Fascinating article and kinda sad. Most of the time with films it takes time for writers to do draft after draft to iron out plot problems and manage satifactory character arcs. But not Lucas, no he had it all in place back in the day, then went back in and introduced extra plot problems. wtf??
e.g. "Leia and Luke’s mother go to Alderaan and are taken in by the king"
Why did you make Bail Organa a Senator George? It makes NO sense that his daughter grows up to be a princess! *sigh*
Although it's interesting to note that the "Seduction of power" plot element...
"(Papatine) was a politician. Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the senate and finally took over and became an imperial guy and he was really evil. But he pretended to be a really nice guy. He sucked Luke’s father into the dark side."
...was fully filmed during principle photograhy on ROTS. But Lucas went back in during post-production and rewrote much of the dialogue and called his main cast back for pickups, to change Anakin's fall to be about losing Padme. All of this material is sitting on a tape somewhere in the Lucas archive but I doubt it will ever see the light of day.