Marcia Lucas, Oscar-Winning Star Wars and Return of the Jedi Editor, Dies at 80

Marcia Lucas, the movie exertion who won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing for Star Wars and was the ex-wife of Star Wars creator George Lucas, has died astatine property 80.

Variety reports that Lucas passed distant from crab Wednesday successful Rancho Mirage, Calif. Her household issued the pursuing statement:

“Marcia volition beryllium remembered arsenic a superb storyteller, a trailblazer for women successful film, a loving parent and grandmother, a generous host, and a loyal person whose wit and sparkle filled each country she entered. Her power connected movie is indelible, but those who knew her champion volition retrieve the mode she made beingness consciousness much vivid, much beautiful, much fun, and much afloat of love. … Her enactment was known for its affectional intelligence, rhythm, and humanity — a uncommon quality to find the information of a country and bring heart, momentum, and clarity to the screen.”

Born Marcia Lou Griffin successful Modesto, California connected October 4, 1945, Lucas began her vocation arsenic an apprentice movie librarian earlier segueing into movie editing. It was portion moving for esteemed movie exertion Verna Fields that she met a University of Southern California movie pupil named George Lucas who had been hired arsenic an adjunct editor. They joined successful 1969.

Lucas worked arsenic an adjunct exertion connected Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People and Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool earlier serving the aforesaid relation connected her then-husband’s diagnostic movie directorial debut, the sci-fi movie THX 1138.

George and Marcia Lucas successful 1977. (Penske Media via Getty Images)

She past served arsenic movie exertion connected George’s follow-up film, American Graffiti, which became a container bureau smash and earned Lucas her archetypal Oscar information for Best Film Editing. Lucas past worked with manager Martin Scorsese connected 3 films successful a enactment – Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, and New York, New York – earlier being enlisted by George to assistance edit his 1977 abstraction opera Star Wars.

Marcia Lucas is wide seen arsenic the exertion who helped prevention Star Wars aft George was unhappy with archetypal exertion John Jympson’s unsmooth cut. George brought successful Marcia arsenic good arsenic Richard Chew and Paul Hirsch to rework the movie. She edited the climactic Battle of Yavin/Death Star onslaught into the classical series that generations of Star Wars fans bask to this day. SFGate called Marcia Lucas “the concealed weapon” of Star Wars successful a 2021 article.

“My wife, Marcia, tin usually chopped a full reel – each 10 minutes of the movie – successful 1 week. I deliberation it took her 8 weeks to chopped that battle. It was highly analyzable and we had 40,000 feet of dialog footage of pilots saying this and that,” George Lucas told Rolling Stone successful 1977. “And she had to cull done each that, and enactment successful each the warring arsenic well. Nobody truly has ever tried to interweave an existent crippled communicative into a dogfight, and we were trying to bash that, nevertheless palmy oregon unsuccessful we were.”

Lucas, Hirsch and Chew shared the Academy Award for Best Film Editing successful 1977 for Star Wars. Her past Star Wars movie – and her past movie arsenic a movie editor, play – was Return of the Jedi, which she worked connected with editors Duwayne Dunham and Sean Barton.

George and Marcia Lucas announced their divorcement successful 1983. Marcia Lucas past stepped distant from the movie manufacture to absorption connected her family. The USC School of Cinematic Arts named The Marcia Lucas Post Production Center after her.

In 2025, Marcia Lucas famously ripped into the J.J. Abrams/Kathleen Kennedy Star Wars sequels successful her foreward to Howard Kazanjian: A Producer's Life, a publication astir the shaper of Return of the Jedi.

"They don't get it," Lucas wrote. "And J.J. Abrams is penning these stories — erstwhile I saw the movie wherever they termination Han Solo, I was furious... Absolutely, positively determination was nary rhyme oregon crushed to it. I thought, You don't get the Jedi story. You don't get the magic of Star Wars. You're getting escaped of Han Solo? And past astatine the extremity of this past one, they person Luke disintegrate. They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don't person Princess Leia anymore. And they're spitting retired movies each year.”

Lucas adjacent expressed her displeasure with George’s prequel trilogy: "I cried. I cried due to the fact that I didn't deliberation it was precise good. And I thought [George] had specified a affluent vein to mine, a affluent palette to archer stories with... There were things I didn't similar astir the casting, and things I didn't similar astir the story, and things I didn't similar — it was a batch of oculus candy. CG."

(Thumbnail photograph credit: Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage)