Originally posted by: Tiptup
I've said it before and I still believe that George Lucas is a man obsessed with ideas. A certain concept will grab his attention for a moment, he'll love it, try to use it, and then, once he's bored with it, move onto another idea. These fascinating ideas are what made Star Wars so great (and they easily comprise the most promising aspects of the prequels as well). While I'd say that this is his greatest artistic strength, it also causes him to ignore a lot of other things like continuity, plausibility, and finesse, as well as a whole ton of various emotional concerns (such as energetic dialogue). For instance, George knows what character drama looks like from the outside, and can have everything sitting in the right place, but he doesn't know how to connect all of that to the emotions sitting inside. Or, in the reverse case, when George starts with an emotional motivation (like the fear of loss), he doesn't know how to truly connect that to logical events nor on-screen performances. To do so would require too much work and he wants to move onto his next, fascinating idea.
I've said it before and I still believe that George Lucas is a man obsessed with ideas. A certain concept will grab his attention for a moment, he'll love it, try to use it, and then, once he's bored with it, move onto another idea. These fascinating ideas are what made Star Wars so great (and they easily comprise the most promising aspects of the prequels as well). While I'd say that this is his greatest artistic strength, it also causes him to ignore a lot of other things like continuity, plausibility, and finesse, as well as a whole ton of various emotional concerns (such as energetic dialogue). For instance, George knows what character drama looks like from the outside, and can have everything sitting in the right place, but he doesn't know how to connect all of that to the emotions sitting inside. Or, in the reverse case, when George starts with an emotional motivation (like the fear of loss), he doesn't know how to truly connect that to logical events nor on-screen performances. To do so would require too much work and he wants to move onto his next, fascinating idea.
Thank you so much for posting that. It is something I came to realise ever since AOTC, explaining the extremely different and entirely dissonant prequel identities. Its ironic that even though the OT is basically a patchwork of improvisations it still feels ten times more consistent and deliberate than the supposedly-planned PT.