Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
Okay but there is a big difference between accusing Lucas of contradicting his own idea of what Star Wars is and contradicting what you assumed it was. Certainly we all have a unique point of view, and as such there is no way Lucas could ever hope to match up to the things all of us assumed around the edges, because it's different for everyone.

That's fine.

But George has done a good enough job of contradicting his "view" of Star Wars without having to put personal interpretation into it. These contradictions existed from day one and came from Lucas' changing ideas about what Star Wars is--from being a stand-alone movie to maybe getting a sequel to being this grand nine-part (and later six part) saga of which the OT was only a small part. Heck, he even had two entirely different ideas for a sequel to the original Star Wars--one got filmed and became Empire Strikes Back, and the other became the novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye.

In all honesty, most of the contradictions and writing decisions people complain about in the PT were already becoming quite apparent in the OT. A case in point, people complain about how ROTJ, TPM etc. have references to Earth-based things (Tarzan yells, Anakin asking Padme if she's an Angel, etc.) Nevermind the fact that in the very first Star Wars movie, Owen actually uses the line "There'll be Hell to pay," as if people who existed a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away would still abide by Christian beliefs.

That being said, as stand-alone movies I find the PT work well. But in trying to be an explanation/set-up for the OT, they fail. Even though Star Wars has always contradicted itself, by the time the PT came around Lucas' ideas had changed so much that they just couldn't mesh. If a writer writes a story and then comes back and writes more of that story fifteen or twenty years later, he won't be the same person and his ideas won't match up (I speak from experience here) and this shows. In my mind, the biggest offender is the inclusion of R2D2 and C-3PO and how they adventure around with Obi-Wan and Anakin, and yet it's obvious in A New Hope that neither Jedi recognizes either droid--and none of the other people they supposedly have met before (Owen Lars etc.) recognize the droids either. I know all sorts of excuses can be made, but it's bluntly obvious when watching A New Hope that these two droids are entirely new to every major character of the OT, and this inconsistency is hard to jive.

And it's not the only one. The PT has all sorts of high technology which has suddenly disappeared in the OT (I know you could say the Empire has something to do with that, but then why is every planet we see a barren ice/forest/desert planet?), the Jedi are so strong that they're nearly Gods whereas in the OT their powers are more subtle (I have yet to see a really strong arguement for this), and my personal pet peeve is the inclusion of all the new terminology--Padawan, Sith, etc-- and how characters suddenly all have these alien-sounding names like Quigon Jinn (as opposed to the OT where everyone had names like Luke Skywalker). where the hell were these terms in the OT? Why did Yoda never call Luke his "Padawan?" Why wasn't Luke called something like "Manwo Kweesat" or some other strange alien name? These things in my mind make it hard to see the PT as anything except more Expanded Universe, and in my mind the Expanded Universe doesn't mesh with the OT in any way, shape, or form.