another reason for fan complaints. While Return of the Jedi was very well-received, criticisms of it, or at least of some aspects of the movie, still surface to this day – from dislike of Ewoks and their entire plotline, to the fact that everything went a bit too smoothly for the good guys and the happy ending was a bit too sugary.