That's one of the reasons I defend the PT. When he was asked in the early 90's why on earth he was starting the PT with Anakoin as a nine year old, he replied that he was telling the story that he intended to tell. Not the fans' story, or Spielberg's story, or anyone's story but his. From what I can tell, he did what he thought was best for the story. Now, he has said himself that you cannot please everyone because Star Wars fans, and sci-fi fans in general are "very independent minded people who have a very clear idea of what they want to see."
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Now I don't have a problem with Lucas doing whatever story he wanted, cause as I have said before, alot fans didn't have the PT story in their head as much as people think. Most fans who grew up with the OT thought of the duel between Kenobi & Anakin, how Anakin turned, how good Anakin was at being a pilot, and the Clone Wars. Only what was stated in the OT was what people wondered about.
And the thing that gets fans mad at the PT is Lucas didn't expand on alot of those issues that people wondered about in the OT. He could have really developed the relationship between ObiWan/Anakin/Uncle Owen and why Owen feels the way he does toward both Jedis in ANH, but we get nothing, nothing that even relates to the OT, other than that they are stepbrothers, and by that you feel Lucas is just connecting the dots cause he has to.
The birth of the rebellion, Anakin/ObiWans friendship, Palp/Anakin manipulation for more than just 1/2 of ROTS, those were great parts that Lucas just left out cause he wasted so much meaningless time in TPM. There should have been two solid movies of Palps playing Anakin like he did in ROTS, and really understand the conflict within Anakin on why he turned, other than this 5 second switch that totally comes off as contrived and ridiculous.
Whatever Lucas says his story was and is sticking by it, in some ways he wants it both ways. He didn't have the whole story for the PT even written beforehand. He would finish each script right up to the shoot of the movie, he changed the whole turn scene from one part of the movie to the other after he didn't think the first one didn't work. He did this 20%/20%/60% split of plot points for the PT which I will never understand, cause he ran out of time for ROTS leaving out key scenes.
I think what frustrates people is not that Lucas didn't fulfill our story, but he didn't make great movies. I will give you an example of two movies that I had the story already in my mind and one sucked, and one was very good.
Titanic which came out in 1997, I knew the ending, I knew everything that led up to the sinking, but Cameron made a compelling side story about two lovers getting caught up in this tragedy, and overall the movie really worked for me.
Pearl Harbor released in 2001 was piece of crap. I knew everything about Pearl Harbor going in, what happened, why the Japanese bombed us, but Michael Bay was so obsessed with effects, he forgot to write a good story, and the characters were lame, and I just didn't care about them. The only cool part was the bombing which was all CGI, but that does not make a great movie, the characters and the story do.
Same with the PT, if Lucas made me care about Anakin & Padme, and made the story great, even though he may have not fulfilled everything I wanted in the PT, I would have been satisfied if they were still great movies, in the end they weren't, that is why they get criticized. Text