‘Star Wars’: Ewan McGregor Once Shared What Made Working on the Prequel Trilogy Soulless
Star Wars actor Ewan McGregor has been a part of Lucas’ popular sci-fi trilogy since his introduction as Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi. Although he holds the trilogy in high regard, he once shared that working on the movies behind the scenes was extremely difficult. So much so he found some of the work put into the films soulless.
Ewan McGregor found the mixed reaction the ‘Star Wars’ prequels received difficult
Like some fans, McGregor holds the prequel trilogy close to his heart. It’s a trilogy that helped further increase the actor’s profile while making him synonymous with one of Star Wars’ most iconic characters. But during its initial run, the trilogy wasn’t all that heavily favored. And McGregor admitted this was a hard thing to come to terms with.
“It was one of the difficult things about being in the prequels,” he once told NBC News. “When they came out, they were not seemingly well received.”
But over the years, McGregor has discovered that the prequel trilogy had more fans than he realized back then.
“I became more aware of the fondness that the generation that we made the prequels for has for those films,” he added. “They couldn’t understand why I thought that they weren’t liked when they came out, you know? It meant a lot to me.”
McGregor once explained at a press conference that this new revelation helped give him a new perspective on the prequels.
“It’s scary. And then those films were critically not liked very much. Or they weren’t written very nicely about by the critics. But what we didn’t hear at the time was people your age, your generation. We meet those people now who really love our films, you know,” McGregor explained. “But it’s taken us 15 years to hear that. And it’s so nice. It’s really nice. It’s changed my outlook. My relationship with Star Wars is different because of that.”
Ewan McGregor found working on the prequel trilogy soulless
As much as McGregor appreciated the prequels, he wasn’t shy about sharing how difficult they were to make behind the scenes. Part of the reason was due to the amount of CGI that was involved in the movies.
“We put our heart and soul into [the movies]. And they were difficult to make because the second one, the third one, there was so much green screen and the blue screen,” he said. “Because George was pushing into this new realm that he had designed. He was responsible for ILM and he wanted to max out that technology. But that meant for us that we were very much on blue screens and green screens.”
In an August 2005 interview with Playboy, he spoke a bit more candidly about how working with Lucas’ technology impacted his process.
“Backgrounds and effects are added later. It’s tedious, and there’s no soul to them. By the nature of those movies, all the creative work is done afterward. They don’t spend nearly as long on the acting as they do on everything else,” McGregor said.
Ewan McGregor agreed that ‘Star Wars’ dialogue wasn’t the best, but that was a good thing
One of the prequel trilogy’s criticisms was how Lucas wrote dialogue between characters. McGregor agreed with the sentiment that Star Wars’ dialogue wasn’t the best. But he felt that was what made it Star Wars.
“If you had really good dialogue in a Star Wars movie, it wouldn’t be a Star Wars movie anymore. The people are two-dimensional, which has almost become the style. I loved being in them. Among the nicest things for me was meeting Hayden Christensen, who is great, and Natalie Portman, because I think she’s a wonderful girl as well as incredibly bright and passionate,” he said.
