Why didn't he just hire another screenwriter to improve his writing for the prequels when he already had millions to...

Why didn't he just hire another screenwriter to improve his writing for the prequels when he already had millions to spare on special effects?

Because Disney blackmailed him into selling.

Do you have evidence that he was blackmailed or is this another attempt to victimize a man with a net worth of $5 billion?

ego my dude. check the behind the scenes videos of the prequels.

you're implying he thought his writing needed that

when you're surrounded by morons who endlessly worship whatever you touch, it could be hard to recognize when you're being bad at something

This is flat out wrong on so many levels.
Being surrounded by bootlickers and brown-nosers isn't an excuse for arrogance. A smart and sensible man needs to recognize when his """followers""" are holding back his true potential.
If you don't, then I can only assume that it's because you are a narcissist who just enjoys hearing people heap mountains of praise on you.
Lucas followed bad advice because he is just a shitty person, not because he was a victim of those darn sycophants and their darn praise.

But he wanted exactly that, due to how much he resented being second guessed during the OT

Because he thinks he's a good writer.

Correcto.
It's pure egotism.
Even if Disney had to blackmail Lucas into selling his property, I say fuck Lucas. Arrogant and untalented pricks like him deserve far worse.

He quit the Director's & Writer's guilds decades ago in a spat over crediting in the original Star Wars. As a result, he couldn't get a screenwriter to work with him. One of the few who will is Spielberg, but he apparently felt that the Prequels were George's baby and should be his alone.

>He quit the Director's & Writer's guilds decades ago in a spat over crediting in the original Star Wars.
Jesus fucking christ, what a baby.

He was apparently planning on it during the early days of development. George asked a few people informally very early on, but they were all hesitant about it because it was such a big project. After that, he never bothered with a serious effort to find a screenwriter. It's not really clear why he changed his mind, but I see two main options:

>1. The first people all apparently said that they were nervous about working in George franchise, so maybe he got the idea that because the series was "his," he let his ego take over and decided only he could do it.
>2. He might have made the choice as a way of proving himself. After the divorce from Marcia and the split with Kurtz, there was a clear effort in Lucasfilm materials to paint Star Wars as entirely the result of George's work (see Skywalking). Deep down, George had to know it was all bullshit, and might have wanted to prove he could really make a Star Wars movie by himself.

Whatever the cause, to me the weirdest thing about the writing of TPM is how little effort George seems to have put into it. Lots of people have commenting on how the movie feels like it was made with a rough draft, but it's kind of worse than that. The plot of TPM is almost exactly the plot of the first draft of Star Wars (way closer than the final movie was). Instead of actually writing a new movie, he just reused a script he'd thrown out 20 years before and updated it.

You do realize the script isn't even the worse part about the prequels right?

Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman killed the prequels. This is an absolute fact. Better actors would have taken Lucas' mediocre screenplay and actually made it work on screen.

Because he wanted to be in charge of everything. He wanted to make the movies his way because he wanted to complete his story, unlike the people in charge now that just want money.
Not saying the prequels are good movies because of this, but they at least had a few moments where you can tell someone was putting their heart and soul into the production. You can't say the same for the new ones.
I have a theory that you can tell how much the film makers cared by listening to the music. The prequels had great music and a lot of variety. TFA was just generic rehashing of John Williams' old work. The sad thing is all of it is John Williams (not including rogue one).

Stop being so autistic.

this. there is a common saying that goes "casting is 80% of the director's job" that perfectly captures the problem here. directors shouldn't have to teach their actors how to act, they're there to direct them, and tweak their performances. george had developed a terrible habit for casting bad (or ill-suited) actors after his golden years as a filmmaker. you can even see how he picks the WORST of the three kids (no offense to jake lloyd) in the behind the scenes of phantom menace for the part of anakin. and it is implied that natalie portman wasn't even cast but was simply forced into the movie. just a terrible sense of casting. I do agree that had they put more competent actors into those movies they would have been much, much better.

>actors that have performed well in other roles ruined the movie
>disregard the poor performances from Taken man and trainspotter which were shit and mediocre respectively
>pretend Sheev wasn't poorly used and jar jar doesn't exist

Sure, Herschlag and Christensen were the problem. It couldn't be that the dialogue was stilted, unrealistic at best and outright trite at worst, the characters undeveloped, and the "comic relief" was one of the worst characters in cinematic history.

>Because he wanted to be in charge of everything. He wanted to make the movies his way because he wanted to complete his story,
Then he's an egotist.
The prequels were ruined because of one man's ego.
TFA was ruined because it's just as assembly line product that has to meet the quota.
The former is worse. Much worse.

