Lucas’ whimsy and energy (creative not physical, he barely moved the camera) worked in a team of people where he had to fight to keep his ideas and notions in the mix. Once he became the Emperor and anyone that might obstruct him was removed he had nothing to steer him on course.
Not really a valid point, since he was the “emperor” ever since ANH was finished. Even in ANH he had mostly free hands since studio didn’t seem to be particularly interested in the film. Of course he couldn’t directly fire people in ANH but he could in ESB and ROTJ. The way I see it, he had more sense and was a bit more open to outside input during OT. Still, judging from screenplay meetings transcripts from ESB and ROTJ, he pretty much rejected any suggestion he did not like. Perhaps in PT his team wasn’t giving him any suggestion at all.
It is valid. Lucas sank all his cash into ESB and when it went over budget he had to go cap in hand to Fox, something he desperately wanted to avoid doing. If he didn’t make his money back and make enough to repay Fox and still make enough profit to reinvest in his other projects his success with the first film would have been flushed away. So not quite Emperor at this point.
This and he almost had a physical and mental breakdown making the first film meant he needed to surround himself with people who could help him make the second film go as smoothly as it could. Don’t get me wrong I concede he still ghost directed much of the thing, almost totally rewrote the screenplay and was still not satisfied with the film most people love to bits.
Come ROTJ he was able to call all the shots. He didn’t need any more loans from Fox and he could get rid of whom so ever he pleased. This all while his marriage to Marcia was on it’s last embers and Marcia had made friends on the OT. Friends that were largely removed from his circle.
This is the period where script by maquette started to seep in. You see some of it when George is picking out characters for Jabba’s court (which is still okay as that’s not really going to influence the plot direction). But then you had the villains of the PT being created by the art department doing design concepts.
Instead of writing a character and deciding what the character looked like he was getting people to design action figures and allocating plot to the eventual toy product.
From ROTJ onwards story and film craft began to take second place to filling the screen with things that may be purchased as small colourful plastic collectables. That’s why the PT is so ‘dense’.
The acting in TFA is sometimes better than ROTJ but it’s story is even more a reconstruction of what was proven to work the first time, which is why I prefer ROTJ because it still has a spark of something unexpected and narratively interesting.
The PT has interesting plot points (some of which go nowhere like the mystery elements of AOTC) but unlike TFA the acting, directing and characters are bland and poorly constructed and rendered (human and digital cartoon).
This is what happens when telling a story is a secondary consideration to making cash. I’ve got no problem with people making cash from a well told story but I don’t generally speaking enjoy adverts.