Originally posted by: Dirk Blackpool
If I am add my 2 cents into this.. I must disagree that Lucas is the only one who could have made Star Wars as great as it is. I have no doubt any number of filmmakers from Steven Spielberg to James Cameron could have taken Lucas's initial idea and the creative team of artists he had and come up with something just as good if not better. Especially Spielberg who we have some evidence of proof of that with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Further evidence of this is Empire where his creative input was minimal compared to the other movies. I have really come to believe that he just got really lucky with ANH; luck with circumstance and luck at having assembled a team of unsurpassable creativity.
If I am add my 2 cents into this.. I must disagree that Lucas is the only one who could have made Star Wars as great as it is. I have no doubt any number of filmmakers from Steven Spielberg to James Cameron could have taken Lucas's initial idea and the creative team of artists he had and come up with something just as good if not better. Especially Spielberg who we have some evidence of proof of that with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Further evidence of this is Empire where his creative input was minimal compared to the other movies. I have really come to believe that he just got really lucky with ANH; luck with circumstance and luck at having assembled a team of unsurpassable creativity.
I agree with you in someways about Lucas and how everything turned out in the OT. I simply look at the PT as man who was past his prime, and by doing everything it did show his flaws that were maybe covered up by others in the OT days. I mean when was the last time Rob Reiner, Francis Coppola, or Brian Depalma directed a really great movie? To me Lucas's glory days were from Grafitti to Raiders.
Was he lucky with SW '77? Sure he was, but sometimes the stars align when classics are made. Johnathen Demme directed Silence of the Lambs in 1991, and is one of my favorite movies. He has never come close to doing anything as great as that before or since, so it was his time where the stars aligned. Andrew Davis directed the Fugitive in 1993, again another classic movie, but what has he done since? Now was he lucky, or just he was the right man at the right time for the job? What I am saying is none of these guys, including Lucas are genius's as directors , but they deserve their due for those respective great movies.
ESB is not a Lucas film in the execution, and that is why it comes off so different than the other 5 SW films. You can see it just doesn't have that post ROTJ kiddie touch to it, little things that make you wince during the movie. I give Lucas credit for conceiving the ESB story, cause he was able to take a risk in his storytelling and go a different way than SW '77, and that is what makes it great.
But Lucas deserves every amount of grief for his post ESB/Raiders of the Lost Ark work, none of it is great. ROTJ is good to me cause it finishes the trilogy, and gives me closure, so it gets a pass in that sense. But as an individual movie to stand its own, even compared to ESB, it pales. The PT are just movies with great moments and really bad moments, and it tells me Lucas was not really in it to make them classics, but just good enough. And he was right as so many PT gushers defense is, "Well, no movie is perfect." "Yeah, the love story isn't that great in AOTC, but what do you want?" "Yeah, there are alot of plot holes that don't tie the trilogies together, but you're looking too much into these movies." and the best is, "Jar Jar was suppose to be annoying, Lucas wanted the audience to hate him because he was never suppose to fit in."
SW & ESB are bonafied classics, and that makes the OT what it is. It gives ROTJ a pass because it fits with the trilogy and gives closure, but the PT did expose that Lucas is no genius, and maybe he was lucky on ANH, but I will still give him his due for that great movie, and still my favorite of all-time. I just don't call him a genius anymore.