George's directing style also has something to do with it, because he's incredibly lazy and doesn't particularly like giving direction. Watching the behind the scenes stuff convinced me that if George could have pulled of the prequels as CGI animation, he probably would have tried, because he's terrible with actors and constantly relied on CGI to accomplish what he wanted.

because he's very passive-aggressive

>wanting to finish a story you started is egotistical
>implying TFA is any better than any of the prequels
You can't be fucking serious. TFA is a void in the fabric of cinema. It's worse than a bad movie. It's a money factory. It has no purpose or function beyond making money. It shouldn't even qualify as a movie.

They also had to deal with lucas' incompetent direction and his full creative control.

>It's a money factory.
...and Disney hasn't pretended otherwise. If you walked into a Disney movie expecting something good then that's your problem, moron.
Disney has always been in it for the money.
Lucas was the richest man in the world to attempt an independent, no-strings-attached movie. His failures as a filmmaker are much more egregious and unforgivable.

> Those scared faces.

The prequels proves that "Auteur Theory" is bullshit; alot of the good things in Star Wars were the result of people arguing with Lucas.

When he had total power and McCalum kissing his ass stupid shit went unchallenged; Jar Jar is the kind of thing that got weeded out of Episode IV by creative argument.

>his failures as a film maker
Are more respectable than the "successes" of a company that has dollar signs for eyeballs. He put real effort into those movies but the bad simply outweighed the good.
>egregious and unforgivable
Now you're just being autistic. Typical of a prequel hater.
No, I'm not saying the prequels are good so fuck off with that bullshit in advance, please.

>Lucas was the richest man in the world to attempt an independent, no-strings-attached movie. His failures as a filmmaker are much more egregious and unforgivable.
This. Since he started building Skywalker ranch in the late 70s, he's been promising to devote his time to making good films outside the constraints of the commercial Hollywood system, but every Star Wars movie from ROTJ onwards has basically been a 2 hour toy commercial. George is a massive sellout, and he doesn't even have the decency to be honest about it.

Just because lucas is an egotistical retard doesn't mean auteur theory is bullshit

>make a fortune from autistic kids
>make even more from now grown up autistic kids and their autistic children
>sell it to disney for more money
>now retarded kids and their parents can enjoy it too

>dubs comfirm

If you thought George Lucas was a sellout you must have had a stroke when you saw what Disney is doing now.

Bitching about disney doesn't make the prequels any less of total abject failures.

"George, you can type this shit but you can't say it." - Harrison Ford

Lucas writes tons and tons of exposition, characters stand around and explain the plot.
The most cringe-inducing example is when Dooku explains why he and Yoda must now fight with lightsaber.

His huge ego made him think he was the reason why the original trilogy became a pop culture icon.

>his failures as a film maker are more respectable than the "successes" of a company that has dollar signs for eyeballs
A failure is a failure. Stop making excuses for that idiot, you cuck.
Lucas needs to have the decency and humility to just accept that he failed. Instead, he got a childish hangup over the criticism he got for the prequels and acts like he is somehow a victim despite having a personal net worth of $5 billion.
That's reflects very badly on him.

>He put real effort into those movies
Evidently, he did not.
If there any was real effort put into those movies, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Again with this argument?
Disney's failures and shortcomings DO NOT excuse Lucas's own failures.

1. He asked several people beforehand to help with writing and directing. They all turned it down because they felt it was his project.
2. George was always obsessed with Flash Gordon-era sci-fi serials, and he tried to copy the writing style (which was very corny and theatric) verbatim, rather than adjusting it for modern taste.
3. George’s wife, who is often credited with “saving” episode IV in editing, left him during production of episode VI. A lot of the weird exchanges in the prequels could have been fixed by a competent editor.
4. George is legit autistic. How anyone can watch the bts documentaries and not see this is unfathomable. He has no grasp of social interaction and thinks he’s much funnier than he is.
tl;dr, George is a grade-a autist who wanted to make space movies and didn’t have anyone around to tell him when an idea was bad.

Lucas thinks you can take two actors in a scene, take one actors "best take" and make it so it appears opposite the other actor's "best take".

You can do that with VFX but not acting, a big chunk of which is reacting and the performances have to be attuned to each other.

Yea, Obi Wan had similar writing but Ewan was able to elevate it for the whole trilogy.

The only problem with the prequels was the dialogue

Prove me wrong

Lucas had total creative freedom...and then squandered it.

I didn't say that.
>a failure is a failure
When did I imply otherwise? They're failures just like TFA was.
>Evidently, he did not
Why? Because the movies ended up being bad? That doesn't mean he didn't try, you dumb piece of shit.
I didn't say that. Stop putting words in my mouth.

again, check the behind the scenes stuff, any time he's given any sort of input or even constructive criticism he starts literally whining.

Of course not, he's the same retarded shit who posts those "apologize" shitposting threads every day.

He should have had an abortion.

>better actors

Ok, but even the CGI characters were shit. It's not coincidence that the only 'cool' character (maul) didn't have any lines. That's just bad writing.

