It’s important to acknowledge and appreciate Marcia and everyone else who collaborated with George and took part in the creative process. They’re crucial to why Star Wars was so great. But there’s a big difference between saying “George was helped” (which is true) and saying “George was carried” (which isn’t true). In the years after the Plinkett reviews came out, I’ve heard a lot of people online parroting the latter statement, worded in different ways, but all implying the same thing: that George was just some helpless fool who needed to let the “real filmmakers” step in and salvage his incompetence. RedLetterMedia did say things to that effect in their reviews, and perhaps they meant it jokingly, but I encountered a lot of people who took it seriously and believed it.
As usual, the truth isn’t as simple as people make it out to be. George is not a helpless fool, nor is he infallible. He’s an intelligent filmmaker who makes mistakes sometimes, like anyone else, and who benefits from bouncing ideas off other people, like anyone else.