George Lucas Visited the Set of 'Rogue One' and Said They Should Use More CGI

"I think there are two things that are incredibly surreal that you can do in your life. Number two is having to show George Lucas your Star Wars movie. Like, that was really crazy. And I think number one is to be George Lucas and have someone show you a Star Wars movie. So I felt for him, and he was incredibly gracious."

"He said, 'Don't screw it up.'… He joked a lot about how we should do more in the computer, and not build so much. We didn't take his advice. We tried to shoot as much in-camera as possible."

Our first reaction upon hearing that George Lucas' was on the Rogue One set giving 'advice' was sheer panic. The Star Wars fandom spent three years anxiously waiting to see if J.J. Abrams and Disney could revive the franchise after the unmitigated mess of the prequels, and guess what—it all turned out okay. The Force Awakens, while still being very safe, familiar, and expected, reassured fans that Star Wars could be good again, even amazing. But the bedrock of that reassurance was knowing that George Lucas would not be allowed anywhere near the new films—after acquiring Lucasfilm, Disney even rejected Lucas' story treatments for Episodes VII, VIII, and IX . The age of green screens was over. So what 'advice' was Lucas giving Edwards?Use more green screens, essentially.According to a report by Collider , Edwards interviewed with a French media program and spoke a little bit about the experience of making the film (as well as answering some select questions with oui and no, like "Will there be R2-D2?" or "Will there be lightsabers?"—both no). During the back-and-forth, Edwards revealed that Lucas himself had dropped by the set to check out a screening of the movie. Edwards said it was a bizarre experience:We have to admit, that's pretty wild. Despite building on the work of hundreds of dedicated artists, actors, and craftsmen (including Ralph McQuarrie and Colin Cantwell, the latter of whom designed the Millennium Falcon and Death Star trench ), George Lucas is considered to be the embodiment of the whole Star Wars universe. Edwards says Lucas was 'gracious,' but I guess that's the best you can hope for when you're showing a man his own Death Star (we imagine Lucas felt sort of like Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'The Sixth Day ').Then came some of Lucas' "advice":Upon saying those words, "do more in the computer," Gareth Edwards probably felt millions of Star Wars fans suddenly cry out in terror. We look at Rogue One posters with Jar Jar Binks' face replacing Jyn Erso and laugh a little, but only because we know we'll never have to deal with the kind of computer-heavy moviemaking that helped to turn the backstory of Star Wars into fake-looking, badly executed CGI slop. Even if it was a joke on Lucas' part to tell Edwards to use more computers, it's probably one of the bitterest, most loaded things you can joke about on a Star Wars set. We like to imagine Lucas has a Stormtrooper stress doll at home for every time he thinks about it.Either way, we're extremely excited for the upcoming release of Rogue One (and the Twitter chat today with the cast! #AskRogueOne), but we're even more excited knowing that Edwards stuck to making his own movie... and passed the Lucas Test.