That doesn't mean he didn't try. It just means he was stubborn and didn't want anyone to argue with him, and yes, the movies suffered for this. I'm not debating that. All I'm saying is they have more soul, which I understand isn't much of an accomplishment because TFA had literally none. Like I said, it shouldn't even qualify as a movie. It's only called that because that's the closest word we have to describe it.

Oh but it's evident it was his ego driving him, otherwise the special editions and subsequent changes to the movies wouldn't have happened.

>getting this mad about a 40 year old flash gordon ripoff

>prequel haters somehow manage to be more autistic than the prequel lovers

>mfw finally watch THX 1138 and I just fucking zone out towards the end

That movie was fucking boring and it had an interesting premise but god damn it just was snore inducing towards the end.

Star Wars is a ripoff of like 5 different things, you retard.

I honestly don't see how better actors could have salvaged those scripts. The fact that they didn't break while reciting George's ramblings speaks of their quality.

People don't whine when they're doing something, exerting effort. they whine when they're trying NOT to exert effort.

Fuck you, Rick Berman.

Reminder you most likely watched a lucas'd version of it.

Unless you think they had CGI in 1971

>y-you're autistic
Excellent counterpoint, I yield.

>people don't whine when they're exerting effort
They absolutely can. He just thought he was right about everything and didn't want to give it up. Doesn't mean he wasn't trying. He was trying to make the movie he wanted to make. It just so happens that that movie isn't good.

Thank you.

Tip of the hat to you, m'lord.

>someone offers some constructive criticism
>lucas starts whining until he can go back to sitting on his fat lazy ass staring at monitors

If Samuel L Jackson can't squeeze some cool out of the dialog there's something really wrong.

And? Him being lazy during the editing process doesn't mean he didn't try. He also directed and wrote those fucking movies.

You’re right, my bad.
>getting this mad over a 40 year old Flash Gordon/Akira Kurosawa/spaghetti western/wuxia/wwii news reel ripoff

>not trying and being averse to trying doesn't mean you're not trying

... Ah, you don't know what words mean. that's cool.

He's really really dumb.

His ex-wife is what made the original trilogy what it was. She edited most of George's early movies (the good ones) and worked magic editing the first 3 Star Wars, turning the fevered ramblings of a madman into a respected film trilogy.

Don't forget Star Trek
The irony is palpable here.

That's not very nice :(

Remember that everyone thought new hope was going to be a disaster.

I think we know why he divorced her.
Her constant presence in his life reminded him of his shortcomings as an editor. As a self-absorbed asshole who thinks that he's 100% responsible for the success of SW, he couldn't abide by that.

You expect a corporation to behave like that.

But a film-maker?

Lucas had the kind of creative freedom his peers could only dream of. His initial outlines of Episodes 1,2, and 3 were much more ambitious, for example, he said 2 would be a romance with very little action...but then what we got was mostly set-pieces with a huge bloated set-piece at the end.

Lucas has some very interesting ideas amongst his bad ones, which a good writer could have tweaked and tuned into a potentially great story.

Don't you just love how Lucas always vilifies corporations and rich fucks in his shitty stories?
Talk about projection.

None of the movies were well received at first.

Then why do the prequels inspire more hatred and ire than the originals?
No one ever made a Plinkett-style review for the original trilogy because the base material is good.

>OT is compared to Bergman, Goddard, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, etc
>comes up short

>PT is compared to OT
>comes up short

wow

either way RT is basically useless

He was the rebel who when he got into a position of power...actually reinforced the old studio system.

He's the archetypal Baby Boomer in many respects.

They divorced because George was obsessed with his work and had little time for intimacy.
“It is hard to describe the amount of detail, the amount of work involved [in making a film]...You can do it for a couple of months, but year after year its gets to be grim. I've been doing it for god knows how long. It's more and more pressure and I'm more and more unhappy, and tired and exhausted and dragging home endless problems at the end of the day. I'm not having much fun. It's all work. It's very anxiety-ridden, very hard, very frustrating and relentless. The extent to which one's personal life is usurped cannot be overestimated. It has made me less of a happy person than I think I could be. It has disrupted my family life.”

So satisfying to see him get cucked by Disney.

Because youtube didn’t exist in 1977?

As it turns out, the ST will also be compared only to the OT. The OT was a copy of at least 5 different things. The ST so far has been a copy of that one copy. It's only getting worse from here. Hopefully in 10 years or so people will have a lesser opinion of these new ones.

see

compared to the prequels the new ones are brilliant and will always be.

No one puts the new ones above the OT, just above the PT.

>not realizing that user was referring to people today, not people who lived 40 years ago when the internet wasn't a thing

You can't back up that statement.

that's not true at all

many times in interviews he's stated the opposite