Originally posted by: Guy Caballero
I wonder what the whole story there is, if there even is one. TRON had no opening credits, Spielberg himself directed 1941, which has no credits. i think that whole Spielberg-directing-a-star wars-movie was probably a lot of talk. The dvd just covered it in the same vague P.R.-influenced bullshit as everything else.

Well, they kind of let it slide for the first movie. Then, when ESB came out, they fined Irvin Kershner like $200,000. GL paid it, and left the guild. He didn't want more problems for Jedi with Spielberg, so he picked a non-American to direct. TRON and 1941 had no sequels, so there wasn't the same problem.

But yeah, I've also read that Marquand was picked because he agreed to kind of "go along" with whatever GL wanted. However- in "Empire Building", it did say that the scene where Luke goes back to Dagobah was Marquand's idea, and he was pretty firm on it. In the original Jedi script, Luke doesn't go back, so we have Marquand to thank for that scene.