LIFE WITHOUT `STAR WARS' THE SAGA CONCLUDES, BUT GEORGE LUCAS' JOURNEY CONTINUES.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

SKYWALKER RANCH - George Lucas looks almost buoyant.

That's not the way the celebrated director is generally viewed by many in the press - closer to impenetrable, as if he were wearing Darth Vader's mask. But today, dressed in his familiar sweater and buttoned-down white shirt, he says he's relieved to have ``crossed the finish line'' with ``Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith,'' the prequel trilogy's concluding chapter, which opens Thursday.

``When you're doing something for 10 years,'' says the director, who turned 61 on Saturday, ``you're just hoping you're around to finish it and the world doesn't end.''

For Lucas (and doubtless millions of fans), this is closure after more than a 30-year odyssey and a six-movie story arc.

``Star Wars'' was something he started in 1971 when he began writing ideas for a ``Buck Rogers''-style film - and the universe kept expanding. When the first film (now referred to as ``A New Hope'') was released in 1977, neither Lucas nor the studio expected it to be successful. But the first five movies have made nearly $3.5 billion at the box office and $9 billion in merchandising, which Lucas - in hindsight - was clever enough to snag the rights to at the beginning.

But the filmmaker never expected ``Star Wars'' to consume his life, and after the first three films were completed in 1983 with ``Return of the Jedi,'' he turned his back on the saga. Instead, he concentrated on raising his three adopted children and turning to other projects, like the ``Indiana Jones'' films.

But something continued to tug at him. So when he thought his ``kids were old enough'' and that he ``had the technology to do it,'' Lucas decided to return to the back story - the rise and fall of Darth Vader (think Greek tragedy). He also was 50 years old at the time and knew ``starting a project when I'm 75 was not in the cards.''

Now that ``the puzzle is com ,plete,'' Lucas is pleased. ``People will, hopefully, see it as a six-story saga and not a bunch of individual movies.''

The director hasn't always been so serene about ruling the ``Star Wars'' empire. In the 1980s, according to ``Easy Riders, Raging Bulls'' by Peter Biskind, Lucas felt that ``Star Wars'' had derailed his career like ``The Godfather'' had done to his mentor, Francis Ford Coppola, and he even vowed never to return to the franchise. Lucas has even been blamed for ruining American cinema, a charge he rejects.

Back at USC film school in the 1960s, Lucas had hoped to become an independent filmmaker, creating arty movies, and his first feature, 1971's ``THX 1138,'' bore that out. Many regarded the film as interesting but cold. Encouraged by Coppola to do something warmer, Lucas made ``American Graffiti,'' which in turn gave him the chance to do ``Star Wars.''

Its unprecedented success turned him into the object of constant media and fan scrutiny.

As he was working on ``Return of the Jedi,'' he began building Skywalker Ranch in a secluded part of Marin County, a place that has shielded him from Hollywood's spotlight.

Somewhere along the way, though - sometime while he was raising his children - Lucas reconciled himself to the franchise, perhaps because he had always loved the characters.

Matt Stover, who wrote the novelization of ``Sith,'' says when he talked to the filmmaker about the project it was ``almost like talking to another fan, because there was no pretense, no artifice. His enthusiasm for all of this was so palpable.''

Even after returning to make the prequel trilogy, which started with ``Episode I - The Phantom Menace'' in 1999, Lucas wasn't always on firm ground. Partly because, as he admits, ``Dialogue is not my thing. I'm pretty good at plots.'' Yet he felt no one else could tell the story but him.

Still, he finished the first draft of the script for ``Episode II - Attack of the Clones'' just a week before shooting, then hired a writer to work on it because ``I decided I better go back to being a director, and I needed somebody to yell at.''

But on ``Sith,'' Hayden Christensen, who plays Anakin Skywalker, saw a different Lucas than the man who directed ``Clones.''

``He was definitely more excited by the story he was telling. You could tell by the way he came to the set every day with a passion to get the scene right. I guess there was maybe an ease or confidence that he hadn't had on the last film because he was very sure in the story, as we all were.''

