George Lucas admits he 'may have gone too far' with 'Star Wars: The Phantom Menace'

George Lucas admitted to a screening audience that he "may have gone too far" with "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." (Reuters)

Director George Lucas admitted to a screening audience that he “may have gone too far in a few places” when it came to 1999’s “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.”

Lucas said the story was “disjointed” in a rough cut of the franchise reboot. His comments were made in a "making of" featurette in the movie’s DVD set, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

"It's a little disjointed," Lucas told the audience after the screening. "It's bold in terms of jerking people around. I may have gone too far in a few places."

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The hour-long "making of" footage also includes Ben Burtt, the movie’s film editor, who criticized the film’s pace.

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"In a space of about 90 seconds, you go from lamenting the death of a hero to escape to slightly comedic with Jar Jar to Anakin returning ... It's a lot in a very short time," Burtt said.

The footage captured Rick McCallum, the fim’s producer, watching the film with “his hand over his mouth” in shock.

"It boggles the mind," Lucas told the audience. "I have thought about this quite a bit, and the tricky part is you almost can't take any of those pieces out of it now, because each one takes you to the next place. And you can't jump because you don't know where you are."

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After the audience left the screening, the footage shows Lucas, McCallum and Burtt in a “slightly heated exchange.”

"I do a particular kind of movie of which this is consistent," Lucas told Burtt and McCallum. "But it is a very hard movie to follow. But, at the same time, I have done it a little more extremely than I have done it in the past. It's stylistically designed to be that way, and you can't undo that, but we can diminish the affects of it. We can slow it down a little bit, so if it's intense for us, a regular person is going to go nuts."

The film was not a hit with audiences or critics. The movie has a 55 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics. The latest “Star Wars” installment, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” currently in theaters has a 91 percent approval rating from critics, but audiences have been split and gave it a 51 percent approval rating.