FrederikOlsen said:
It’s never been a particularly well-written franchise, IMO.ANH is considered one of the best scripts ever written. It’s still being studied in film school for ts achievements, thanks to Lucas rewitting it to perfect it numberous times. TESB is simply the continuation of this high quality standard rooted in the foundation of a perfect script. Only what came after wasn’t as good and was sometimes even quite terrible, such as this tv show.
The original Star Wars was saved in editing by cutting great chunks out of that script.
I see the consequences of an interesting YouTube video… you confuse the script quality and the final movie. Also reaching the « simplicity » of ANH is incredibly difficult : just see how complex OWK is. Complex and badly written. ANH has 2 action scenes in its first 30 minutes, introduces all its protagonists, establishes a complete universe with its rules and its story with what is clearly at stake (again compare with OWK: when does this show even try to create stakes others that the fact the audience knows Leia and Luke are kinda important in LATER movies?). You even get long sequences without dialogues and you get to follow two characters where none of which is even human. Simplicity here is the consequence of hard work, of multiple rewrites, of research, etc. OWK looks like a first draft that went in production as-is…
SW wasn’t saved through editing : editing made it better. So was the music, the clever casting choices, the special effects, etc. It’s a miracle. Which could only exist because it has the solid roots of an amazing script that EVERY screenwriter does study.
I can’t believe on this forum that we need to explain why ANH is a tremendous script 😅