Is George Lucas Making His Own Star Wars Fan Documentary To Combat The People Vs. George Lucas?

Early in 2010, George Lucas came onto The Daily Show and was asked if he felt the need to respond to his detractors. His response: a definitive 'No'. It's interesting then, that so soon after the documentary The People vs. George Lucas started making its presence known, Lucasfilm announced that it would be beginning its own fan-driven chronicling of Star Wars experiences, referred to as simply The Star Wars Stories Project.

Fans were first called upon to share their Star Wars tales and memories at Comic-Con '09, and now the official Star Wars website announces that the project will continue this August, during the official Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando. Each fan will be granted 15-minutes to tell their story, and its recommended that you make a reservation if you intend to do so.

The question remains: What is Lucasfilm planning to do with this footage? Unless this is nothing more than a Lucas ego-trip a la Prince, I doubt they'd be going through all this effort to record hundreds of hours of video content without the intent to include it as part of some sort of Star Wars-related feature/documentary, and then released for the world to see (maybe theatrically? Or possibly on the upcoming Star Wars Blu-rays?).

Regardless of the intent, this can still be seen as something to directly combat all the negativity that was been heaped onto the series lately, such as the 70-minute Phantom Menace deconstruction (which has received nearly 2.5 million views). Perhaps it's intended to show that, despite the vocalized hatred that the Star Wars prequels get online, the outside world has several generations of fans who love every aspect of the franchise, whether its the prequels, cartoons, or even books. Older generations may complain about how Lucas ruined in the saga in their own documentary, but let's be realistic: If they weren't talking about Star Wars, nobody would care what they had to say.

Here's the The Star Wars Stories Project video from Comic-Con '09: