Director Ron Howard and Lucas go over a model with special effects supervisor Dennis Muren for the climactic sorceresses battle.

Enter the world of Willow.

QUESTION: It seems that much of the enjoyment in films comes about because you go someplace you've never been before. How important is this for your films?

GEORGE LUCAS: I'm interested in fantasy, and in order to make fantasy work, you have to create a kind of immaculate reality that exists for the moment of the movie, and without that, the fantasy won't work. If it seems phony or unreal or doesn't have that dimension, then it just won't work for the audience, and, so that's obviously a very integral part of creating these kinds of movies, the fantasy movies.

QUESTION: Is Willow a special effects movie?

GEORGE LUCAS: Special effects never make a movie. I don't make special effects movies, I make movies about people, and in order to tell the story, I have to use special effects in order to create the environments. Effects should never be used just for the sake of the effects. To me, the best special effects are the ones you don't even realize are there. Obviously, when you have dragons, fairies and brownies, there has to be something involved.

Vohnkar, the Nelwyn warrior, receives battle tactics from Ron Howard and George Lucas.

QUESTION: What is Willow about?

GEORGE LUCAS: Willow is about commitment, it's about compassion, it's about taking responsibility for what goes on in the world. It's about love. It's about an Everyman who comes up against extraordinary circumstances.

QUESTION: Who is Willow for? What sort of audience?

GEORGE LUCAS: It's for everyone. The audience for Willow is the same as the audience for Star Wars--everybody from six to 60.

QUESTION: Do you think it's risky at all to make Willow?

GEORGE LUCAS: No. It never occurred to me that it would be risky. Willow is a film about little people and I think all of us at one point or another in our lives think of ourselves as little people, before we grow up. So, I think this is something that people can identify with.

QUESTION: What is your relationship with Willow director Ron Howard?

GEORGE LUCAS: Ron and I have a great relationship. We worked together early on with American Graffiti, and became friends, and we have similar personalities, and similar sort of creative tastes, which makes it very easy for us to get along together. I wrote the story for this film and I've been involved in the creative process of bringing it to life, because again it's a vision that really only existed in my head. So, over the last year, Ron and I have worked very closely to bring it about. A film this big is like a Star Wars film. It's really beyond one person's ability to control everything. And so I've been here as a backstop for him to help clean up the details that sort of spill over into his daily life. And I try to support him in the technical areas and things that have to be coordinated and sorted out from time to time.

Inspired by the little people who worked on Return of the Jedi, Lucas went on to create a new saga with Howard.

QUESTION: Why don't you direct?

GEORGE LUCAS: Well, because then I wouldn't have anybody to support me. I would have to hire Ron to be my producer. [laughter] And, you know, Ron's a director and I'm a producer, so it's easy to do it this way. But I don't think a film like Willow could be done without a great deal of technical and creative support. And that's what I provide for Ron, and this way I can get the movie done. I'm making two other films at the same time, Tucker and Indiana Jones III. I couldn't be doing that if I had to focus 100 percent of my energies on Willow.

QUESTION: How long have you been working on Willow?

GEORGE LUCAS: It has been a long time. It started, I don't know, about 15 years ago, and I got very serious about it when I was doing Return of the Jedi and met Warwick Davis [who played Wicket the Ewok]. Then I thought, "Gee, I could actually make this movie," because I thought Warwick could play the part of Willow. And that was really what spurred me on to try to see if I could put something together. When I got Ron involved--and I knew that if I could get Ron and I had Warwick, that I could begin to put together a movie. And it would come out the way I had envisioned it.

"Ron and I have a great relationship," notes Lucas of his fellow fantasy filmmaker.

Willow evolved out of some of the things I was doing on Star Wars with Jawas and R2-D2, and my interest in fantasy at that point--I was trying to decide whether I was going to go to space fantasy or back into more traditional fantasy, and exploring around there, I got excited about this genre. It was a difficult genre because most of the films that have been made haven't done too well. So, it was something I had to just put on the back burner, because it didn't seem like there was much hope to do it. It seemed like Willow was impossible to do but I still wanted to do it.

QUESTION: What do you like most about Willow?

GEORGE LUCAS: Willow is simply a good piece of entertainment. It's fun. It's moving. And it's very exciting. Which is like many of the other films I've made and I think that's really what the draw is. It's a very emotional movie. You can get excited and laugh at the same time, and it has many feelings in it, many emotions. It's the most exciting thing I've really been involved with since Raiders of the Lost Ark. I believe fantasy can live and work, and with Willow, I'm trying to prove it.