The sci-fi saga born a long, long, time ago is finally over. Steve Pratt talks to the genius behind Star Wars, George Lucas, and gains the views of Anthony Daniels, Ian McDiarmid and Hayden Christensen.

GEORGE Lucas could be forgiven for breathing a sigh of relief. After 30 years, he has brought the last of his Star Wars movies to the screen and can move on to other things. The pressure is off at last. He has delivered five - and undoubtedly the latest, Revenge Of The Sith, will make it six - of the most successful films of all time.

He tried not to think about the level of expectation from fans around the world while shooting the final instalment. "Ultimately, I had to push that out of my life and say I will continue to make the movie I set out to make," he says, the morning after Monday's London premiere.

What was intended as one movie - a return to those Saturday matinee serials he remembered from his childhood - grew into six. He'd written the back stories of all the characters in the first Star Wars, so had the material he needed for subsequent instalments.

After making the trilogy, he called a halt. "I had a long, soul-searching time. I stopped so I could raise my kids. When they were older, I said, 'I can go back'," he explains. "It was a question of returning to making avant garde movies or going back and finishing Star Wars. I realised if I didn't do it then - I was 50 - I wouldn't get around to it."

Now that the saga is complete, something is missing in his life. Not so much a sense of loss as "like having your kids go off to college - they still come back when they need money and for the holidays".

The story will continue through an animated TV series about The Clone Wars and a live action TV series about minor characters in the saga. He'll obviously be keeping an eye on the new projects but won't be directly involved, so he can concentrate on his own films.

Lucas is famous for the secrecy surrounding the Star Wars productions, although he plays this down. "All pictures have security on their set," he says. "It's harder now because of the internet and cell phones that take pictures. There used to be important plot twists held back so people would enjoy a picture. With Revenge Of The Sith, it's not as if people don't know what happens. We bought the book out ahead of time and the video game."

He sees piracy as the biggest single threat to the film industry. If it wasn't for DVD, there wouldn't be an industry in his opinion. Eventually, he suspects everything will become available on line. "I think people will always want the theatrical experience and go to movie theatres. I have a feeling films will be released on DVD and in theatres at the same time," he says.

When the first Star Wars was released in the 1970s there wasn't even VHS let alone DVD. Lucas has embraced new technology and, through his company Lucasfilm, has helped develop it too.

He's unsure when the Star Wars six-pack will be available on DVD. The films could surface in 3D before then. "I've seen a 3D process that's quite amazing and really makes Star Wars look good," he says. "It's not like 3D films where things are poked in your eye. I have become quite a fan of this 3D."

If Lucas had to pick a character with whom he most identifies it would be Luke Skywalker - "that's where I started, he was a farm boy like I was and went off to fight in the galactic world".

Picking which of the six that was most fun to film doesn't get an answer. "The films are like my children so don't ask me to choose which one I like best," he says. "Everything is a problem, you worry about everything that goes on every day, especially when they turn into teenagers. Then you have the next one and it gets easier and easier and easier. By the time you get to the last one, it's a piece of cake. It's very much like that with the movies. The first one was the hardest one and the last was the easiest."

His sense of humour makes his appreciate the numerous parodies and spoofs of the Star Wars saga that have appeared in print, on TV and film over the years. "It's the fun part. We used to say we made movies to be parodied in Mad magazine," he says.

"I always wanted to do two version of the movies, do an extra take after each scene which was a comedy take so I could cut together whole movies as a comedy. "

* Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith (12A) opens in cinemas today.

War stories

THIRTY years ago a radio and stage actor called Anthony Daniels reluctantly went to meet American director George Lucas to talk about playing a robot in a low budget sci-fi movie. He's honest enough to admit that the part didn't really appeal to him. But eventually he signed up to play C-3PO in a film series called Star Wars. Little did he know that what was supposed to be a "12 week gig" would extend across three decades.

"I didn't want to meet him. I didn't want to play a robot. Can you imagine how I would have felt today being a shelf-stacker in a supermarket, thinking, 'I could have been in that'. So I guess the force was with me," he says.

"Actually it was the cover of Newsweek magazine that blasted the whole thing, saying this is the best thing ever. Because Star Wars opened with no publicity, it was just audiences going in and coming out screaming, and taking their friends in, and it just kind of built."

Daniels can now claim to be the only actor with a speaking part in all six Star Wars films. Not that playing the golden robot wasn't without problems. His costume - the robot's familiar "tin can" - was made from a plaster cast of his body but shrunk in the manufacture.

On the first day of shooting, it took six props guys two hours to squeeze him into his suit. Then he emerged from a tent in the desert, took one step and the costume broke, nearly cutting off his foot.

He also reveals that he's been wearing the same costume for 30 years. The technology may have improved for the special effects but C-3PO still has that old-fashioned look.

Daniels also has the distinction of speaking the first and last words .

His first line was something like - and he adopts C-3PO's voice - "Did you hear that? They're shutting down the main reactor. I didn't really know what I was talking about. I hadn't been in a film before and thought this was weird," he says. "Then 28 years later walking in a sound stage in Australia and seeing the same set."

And his last words in Revenge Of The Sith? "Oh, no."

IAN McDiarmid is an internationally acclaimed actor and director whose most recent stage appearance was the title role in a revival of Edward Bond's Lear. But to Star Wars fans he'll always be the supreme ruler of the entire galaxy. The latest instalment completes his transformation from seemingly benevolent Chancellor Palpatine into the decidedly unpleasant Darth Sidious.

The actor has appeared in four of the episodes, a figure boosted to five in recent years thanks to Lucas's digital reworking of past films. "It's interesting, especially in the prequels, because I play a straightforward politician - now there's a contradiction in terms," he says.

"He's charming, smiling and for the good of the world. Underneath that lurks a monster. So it was very easy to build the character, I just looked in the newspapers.

"Now in this film, he is who he is - worst than the devil and certainly worst than Darth Vader, who comes across as more sympathetic. I like the fact that he doesn't have any psychological works, he was spawned in hell."

CANADIAN-BORN actor Hayden Christensen also underwent a radical change of image in Revenge Of The Sith as Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side and becomes Darth Vader. The pain and suffering turned out to be having the prosthetics, which were glued to his face, removed after shooting.

"Looking in the mirror you reacted to yourself, you were unrecognisable and that aids in that transformation," he says. "That was what was really neat, getting to put it all on and experience the sensation of being Vader was great.

"People I'd befriended and spent a lot of time with, who knew I was in the costume, would see him and there were an excitement and certain awe. There was a fear and a respect. As I walked by, their eyes would light up and they would lower their heads a bit, take a few steps back and let me pass. A very empowered feeling.

"It was Vader's day, the very last day of filming as well. Everyone from the production offices and everyone from the film came out to bear witness. It was an exciting day."

Published: 19/05/2005