In the latest issue of MAXIM Magazine you can find interviews with many Star Wars celebs, including George Lucas. Here's a clip from his interview no available online:

When you look back at The Phantom Menace, is there anything you wish you?d done differently? No. I don?t think back that way. A lot of things I?m doing are from when I first started, because it?s really a 12-hour movie, and I?m trying to make it consistent. I feel that I?ve forced myself into a style I created at the beginning, and I have to follow it all the way through. My only regret is when I don?t get to finish something. Someone once said that movies are never finished?they?re abandoned.

Were you disappointed that Episode I wasn?t embraced like the first trilogy was? Well, worldwide, Phantom Menace outgrossed the three other films, so it was the most popular. It?s definitely more popular than Empire and Jedi. It?s impossible to get into that stratosphere without people really liking the movie and going back to see it again and again. None of the films have been received well by critics. I make them for a particular audience, and that audience seems to respond. Even then half the fans love a certain film and half hate a certain film.

Did the events of 9/11 alter your perspective on the story of a ?rebel alliance? fighting an ?evil trade federation?? I?m talking about universal issues that are more transcendent than the current events. The whole series was basically written 25 years ago, so it?s about issues that came out of the ?50s and ?60s. But history repeats itself; a lot of things that happened in Rome 2,000 years ago are recurring today in exactly the same way. Those themes are what the Star Wars movies are about.

Were you flattered when you heard that several of Enron?s shell companies were named after terms from Star Wars? [laughs] I don?t know if I would say I was ?flattered.? Star Wars is part of the culture, and it?s had a big influence on two generations now. But I don?t want to encourage people to disregard the law in the name of Star Wars.

Will Attack of the Clones offer a darker vision of the universe than what we saw in Phantom Menace? This entire trilogy is darker, rather than any particular film. And the darkest of this trilogy will be the climax, the third film. This is the middle film?it?s basically a love story, with overtones of what?s going to happen. So it?s the same as the first trilogy, except that the first trilogy has a happy ending and this one doesn?t.

Since we already know that Anakin Skywalker will become Darth Vader, will that final chapter be totally bleak? Well, I think there?s redemption in the fact that his babies will go off and eventually bring their father back to his senses.

Last summer we witnessed a string of ?event? movies that opened huge and were gone by the following weekend. Do you feel any responsibility for that trend? That has nothing to do with me. When I started, a film would play for a year?American Graffiti played for more than a year?but that would never happen today. In the ?70s, all these giant blockbusters?The Godfather and Jaws and Star Wars?made theaters a lot of money. And what did the theater owners do with that money?

They built more sophisticated snack counters with 14 types of butter? No, they built multiplexes. And because they have so many screens, they have to fill them. If 14 screens are playing Harry Potter this week, 10 will be playing Harry Potter next week, so you?ve got screens just sitting there. But there have always been blockbusters. Gone With the Wind was made to be a blockbuster. It?s part of the business: You have some giant movies, and then you have lots of little movies, and you need that mix to make it financially viable.

Was it hard to get the first Star Wars made when no one knew what it would be? I had a lot of challenges because nobody really believed in the movie. It didn?t help that there were only about five Americans on that film, and three of ?em were actors. But I got to do it because Alan Ladd Jr. [then an executive at 20th Century Fox] loved American Graffiti, and even he said, ?I don?t understand this movie.? But at the time it was an average-cost movie. It was $9 million, which would be like a $40 million movie today. You know, all the special effects in that movie cost $2 million, and a million of that went to build the motion-control cameras.