BlueCardinal said:

I often have found myself asking, "Empire is so good. How is it possible the PT turned out so bad?!" Either Collative Learning is right in that Kirshner is a genius, assisted by a team with impeccable attention to detail (i.e. the details of the hand-chopping scene in Pt 2 of his review above), or it was just dumb luck how all the elements came together the way they did. Either way, I enjoy reading Ady's explanations on his decisions and the team's efforts to preserve the integrity of the narrative. Keep up the fine work on making this great film even better!

Haha, if Kirshner is a genius, he was a genius for ONE movie. Look, the idea of director-as-author hasn't been around for ever; it's not always the case, and it certainly wasn't in the case of ESB. Clearly Kirshner had a large and positive role in the making of the film, and I sure wish he had returned for ROTJ because he likely would've helped with the performances.

That said, Lucas wrote the story and Lucas edited it (not manually, but his was the final word). He's the alpha and the omega. If there is an "auteur", it's him. But there are a ton of moving parts in these movies, and it's a collaboration, more than anything else. That's why I feel like the Revisited versions have more legitimacy than The Powers That Be give them credit for.