Going into the prequels, Lucas knew things would be different about these ``Star Wars'' movies. ``I accepted the fact that I wasn't a kid anymore.'' And although he ``wanted stylistically the same thing'' - a Saturday matinee serial and the acting style of a '40s movie - he knew the films would be darker.

``It wasn't a traditional story arc. It wasn't a plot. It was a character study. That part is different. I knew this would be a more mature look at the same idea.''

While ``Phantom Menace'' ($925.5 million) and ``Clones'' ($648.3 million) brought in fans, they both had an unfinished feel. The payoff was coming in ``Sith.''

Lucas says he wanted to finish the saga because he felt that many people didn't understand that the ``Star Wars'' films were really the story of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader.

``Sith'' producer Rick McCallum believes the film - made for $113 million - ``will satisfy audiences,'' including younger ones who cheered Anakin in ``I'' and ``II'' and who want to see how he becomes the evil Vader.

A darker tone has led to a PG-13 rating for ``Sith,'' the first film in the series to get something other than a PG. Lucas says it couldn't be avoided because of the story he wanted to tell.

He says ``Star Wars'' has endured because it's ``based on mythological motifs that have been around for thousands of years.'' This reflects Lucas' interest in Joseph Campbell's classic work on myths, ``The Hero With a Thousand Faces.'' Lucas says he re-read the book after beginning ``Star Wars'' and considered the late Campbell, whose work he helped make more widely known, something of a mentor.

These days, the director is championing the work of Daniel Goleman, whose 1995 book ``Emotional Intelligence'' helped to shape the mission of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. In a statement on the foundation's Web site (edutopia.org), the filmmaker says the organization was created because ``public education is the foundation of our democracy'' and because he wondered ``why school can't be exciting all the time.'' To that end, the foundation produces films, books, a magazine, an e-newsletter, CD-ROMs and DVDs for schools. Emotional intelligence, according to Goleman, is the idea that skills such as self-control, getting along with others, perseverance and self-motivation are more important than IQ for lifelong success. Lucas has put it this way: ``In my work in filmmaking, we need talented individuals with technical skills, but their abilities to communicate and work with others are just as valuable.''

Talk to him about the ``Star Wars'' story, and you see why Lucas is interested in Goleman's work.

``Emotionally, we haven't changed very much in the last 3,000 years. I think deep-seated feelings about things and a need to know how things work in terms of a family, in terms of our place in society ... are exactly the same. That's why people relate to it. I have been saying this ever since day one, when people were saying ('Star Wars' was) all about spaceships ... . You could do it with chariots and tell the same story.''

And while Lucasfilm will continue to make ``Clone Wars,'' an animated spinoff of the franchise, and eventually plans to produce a live-action series that takes place between episodes ``III'' and ``IV,'' Lucas says, ``I'm looking forward to doing other things in my life.''

That includes those arty nonlinear films he intended to do out of college. When pressed on what they would be like, he mentioned only ``Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation,'' a visually stunning docufilm by Godfrey Reggio that Lucas produced in 1988. But otherwise, the filmmaker only smiles and says, ``I don't know. I've got nothing yet.''

While ``Star Wars'' won't consume him anymore, he'll remain a force in filmmaking with his new $350 million, 850,000-square-foot Letterman Digital Arts Center, located on the former Presidio army base in San Francisco.

``I would have never believed I would end up where I am now - not in a million years, and I went about it completely wrong,'' says Lucas, who will be honored today at the Cannes Film Festival, where ``Sith'' is having its world premiere, and is receiving the prestigious Festival Trophy.

``I was actually going the opposite way. Somehow I ended up here. So that's the way life is. You head north and you end up south.''

Somewhere along the way Lucas - whether arty filmmaker or pop-culture wizard - seems to have embraced his destiny, whatever direction it's headed.

Rob Lowman, [phone]

robert.lowman(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

7 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 4 -- cover -- color) CREATIVE FORCE

George Lucas reflects on a 30-year voyage that changed cinema

(5) Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) and director George Lucas on the set of ``Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.''

(6) George Lucas, 1968

(7) George Lucas with cast and crew on the set of ``Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi''