imperialscum said:

SilverWook said:

Shooting second unit does not make one the director of a film.

You are right. However, leading the creative aspects of pre-production and post-production kinda does.

IIRC, the Director's Guild, (which George had conflicts with and quit of course) has very specific criteria, as the issue of who really directed a film has come up on other productions.

Lucas quitting the DGA is probably what kept Spielberg from ever directing an episode, and limited the pool of directors George could choose from for Jedi. If Marquand was a disaster, it was hushed up out of a fear of bad publicity. With the DGA out of the picture, they could have easily sacked him.

Ray Harryhausen was way more involved with the creative aspects on all his films, but that still doesn't make him the director proper.

You can make the argument that Lucas co-directed Jedi, but not Empire.