Is the point some have made of Lucas having no collaboration on the prequels mostly a myth?

I am exploring this by doing some research.  The evidence shows there was a shitload of collaboration from the whole basic crew that worked on young indy except for the writers, and some of the veterans of the old trilogy.

George asked for advice from his friends, he even begged at one point for ron howard to do episode 1, i think this was after jurassic park was released.  He tried to get Steven according to rumor to shoot episode II.

It is also rumored that Carrie Fisher helped him with the script on episode 1.

Obviously Jonathan Hales helped him write episode II.  And he was not somehow   out of touch if you see some of those bbc documentaries he still had a lot of contact to people like pals coppola and scorcese.

He had Steven visit him at the ranch during the making of episode 1.

Of course the biggest amount of collaboration was visually and through the art department, or sound recording department.  He also had a lot with the pre visualization whether as sketches, paintings or computer drawn.

Spielberg directed the mustafar pre viz, and other than a few tweaks by Lucas and differences in the live action plate as shot the final duel edit had his hand in it.

Like he would later compose the whole first go at crystal skull through directing the pre viz.

I don't have the star wars chronicles book for the prequels but i have seen the web documentaries, and read the making of books.  Lucas seems to have directed the whole process from an idea in his head to the films being released, but still had many many other people working for him to reach that goal.

The movies may sell the story short and be pretty laughably bad as star wars films, but it is unfair to the artists working on them to be blamed for this.  The cgi artists, the model makers, costume makers, painters, set builders all did there best work for Lucas.

I would say the visualizers pretty much got on the screen what lucas described to them, the visual sense of the prequels is strong imho, but lacks any heart behind this.  So they did there jobs admirably, the editors did a pretty crap job though.   The cinematography was weaker than on the originals but was not the worst part.  The careless directing, and poor scripts could not do the films any worse than they did.  The actors, the score, and everything else could not elevate that out of the cesspool of crap it was from the beginning.

The basic weakness of the prequels is there was no story, it was a backstory created to make the originals but the best parts had already been mined and salvaged, and basically the final films are as weak as the two or 3 paragraphs Lucas had to base them on,lol. That is if he even had any sort of outline at all, i don't believe he did it was all in his head.

Most of this backstory had changed during the making of the films especially empire strikes back and return of the jedi.  And those prototype scripts were so vastly different than the first star wars film, the journal of the whills basically tells you nothing about the finished product.

In essence since no outline exists for the prequels without proof the outline is right there in the final direction decided for the original three films, and their plots.

The father of Luke Skywalker was a very vague concept when star wars was made, only on empire strikes back did vader become the father.  Kenobi was always meant to train luke, they created yoda on empire strikes back as his replacement.  Leia in the first film was basically a fairy tale princess who could end up with luke or solo and was not luke's sister or darth vader's daughter.

The concept of the force was not all that well mapped out, the emperor did not even exist when the first film was made or was a very vague and shadowy concept even in empire strikes back, he was not really given form and flesh and a personality until return of the jedi.

The concept of the sith and the jedi was very sketchy, not well defined just like the force was mysterious. 

There was no jedi council, no coruscant they did not exist at all in 1983.

Well yeah, but also he had a chance to make the films less commercially appealing since he was truly independent financially and fox was only the release company.

When he made the originals there was a certain mentality and when he made the first film he had to re-write it about four times til it was a marketable commodity.

He could have just shot a film that made no sense and was a wacky independent film like THX but he would have never worked in hollywood again.  But also he was able to do a lot more on star wars than he could have because of the sucess of american graffiti, he certainly did not get his shot at  making a big picture because he made thx 1138.

The original drafts were much more hard to make out. They were very serial, comic book in nature but also very full of politics not unlike his own idea of apocalypse now, with a bit of kurosawa samurai films thrown in.

The emperor in those scripts had a "wicked looking mustache" sounds like Hitler, even though lucas claims the conflict between the rebels and the empire was supposed to be the us versus the vietcong, and that the emporer was based on president nixon.

There was a lot more blood and killing in the original concepts, war was not laughably comical, he could have done a style like spielberg did later for saving private ryan.  The Tavoularis storyboards reflect some of that original violence that was toned down,as does the novel.

The sex scene that was an off color joke and not shown in one of the drafts between anakin starkiller and a rebel female aide, would never have been in a PG film.

The original concepts were also a lot more daring a 14 year old princess leia for instance lucas got rid of because of labor laws that would have been a pain in the ass, which they had already gone through on graffiti.  Just like Lucas had a much younger Marion Ravenwood in mind when the characters first met.

Icky Pedo connotations would have resulted from either of these if he had done them.

As a kid i appreciated the kiddy ness of star wars and its fairy tale story, but as an adult it is a lot less believable.  The only thing that still sells the films to me and makes them still work is the sincerity of the actors who play the roles, and that the person behind the camera believed in the secondary world they were creating and did not play it for laughs.  Nostalgia and fun also have to do with why i still love the films. Also the sheer vision of grandness the films speak of being larger than life, and the fact these these films are hand crafted works of art made by true craftsmen, not the work of a dude sitting behind a computer cgi render station.

I just wish someone made something like star wars for adults, but the idea is everything for adults has to be barren of any feeling, has to be cynical and have a heavy handed poetical message.

Star Wars with sex scenes and gritty violence would most likely get it banned or boycotted if it was even if it was rated R, and it would destroy the lucas who makes clean kiddy films.