silverwheel said:
He [Lucas] does complain about it in the Maker of Films interview from shortly after the film’s release. … how they disrupted the feel of the movie, how he was editing by feel and how their re-ordering ruined that.
Skywalking: The Life And Films Of George Lucas pages 96,97 read:
" … THX was delivered to Warner Bros. Coppola came by the Mill Valley house on the evening before he was to take the film down to Burbank. Murch showed him a reel, and all Coppola murmured was ‘Strange, strange.’ " " Coppola insists that THX was barely cut, but to Lucas, they might as well have chopped up the entire movie into little pieces. "
UPDATE: edited the Google-Books link to be a “first viewing”, so you can read it! 😃