When asked by Charlie Rose about Disney’s acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, Lucas seemed to be having a hard time letting go, coming across as wounded and more than a little lost.
Still, Lucas made some salient criticisms of the new film. He told Rose that Disney wasn’t interested in the work he had done sketching out sequels because it wanted “to make something for the fans,” and that the new film felt too familiar. “They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie, I worked very hard to make them different. I made them completely different—different planets, different spaceships to make it new.”
But Lucas’s criticisms were quickly overshadowed by this exchange with Rose:
Lucas: These are my kids.
Rose: All the Star Wars films...
Lucas: I loved them. I created them. I’m very intimately involved in them. And obviously to sell them off..
Rose: And you sold them.
Lucas: I sold them off to the white slavers that take these things… [laughs]
This is a very dumb thing to say! It’s offensive. It doesn’t make sense. And it obscures Lucas’s valid criticism of The Force Awakens—and probably makes Disney more than happy to keep him away from the new films.