Continued from D9

story, George, just tell it the best way you know how to tell it."
If the criticism Lucas received for casting Jake Lloyd as 9-year-old Anakin was harsh, it only intensified when he chose little-known TV actor Hayden Christensen to play the teenage Anakin. Christensen says he was thrilled to be chosen for the role but "definitely worried when I read the script for the first time."
"The dialogue was, well ... I didn't know how I could make it convincing," says Christensen of a script some critics called "ridiculous" and "tone deaf."
"Listen, I was thrilled to get the role," he says . "It was one of the greatest parts ever, and I just wanted to do the best I could do. Samuel Jackson, who I thought was one of the best ever, had called George and asked to be in these movies. I mean, who am I? Finally, I just said to myself, I am George's voice. This is his vision, and I'm here to fulfill it, and that's how we worked."
All one piece
Christensen says that in his "reckless youth" he asked Lucas if he could do line readings in a way that bore less resemblance to those in the 1930s serials, like "Flash Gordon," that had originally inspired Lucas to write "Star Wars."
"He would say, 'OK, give it a shot."' But we all knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was what he printed. He knew you couldn't have one actor doing that arched eyebrow stuff and another going all Method on you. It was all of one piece. And only George saw the whole piece."
Christensen believes that "Revenge of the Sith" will ultimately make the previous two episodes more palatable. He says he was really happy with what he learned when the script was delivered more than two years ago.
We will get to see the redemption, yet again. McCallum and Lucas are planning to go back and reconfigure all the movies for 3D, and neither rules out making changes in the process. Lucas, who says he has kept himself outside the "Star Wars" phenomenon while acting as "an obviously interested observer" of the influence that his wild idea has had on the culture of the 20th and 21st centuries, says he will be involved with the 3D editions, but they will not rule what he says is the third act of his life.