With all of this news of Lucasfilm's acquisition by Disney, there's one quote from Lucas that really sticks out for me:

"The time has come for me to hand off Star Wars to the next generation of filmmakers."

What exactly was stopping him from doing exactly this back in the 90's for the prequels???

We know that George's leaving the DGA prevented him from hiring a union director on ROTJ and he went with Marquand. Were the same restrictions in place by the time he was gearing up for the prequels??? Would that have severely limited his choices had he wanted to hand off the directorial duties??? He says in the Maltin interviews on the '95 vhs that he "might direct the first one and then let other directors handle II and III," so it was at least a possibility at some point.

There's that story I heard about Darabont wanting to either write or direct Episode I (or Lucas wanting him to, I forget which way the story went). Why didn't this happen???

At the end of the day, the only conclusion I can come to is that it was George's midlife crisis and he just had to (officially) jump back in that director's chair after twenty years.

I think George would've always written the story for the prequels, just as he did for the OT, but others should've handled the screenwriting and directing like with ESB.

Also, I should point out that, IMO, a world where other people directed and wrote the screenplays for the prequels pretty much goes hand in hand with a world where the SE's never happened.

Sorry, this is a little stream-of-thought, but I just wanted to get it out there. It's a discussion I've been wanting to start on these boards for a while now.