What exactly was stopping George from "handing off" the prequels???

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.

The SE '97 would have existed, no doubt - it already did! However, the '04 and '11 versions probably wouldn't have been made, and the OOT would have been preserved.

The CG modifications in the 97 SE editions were really to test the concept of adding CG characters to the SW films, once proven he announced the Prequels

J

Because he wanted to do them himself. He was wanting to get the prequels made, he was wanting to get back to directing, and Star Wars was popular enough in the early 1990s that he knew he could make lots of money off of it. Those are the reasons he has given; they seem legit.

DuracellEnergizer said:

The SE '97 would have existed, no doubt - it already did! However, the '04 and '11 versions probably wouldn't have been made, and the OOT would have been preserved.

I guess my point was that part of the SE's purpose was updating the OT to fit the vision George had in his head for the eventual six-film saga. Yes, he had to further tweak this in '04 after he'd made the first two prequels and was in the midst of the last, but almost all of the changes to the OT's visual effects were done in '97.

Perhaps this is where I'm overthinking things a bit. Would other directors have made prequels devoid of cgi characters, so that it wouldn't be (jar)-jarring to go from cgi gungans to people in suits??? Maybe the SE's were an inevitability in regards to the prequels, regardless of their directors.

I still think there might've been another way. They could've re-released the OT in '97 after doing strict restorations and no revisions. Then, directors could've come along and made prequels that, once finished, would line up fairly seamlessly with the restored OOT.

Even without George directing the prequels, the idea of there being two completely different versions of the OT out there kinda goes against the idea of there being a six-film saga that perfectly lines up.

....Also George was pushing boundaries....the first digitally projected movie....one of the first main characters to be CG.....one of the first directors shooting in digital,...etc

J

Lucas has said money was one of the motivators. His company was doing okay in the 1980s, but they had to work hard creating new products without any more Star Wars movies or toys. They diversified, created LucasArts, Skywalker Sound and Pixar, which they then sold, plus they started creating tv cartoons and tv films, as well as Disney Land attractions. But a lot of them were in shaky shape because they were still new. ILM was luckily doing fine, but Lucas also made some bad investments in films that didn't return much profit, like Twice Upon A Time, Howard the Duck and Tucker.

So, it was only in the early 1990s that Lucasfilm started stabilizing and making good profit. This coincided with the Star Wars rebirth starting with Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire. That huge resurgence of Star Wars merch lifted Lucasfilm from doing reasonably well to doing very well. By the mid-1990s, Lucasfilm now was making enough money to finance a feature film on it's own, which was Lucas' goal, to return to directing using his own money. So, he looked, and he was faced with this: he could put all his money into some weird original film he wanted to make, but if it wasn't a financial success that would kind of be it, Lucasfilm would have to struggle again to get themselves back to that position. But if he took that same amount of money and made a Star Wars prequel, it would guarantee to double Lucasfilm's income, so that they wouldn't have to worry about whether something flopped or not. That's one reason that Lucas made Phantom Menace so kid-friendly--if the film flopped it was all the money the company had at the time.

Unfortunately, Lucas never got around to doing the OTHER things that the prequels were designed to financially secure. I think he just got tired, lazy, and afraid of challenging himself. So, he made the prequels because they would make him the most money, but then he just sat on the money and made more Star Wars spin-offs, so he essentially ended up doing just to get himself richer.

There's a good exchange from him and Charlie Rose in 2004:

Lucas: At the same time, my kids are getting older now. That’s why I got to go back and do more Star Wars. And when I went back to do more Star Wars I had a very soul-searching discussion with myself about “should I go off and do these three Star Wars or should I go off and do these other movies that I want to do?” And now my kids are old enough that I can go back and direct movies—which is what I wanted to do. And I opted for the Star Wars thing because again it was one of these “well, the opportunity is there and I think I’d be foolish not to do it... I decided one of the reasons to go back to Star Wars was that it would hopefully make me financially secure enough to where I wouldn’t have to go to a studio and beg for money... That’s what I’ve earned. That’s what I’ve been struggling for all of these years in the end, to be able to do what I want to do without a lot of corporate interference and craziness. And I felt strongly enough about it to where I dedicated myself to getting to a point where I could be independent enough to not have to go down the path of compromise for the sake of somebody who isn’t really that interested in what you’re doing anyways.

    Charlie Rose: But are you saying you just got to that point?

    Lucas: Pretty much. I’ve always had to invest everything in what I’ve been doing. So, like with all the Star Wars films, I took everything I made out of Star Wars and invested it in Empire Strikes Back. I took everything that I made in Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars and I put it into Return of the Jedi. When I finished all of that, unfortunately I got a divorce and that sort of set me back quite a ways. So then I had to kind of start over again. So then it took me six years to get back to point where I was financially even. And build my companies up. And then I started working again. And then I decided one of the reasons to go back to Star Wars was that it would hopefully make me financially secure enough to where I wouldn’t have to go to a studio and beg for money. And so I took all the money that I had at that point and I invested it in The Phantom Menace, and then I did the other one [Attack of the Clones] and now I’ve got it all in this one [Revenge of the Sith]

I remember that Charlie Rose episode, he was very frank about the financial factor. He really wanted LFL to be a true heavyweight, he wasnt thinking of his personal wealth but the company needed it. Plus He'd just spent a LOT of money on Young Indy, including whole episodes that never even aired. That ain't cheap.

So I guess the big reason he directed it himself was pretty straightforward then:

He started off as a director and then became the man in charge of a company. When he finally had enough money to self-finance a prequel trilogy, he wanted to make sure every decision being made on the movie was a sound one, business-wise. So, why not go back to being the director instead of going through a middle-man producer?

Yeah, never thought of it that way.

If (especially after the viewer response to TPM) I had managed to make a film so holistically pants as AOTC I would be very ashamed of fooling so many people into giving me money to see it.

Easterhay said:

Of course, folk who post on internet forums don't have an ego, do they? No, nary a whiff of ego round here...

*cough*