The First Woman To Shape Star Wars Isn’t Rey’s New Jedi Order Director
New Jedi Order director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy stirred up some controversy recently when she said it was “about time” for a woman to shape a Star Wars film. While many took her quotes out of context in order to spark outrage, Obaid-Chinoy’s words did bring to mind the first woman ever to contribute to the literal shaping of Star Wars: Marcia Lucas. For someone who may have singlehandedly saved the biggest franchise in sci-fi history, we don’t hear much about Marcia Lucas. So let’s change that.
Marcia Lucas was once one of the most sought-after editors in Hollywood.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was very clearly talking about a woman directing a Star Wars movie when she said, “We’re in 2024 now, and it’s about time that we had a woman come forward to shape a story in a galaxy far, far away.”
But that didn’t stop fans from immediately bringing up Leia, Ahsoka, and every other female even remotely connected to Star Wars in order to try and prove her wrong. Ironically, nobody has been bringing up the one woman who not only contributed to “A galaxy far, far, away” but did so practically from its conception.
Marcia Lucas was once one of the most sought-after editors in Hollywood. For a while, she was Martin Scorsese’s go-to supervising editor, hand-picked to work on several of the director’s early films. Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and New York, New York were all shaped by Marcia Lucas’s hands. The fact that she was also married to George Lucas is almost incidental.
For someone who may have singlehandedly saved the biggest franchise in sci-fi history, we don’t hear much about Marcia Lucas.
Her marriage to George, however, is what landed her in the editing suite on what was then simply called Star Wars—the cumbersome “Episode IV-A New Hope” wouldn’t be added until 1981. At the time, George Lucas wasn’t sure that there would be any more episodes unless the first one was a success.
Enter Marcia Lucas. This history of Star Wars is muddy at best. In the same way that history is written by the victors, George Lucas has self-mythologized the creation of the first three films to such a point that he may not even know what really happened anymore.
Marcia Lucas was instrumental in cutting out unneeded elements in the first Star Wars film.
Stories about just how much Marcia Lucas had to do with Star Wars’ initial success vary. Some fans claim she saved the whole movie in the editing room and that without her, it would have flopped. The woman herself downplays her contributions and gives more credit to her ex-husband as the one largely responsible for the way A New Hope turned out.
The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, but no matter what, Marcia Lucas’ role in shaping the movie we know and love today is undeniable.
Marcia Lucas was the one who insisted that George add little bits of humor to Star Wars to lighten the mood.
The first cut of Star Wars: A New Hope was notorious for its length and overall convoluted narrative. Marcia Lucas was instrumental in cutting out unneeded elements like Luke’s visit to Tosche station—yes, originally, he did make it there in spite of his Uncle Owen—and generally restructuring scenes to make the story flow better and to keep the pace moving. Marcia was also responsible for adding a touch of levity to the otherwise overly serious sci-fi narrative her husband was crafting.
Marcia Lucas has largely been erased from the story of Star Wars since her split with George in the mid-’80s.
Marcia Lucas was the one who insisted that George add little bits of humor to Star Wars to lighten the mood. She was the genesis of the scene in A New Hope when Chewbacca growls at a mouse droid on the Death Star, and it scurries off in terror. Moments like that helped to humanize Star Wars and make it relatable despite its alien setting.
Perhaps most important, however, was Marcia Lucas’s contribution to A New Hope‘s climax, the famous Death Star trench run. In the almost 50 years since Star Wars debuted in theaters in 1977, the Death Star run has remained one of the most exhilarating climaxes of any film before or since.
In all the stories about Marcia Lucas, the one thing no one seems to disagree on is that she was almost singlehandedly responsible for crafting that climax into the legendary sequence it became.
Sadly, Marcia Lucas has largely been erased from the story of Star Wars since her split with George in the mid-’80s—history, victors, etc. Hopefully, now that Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is set to usher in a brand new era of Star Wars equality, more people will find out about Marcia Lucas and her role in making Star Wars the pop-culture juggernaut it is today.
