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RIP: Marcia Lucas, Oscar-Winning Star Wars Editor, Dies At 80

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1 month 1 week ago
```Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 brings word that Marcia Lucas, part of the editing team for both Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, has died at age 80 after a battle with metastatic cancer. Married to George Lucas from 1969 to 1983, Marcia is remembered by The Wrap as "a powerful asset in the early days of the Star Wars series, helping shape its voice and identity long before it became the massive global franchise..." She won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing for her work on the original "Star Wars" movie, an award that came four years after she was nominated for editing George's previous film, "American Graffiti." She additionally edited his debut feature, "THX 1138." Beyond these collaborations with her then-husband, Marcia worked as an editor with other acclaimed filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. She was credited as sole editor for Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," and served as supervising editor for "Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York." Marcia served as part of a three-person crew editing both "Star Wars" and "Return of the Jedi." On the first film, she worked alongside Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew and was personally responsible for editing the Battle of Yavin — otherwise known as the iconic "trench run" sequence near the end of the film. For "Return of the Jedi," Marcia shared credit with Sean Barton and Duwayne Dunham. "If only Lucas had people like her on the prequels instead of sycophants who worshipped him as a God..." argues this 2015 blog post noting an article calling her "the secret weapon behind Star Wars — including this anecdote from The Secret History of Star Wars : The [Star Wars] Death Star trench run was originally scripted entirely different, with Luke having two runs at the exhaust port; Marcia had re-ordered the shots almost from the ground up, trying to build tension lacking in the original scripted sequence, which was why this one was the most complicated (Deleted Magic has a faithful reproduction of the original assembly, which is surprisingly unsatisfying). She warned George, "If the audience doesn't cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he's being chased by Darth Vader, the picture doesn't work." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

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