George Lucas wants to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens as much as anybody, it seems, but until it hits theaters, he wants absolutely nothing to do with the newest installment of his beloved franchise. He's seen no movie footage but the officially released trailer — but his explanation for this is pretty damned good.


The reason is that George Lucas wants to experience a Star Wars movie as a fan — something he's never been able to do before. As he told ScreenRant:

I haven't seen anything; I mean I saw the trailer, it looks great, it looks interesting. But as I've said before: one thing I regret about Star Wars is that I never got to see it, you know? I never got to be blown away by the big ship coming over the thing, or anything. But this time I'm going to be, because I have no idea what they're doing.


Wow. That's really... understandable. As a Star Wars fan, I legitimately feel kind of bad for Lucas that he's been so busy creating the Star Wars movies — even when he was just executive producing them — that he's had no chance to be as mesmerized by them as audiences have been.

It would take being completely hands off from start to finish, and letting J.J. Abrams and Disney do their own thing, in order to leave The Force Awakens a mystery until opening day arrives. Which begs the question — is George Lucas fanboying over Episode VII? Is he scouring through websites and message boards, looking for every tidbit about the movie he can get without going through the official channels? Is he anonymously bitching on websites somewhere that Abrams hasn't included enough Gungans or something? Probably not, but man, is it fun to imagine.