Too many fans today take Star Wars deadly serious to the point where they protest loudly whenever anything goes in a direction they don’t approve.
However, when George Lucas started Star Wars, it was never meant to be a serious movie franchise and was always meant to be for kids.
Mark Hamill pointed this out this week when he revealed what Lucas wanted to play alongside Star Wars in theaters when it came out.
George Lucas wanted Daffy Duck to play before Star Wars
Mark Hamill posted on Twitter that George Lucas wanted a classic Looney Tunes cartoon to play before every screening of Star Wars.
The cartoon in question was Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, and Hamill said it could put fans into the right frame of mind for the movie Lucas had made.
“George really did want this classic Daffy Duck cartoon shown before every screening of #SW,” Hamill wrote. “It would’ve been an icebreaker to let the audience know what was coming was less than dead serious. I was disappointed when we couldn’t get the rights to it & it didn’t happen.”
The animated short was a riff on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It had a sense of playfulness to show audiences Star Wars was meant to embrace that spirit of adventure but not be too serious.
That is something many Star Wars fans have forgotten about.
This is something that fans often see today, with movies from Disney and Pixar often having a short play before the main feature. However, those are animated movies, and it isn’t something most people are used to seeing with live-action films.
Star Wars is for kids
When the Star Wars prequels came out, fans hated several moments and none more so than Jar Jar Binks. However, Lucas always wanted to have something in his movie for kids, whether it was an awkward C-3PO, a muppet in Yoda, or the cute little Ewoks.
In the sequel trilogy, fans grew so angry when things didn’t go how they wanted that they set out with death threats and online attacks of the stars.
It was a huge move away from what George Lucas envisioned when he created a movie about a farm boy who wanted to be a fighter pilot for a rebellion fighting an evil empire.
George Lucas said that Star Wars is supposed to entertain 12-year-olds, a story of “Friendships, honesty, trust, doing the right thing, living on the right side and avoiding the dark side.”
Mark Hamill’s story is a good example of what Star Wars is all about.