Cinescape has a preview of their George Lucas interview in the print edition of the magazine:

?Whenever you talk to an author and somebody that writes, they write this back-story, [and it?s] basically character driven,? Lucas said. ?What you?re doing is setting up who your characters are. Obviously there are a lot of technical issues going on. I had to get somewhere. Okay, this is the father; these are the kids. Where the hell did they come from? In [PHANTOM MENACE], I was dealing with the beginning. I was dealing with a lot of issues a lot of fans didn?t want to hear about ? symbiotic relationships and things. The public yawned and people weren?t ready for it when I said Anakin was basically created by the midichlorians, which is a spiritual, symbiotic idea. In that case I was talking much further back, indicative of all creation. At the same time, it is inevitable we would get to the love story. It is inevitable that, let?s face it ? Padme is going to get pregnant.?

He added, ?I knew when I made the film a lot of fans weren?t going to like this because I wasn?t making the movie they wanted. They wanted me to start with EPISODE II. They wanted to see Jedis fighting; they wanted to see battles. They wanted to see THE MATRIX. I knew that I was telling a story that I wrote 30 years ago and I had to start at the beginning and I had to do all the groundwork, which means you have to lay all the pipe for the world you are creating.?