Star Wars: The Last Jedi is finally about to arrive in theaters this weekend. To say that people are excited about it would be a bit of an understatement. It's tough to match the anticipation we all felt heading into Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but there's a growing sense that this movie is something special. Even though George Lucas isn't involved, it sounds like his legacy is continuing on in a great way. Lucas thinks so too, as he's seen the movie and, reportedly, he really loved it.

The man who created Star Wars recently screened Star Wars: The Last Jedi. According to Connie Wethington, a rep for George Lucas, says that he feels the movie was "beautifully made." That's pretty high praise. He also reportedly talked to director Rian Johnson after the screening and had nothing but nice things to say about his latest entry in the Skywalker saga.

"And in speaking with director Rian Johnson after viewing was complimentary."

Even though George Lucas isn't involved in the Star Wars universe anymore, it must be incredibly nice for someone like Rian Johnson to hear that the man responsible for creating a galaxy far, far away loves his movie. As much as many people hate the prequels, Lucas still deserves a lot of love and credit for what he was able to do. No doubt, Johnson is probably very happy that critics seem to be really enjoying Star Wars: The Last Jedi so far, but one has to imagine that the endorsement from George Lucas is the one that matters most. Especially considering that Star Wars 8, in its final form, looks much different than it would have if Lucas had his way.

Disney purchased Lucasfilm for more than $4 billion in 2012. They were buying everything that George Lucas had created, but they weren't buying his ideas. Despite that, he had an outline for Star Wars 7, Star Wars 8 and Star Wars 9. Reportedly, his outline for the new trilogy was quite a bit different than what Disney ultimately decided to do. That's likely hard for a guy like Lucas to handle. So for him to say that he loves Star Wars: The Last Jedi is really something, when taking all of that into account.

As it stands, Star Wars: The Last Jedi has a 93 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. People seem to like it more than Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a movie that George Lucas didn't like nearly as much, but the movie also has a 93 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. It looks like The Last Jedi is also going to be a massive hit, as it's expected to make more than $200 million at the box office this weekend, and that's just domestically. Even though Lucas isn't involved anymore, the characters he created are still incredibly popular and are the subjects of very good movies.