George Lucas always knew he went too far with 'Phantom Menace'

If there is one movie that was hated by the critics and the audiences in the 'Star Wars' franchise, it has to be 1999s 'The Phantom Menace'.

And it looks like Lucas admitted long ago that he knew that the movie was in trouble, stating this after an early screening of the first prequel.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the director can be seen in a making of featurette, clearly troubled by his editing decisions that made it into the final cut, as per footage shown on the DVD special feature.

As the screening ends, Lucas can be seen saying, "It's a little disjointed. It's bold in terms of jerking people around. I may have gone too far in a few places."

 

The series creator further added, "It boggles the mind. I have thought about this quite a bit, and the tricky part is you almost can't take any of those pieces out of it now, because each one takes you to the next place. And you can't jump because you don't know where you are."

The footage in the small theater ends and then we're transported into a kitchen as George Lucas, Ben Burtt, and producer Rick McCallum have, what seems like, a slightly heated exchange.

Lucas seems to interrupt, defending the types of movies that he makes, but goes on to admit that The Phantom Menace is very hard to follow.

"I do a particular kind of movie of which this is consistent. But it is a very hard movie to follow. But, at the same time, I have done it a little more extremely than I have done it in the past. It's stylistically designed to be that way, and you can't undo that, but we can diminish the effects of it. We can slow it down a little bit, so if it's intense for us, a regular person is going to go nuts," explained Lucas.

Meanwhile, the latest entrant in the franchise 'The Last Jedi' is also garnering some really polarizing reviews from the audiences.

The flick currently holds 91 percent 'critic' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, meanwhile the audience is much lower, 51 percent.

Fans have taken to criticize the latest chapter in the series, 'The Last Jedi', for a variety of reasons, making its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes the lowest of the entire franchise.