An exclusive interview with George Lucas (from an alternate timeline where Star Wars never happened)

In another reality, the one-and-done director of THX 1138 is still dreaming of Luke Starkiller and the evil emperor

Thanks to the success of the Star Wars franchise, George Lucas has fame, notoriety, and a net worth of $5.1 billion. But there was a second, early in his career where Lucas looked like a classic “one and done” misunderstood artist who retreated from Hollywood after directing one well-received low-budget film. To imagine “What if?,” Polygon traveled to an alternate plane of the multiverse to interview the man himself.

THX 1138 was a financial flop that earned mixed reviews and disappeared from the public consciousness before it could even catch on as a cult classic. As for Lucas, who broke out after producing more experimental films at USC, he was essentially banished from Hollywood soon after its release for stealing the film reel and refusing to let the studio suits make any changes. (They still managed to cut four minutes after his producer, legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, returned the reel.)

But if you’ve somehow managed to see THX 1138, perhaps by scrolling deep into some second-rate streaming library or downloading a sketchy torrent from a legally iffy website, you likely experienced the same feeling I did the first time I watched this movie: George Lucas is a genius.

Considering its tiny budget, THX 1138 is a towering achievement; an unnerving vision of dystopia that borrows liberally from George Orwell and Aldous Huxley while always feeling wholly original. The fact that Lucas never made a single other movie is a crime against cinema, or perhaps even more proof that we’re living in the wrong timeline.

Lucas hasn’t given an interview since 1971, after abandoning plans to direct Apocalypse Now for Coppola. But after years of unanswered emails and ignored calls, he finally agreed to talk to me ahead of THX 1138’s 55th anniversary — on one condition. Lucas wanted to show me something, but to see it, I’d have to drive five hours from Los Angeles to his office in Modesto, California.

“I had to create a futuristic world without special effects and without sets,” Lucas says when I ask about THX 1138.

He listens patiently as I praise his film, then shrugs off my questions about his influences. When I ask whether Brave New World was an inspiration, he replies bluntly: “Sure, it’s impossible to write a dystopia without stealing a little from Aldous Huxley.”

Asked about his arguments with the studio and the daring heist of his own movie, Lucas grins slightly: “They didn’t seem to like that,” he says, refusing to elaborate. He hasn’t spoken to Coppola since then, either. And when I ask if Lucas has seen his old friend’s latest movie, Megalopolis, he smirks and then waves his hand with surprising authority: “Next question.”

Taking the hint, I put down my notes and look around the room. We’re sitting in the back office of L.M. Morris Stationery Store, a small shop Lucas took over from his father after returning home from Los Angeles in defeat. The walls are covered with old movie posters (Sam Jones as Flash Gordon, Leonardo DiCaprio as Spider-Man). His desk is cluttered with handmade toys and figurines, small spaceships and furry aliens.

Lucas follows my eyeline and seems to perk up. He sees me stop to study one toy: a man in white clothing with a blue sword.

“That’s Luke Starkiller,” he says excitedly. “He’s the chosen one!”

Now it’s my turn to nod silently as Lucas begins to ramble about distant galaxies, something called a “jeh-die,” and Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey.

“The story is a classic one,” he explains. “Every few hundred years, the story is retold, because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you're in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they're actually not.”

Ten minutes later, I’m starting to understand why Lucas summoned me here. In the decades since THX 1138, he’s been developing a follow-up project called “Star Wars.” The concept, clearly the culmination of someone who watched an ungodly amount of Flash Gordon as a kid, is nowhere near ready for public consumption, and the few Hollywood friends he still has keep telling him to give up. But Lucas refuses to listen.

“Star Wars is more than just a movie,” he says. “It’s an entire universe of characters and stories living inside my head. Thousands of years of history. I can’t stop thinking about it. I even dream Star Wars.”

The more Lucas talks about his unrealized project, the more the gears start to turn. It’s bigger than just another movie or even a franchise. In his wildest dreams, Star Wars is a sprawling media empire that can rival Warner and its pop-culture-dominating, interconnected, 36-movie Sherlock Holmes Cinematic Universe.

For the one-time director, Star Wars is a way of life. It’s something halfway between a religion, with its own rituals and morality, and an unstoppable money-printing machine that will lift him out of Modesto and straight to the top of Hollywood, where he belongs.

“I’ll never sell the toy rights,” Lucas says about a cast of heroes and villains who only exist inside his imagination. Then, in the same breath, he denounces the commercialization of movies in general. “None of this was designed for a mass audience. Nobody in their right mind thinks Star Wars will work.”

Like THX 1138, Star Wars is also intensely political. Lucas envisions a battle between an evil empire and a ragtag rebel army. He’s not subtle about the real-world parallels, either. In his mind, the bad guys represent American imperialism, the good guys are a stand-in for whoever’s fighting back. Back in 1971, that was the Viet Cong. Today, it’s the New England Freedom Forces.

“Ted Cruz is no better than the emperor,” Lucas sneers.

(The current U.S. president is facing record-low approval ratings after dragging the country to the brink of civil war, but based on Lucas’ description of the emperor as a shriveled old space wizard who shoots lightning from his eyes, I’m still not sure the comparison is totally merited.)

Star Wars will probably never exist outside Lucas’ brain. He tells me he knows this. If there was ever a chance, it was long before he burned all his bridges in Hollywood. But he still wants the world to know about Luke Starkiller.

“Someone needs to tell the next great hero’s journey,” he says. “Maybe my ideas can help inspire them.”

As for Lucas, he claims he’s satisfied being a one-and-done director.

“I’m proud of THX 1138,” he says. “Maybe my career didn’t turn out the way I pictured it, but, hey, at least I never sold out, right?”