Later, Vader: Lucas says yes, this really is last "Star Wars"

NICASIO, Calif. — Welcome to the house that Darth built.

Actually, what is called the Main House at Skywalker Ranch, a few minutes outside San Rafael, is an exquisitely crafted and elegantly appointed Victorian model home; no one officially lives there.

The master of the manor, George Lucas, lives in San Francisco. The house is used primarily to welcome visitors and clients, and to give people who work for LucasFilm and its special-effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, a respite from their offices and workstations. Many of them work a short walk away at what is called the Tech House, which is where they and Lucas spent much of last year, bidding Darth good-bye.

The demise of Darth Vader, one of the most well-known fictional villains in the world, occurred in 1983 in "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" (now known as "Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi"). But Lucas swears we will see the last of Darth Vader, known before being cast into the hellish volcanoes of Mustafar as Anakin Skywalker, in the last of three prequels, "Episode III — Revenge of the Sith," opening Thursday.

"Yes, this is really, really the end," says Lucas, who has opened the Main House, the Tech House and other buildings on the 5,000-acre spread of Skywalker to the curious, the fascinated and the obsessed one final time before he starts what he calls "the rest of my life." He's showing them his final "Star Wars" movie in his state-of-the-art screening room so they can write an end to this chapter of the story.

LucasFilm will continue production on "Clone Wars," an animated-series spinoff of the franchise, and within a couple of years hopes to launch a new live-action series that would take place in the years between episodes III and IV but not feature any of the now-iconic characters from the film.

As for Lucas, he will be listed as a producer of these efforts, but his day-to-day involvement in anything "Star Wars" is at an end, he says.

But can he walk away from the most influential myth — and movie series — of the past half-century, not to mention an industry with an annual profit larger than some movie studios?

"I did it for 16 years," says Lucas, firmly. "I'm ready to do it for good."

Some critics argue that Lucas should have never returned to "Star Wars" 11 years ago, when he began writing what would be released in 1999 as "Episode I — The Phantom Menace." It told the story of Anakin, a 9-year-old from the planet Tatooine, whose family is visited by a Jedi Knight and informed that he is the chosen one, a savior imbued with a magical power known as the Force who can maintain the balance of the universe if only he gets into the right school.

"Nobody wanted me to make that movie," says Lucas, sipping soda in a small room attached to the recording studio where the sweeping orchestral scores for his movies are recorded. "What everybody wanted to see was Darth Vader killing everybody and being Darth Vader. The problem was, that wasn't the story I wanted to tell."

Those who need a complete history of the "Star Wars" prequels are directed to the DVD editions of "The Phantom Menace" and its successor, "Attack of the Clones," which contain comprehensive documentaries that many fans believe are superior to the actual movies. (Anyone who has consciously avoided pop culture since the Nixon administration can catch up with the original three films and the story of how they permeated the national consciousness on the DVD box "The Star Wars Trilogy.")

The short version, says Lucas, is that to make the original films, he had to concoct extensive back stories for Vader and other characters. At some point after he finished raising his family; producing three Indiana Jones adventures and many more less successful projects (the most embarrassing of which may be "Howard the Duck"); and overseeing the establishment of the world's leading special-effects house Industrial Light & Magic and a universe of "Star Wars" tie-ins, the muse started nagging him.

"Everybody believed 'Star Wars' was the story of Luke Skywalker," he says of the innocent young hero played by Mark Hamill in the first three films. "It wasn't. It was the story of Anakin, his father, who started as a hero and was then lured into the Dark Side by a powerful surrogate father, who convinced him that to save the wife he loved, and save the universe from the betrayal of the Jedi, he had to give in to his worst impulses — the lust for power, greed, selfishness.

"You can buy this or not, but I actually felt compelled to get the story I always wanted to tell on the record. It was Darth Vader who made the sacrifice by killing the evil Emperor who had seduced him," Lucas says.

"I could have never conceived this, because I always thought 'Star Wars' was like the first act of the movie in my head, and I never really thought I would get the opportunity to make the ending.

"You have to remember, nobody wanted to make that movie. They (the studios) didn't get it. Then I get to go back and explain the beginning. It's still the classic hero's journey, but because it's just been made backwards so to speak, in reverse chronology, we're just now seeing where the hero gets corrupted, before he gets redeemed."

Producer Rick 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.

"I was a guy who wanted to make independent movies outside the Hollywood system. I lived in San Francisco. I still do. Now I want to make some movies about other ideas, other people, other places.

"I've done my bit," he says, "and now I'm on my way."