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he works on the movie, it's good. he doesn't, it's not so good. i may not be able to give you three cited examples of what he did or didn't do to make the early movies better, but they are.
but that makes the argument sorta empty, though, doesn't it? I mean, I'm not denying you your opinion (and it's one I share in that I think the first two ARE better than the 4 that followed, although I do appreciate the prequels more than you do) but if you don't REALLY have anything to point to other than "He was on those shoots and then he wasn't" then the argument is sorta flimsy. There's a few people who worked on the first two who didn't work on the prequels, as well. It's a little too open ended.
And yeah, Burtt was the only one to say anything on the Beginning, but it was only an hourlong documentary. McCallums face isn't shining and beaming when that ended, either, and there's more evidence in that book that he tried to curb Lucas' worst tendencies. But you haven't read that, so I can't REALLY hold that against you, except to say you SHOULD read it if you're really interested in seeing how Lucas' filmmaking procedures have progressed (or stagnated, as the case may be)
And Lucas isn't exactly the GREATEST producer to point to as an example, since he is, as I pointed out earlier, an example of a producer who also CREATED the story he's producing. Not too many producers are also co-writers. A lot of them simply BUY the rights to something and ensure it gets put on screen. there's some creative input, yeah, but that's largely not the job of a STRAIGHT-UP producer. Producer-Writer, yeah. Producer-Director, yeah. But just hired gun Producer? Different ballgame. But you are right, there are producers who do wear both hats, and are credited for that explicitly
