Vaderisnothayden said:

As I have explained, I couldn't care less about the old serials or about trying to imitate them. From reading The Secret History of Star Wars I gather that some of the crappiness of the prequels was caused by trying to imitate the old serials. I'd much rather the franchises were not limited by old serials. And I really don't see how Raiders was this "perfect action/adventure film". Was it because of its bland lack of intensity? Or its bland annoying villains? Or its dumb everybody-goes-gooey ending?

As a huge fan and collector of the old serials, let me say that the prequels are NOTHING LIKE OLD SERIALS. Star Wars (and to a lesser extent ROTJ) is the only film that really have a kind of movie serial feel. A balls-to-the-wall pace, linear narrative, episodic series of challenges, and a classic mustache twirling villain (the original Vader) are all reminiscent of the serials. ESB and the PT totally lack these.

Lucas for some odd reason uses the 'movie serial' talk to justify that he doesn't care for character development (which he admittedly does not). Considering that AOTC is a love story and ROTS is mostly a character study of Anakin, the 'movie serial' thing doesn't seem to apply.