Well yeah, but also he had a chance to make the films less commercially appealing since he was truly independent financially and fox was only the release company.
When he made the originals there was a certain mentality and when he made the first film he had to re-write it about four times til it was a marketable commodity.
He could have just shot a film that made no sense and was a wacky independent film like THX but he would have never worked in hollywood again. But also he was able to do a lot more on star wars than he could have because of the sucess of american graffiti, he certainly did not get his shot at making a big picture because he made thx 1138.
The original drafts were much more hard to make out. They were very serial, comic book in nature but also very full of politics not unlike his own idea of apocalypse now, with a bit of kurosawa samurai films thrown in.
The emperor in those scripts had a "wicked looking mustache" sounds like Hitler, even though lucas claims the conflict between the rebels and the empire was supposed to be the us versus the vietcong, and that the emporer was based on president nixon.
There was a lot more blood and killing in the original concepts, war was not laughably comical, he could have done a style like spielberg did later for saving private ryan. The Tavoularis storyboards reflect some of that original violence that was toned down,as does the novel.
The sex scene that was an off color joke and not shown in one of the drafts between anakin starkiller and a rebel female aide, would never have been in a PG film.
The original concepts were also a lot more daring a 14 year old princess leia for instance lucas got rid of because of labor laws that would have been a pain in the ass, which they had already gone through on graffiti. Just like Lucas had a much younger Marion Ravenwood in mind when the characters first met.
Icky Pedo connotations would have resulted from either of these if he had done them.
As a kid i appreciated the kiddy ness of star wars and its fairy tale story, but as an adult it is a lot less believable. The only thing that still sells the films to me and makes them still work is the sincerity of the actors who play the roles, and that the person behind the camera believed in the secondary world they were creating and did not play it for laughs. Nostalgia and fun also have to do with why i still love the films. Also the sheer vision of grandness the films speak of being larger than life, and the fact these these films are hand crafted works of art made by true craftsmen, not the work of a dude sitting behind a computer cgi render station.
I just wish someone made something like star wars for adults, but the idea is everything for adults has to be barren of any feeling, has to be cynical and have a heavy handed poetical message.
Star Wars with sex scenes and gritty violence would most likely get it banned or boycotted if it was even if it was rated R, and it would destroy the lucas who makes clean kiddy films.