Well actually Lucas wrote most of American Graffiti, THX 1138, ESB and ROTJ himself, but while he was doing that he was getting valuable input from his friends (i.e. Coppola saw every draft of SW). The substandard PT writing is a combination of more formal and stilted subject matter, the fact that his skills have decreased and the fact that he had little input in the scripting phase.

Originally posted by: darkhelmet

Lucas didn't like to write scripts, and it took him a year to write only 13 pages of an original draft. The script was waaay out there; if it hadn't been toned down, SW wouldn't exist as we now know the original 1977 film. From the details in the introduction of the official film script published in 1994 by O.S.P. Publishing, Inc., it probably would've been more like a fantasy film than a sci-fi film.

Actually the 13 pager he wrote between january and may of 1973. The 140 page rough draft is what took him a year, and really i think if it was cleaned up it would make a pretty exciting space fantasy picture (its quite different from Star Wars).

Now, you say, "Wait a minute... Star Wars isn't really sci-fi; it's deeper than that. It's cinema." To which I reply, "Indeed it is cinema, but I think that the studio had more to do with that than the pomp and circumstance of Hollywood legend may lead us to be believe."

For instance, Han was, at one point, to be a green-skinned reptilian-type alien (ala Greedo, perhaps?). Why the change to a human character? Maybe the studio wasn't ready to bet that a Reptilian/Wookie duo would play convincingly with humans Luke and Leia.

Yes, i agree. Lucas originally wanted the bad guys to be the humans and the good guys to be (mostly) aliens but of course this wasnt really doable in 1977 except for some pretty dodgy man-in-suite effects. As it stands Lucas was able to throw in a good percentage of non-human characters in the mix (the droids, chewbacca) but then having the rest of the speaking parts played by humans balanced it out and allowed audiences to connect to the principles whilst still being wowed by the unearthly characters. If Lucas had gotten his way there would have been much less humans and im sure the audience connection would not have been as strong.

I remember reading or hearing somewhere that Lucas only ended up writing 30% of the dialogue for Star Wars (if someone can confirm this and tell me what the source is, I might finally be able to stop feeling like I'm taking crazy pills). If the studio really was concerned that this film wouldn't make much money, and they probably were a little concerned since the decision to allow Lucas to make his film followed on the heels of one of the worst first fiscal quarters of Fox's history, then it makes sense if they asked him to work with some other writers.

Actually its the reverse. After Lucas had written the final draft, while shooting was about to commence in England, his friends Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz visited him and did a quick polish on the script which mainly improved dialog (Huyck and Katz also co-wrote Graffiti with Lucas). In Annotated Screenplays it states something like about 30% of the dialog is attributed to them (they also added some of the humorous bits like chewie scarring the mouse droid). Fox actually had nothing to do with it, Lucas asked them himself at the last minute.

If you are interested in seeing where a lot of the ideas behind the OT germinated the Annotated Screenplays is a very informative source. If you want to read the actual early scripts themselves they are available at the JEDI BENDU SCRIPT SITE