Lucas' lack of involvement is, I believe, the best thing that could have ever happened to the Star Wars franchise. Remove the hack. The guy had a great idea way back in the mid 70s and that's pretty much it. I talked to half a dozen people who worked on Star Wars and the concensus is that Lucas got extremely lucky. His movie came together thanks to special effects that could or could not have worked, under the supervision of anyone but Lucas. Then Kershner and Marquand too over and delivered what Lucas could have only dreamt of delivering. The last 3 are all Lucas and it shows. Shit, shit and shit. People sometimes forget that it takes a village to make a movie, and in the case of Lucas, the village had lost its mayor a long long time ago.
T
Biggest influence(s) over the success of Star Wars '77 was Lucas telling
his story draped with Ralph McQuarrie's unique and beautiful artistic vision of the SW idea.
Three fresh faces (Ford, Hamill and Fisher), John Williams score, and ILM's SPX sealed the deal.
I've always felt that George Lucas gets the short end of the stick in comparisons with Kershner and Marquand.
IMO, the first film is a directorial masterpiece on all levels.
Empire and Jedi are both terrific
because Lucas continued to produce and edit.
Your consensus of six (6) people 'who worked on Star Wars' is that Lucas got 'extremely lucky.'
I'm not sure what this means.
Lady Luck is always present when a film is released to the public and all the big winners are all extremely lucky.
Are they insinuating that he was so incompetent that it was 'luck' that delivered a finished film?
Or that he was lucky because his team came together and delivered what he could not?
Or, just lucky that the public embraced such a flawed film? (Sarcasm)
Lest no one forget, it was Lucas who created Darth Vader, Jedi Knights, the Millennium Falcon, Ob-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and on and on.
And then he oversaw every line of dialogue, every onscreen movement, every special effect.
Those movies were all his 'babies' and he did a remarkable job bringing them all to life.
I say all, but I mean the original trilogy only.
He should have followed his instincts after Jedi and walked away before the prequels.
As for where the franchise goes from here...
From what I've seen Abrams accomplish with Roddenberry's Star Trek, I'm not confident that Awaken will be anything more than another expensive, scene-by-scene 'nod and a wink' homage to another visionary's work.
