I'm definitely not saying that Hayden Christiansen is a great actor, but Anakin's whiny petulance came purely from George Lucas's shitty dialogue. I don't think there are many actors that could have portrayed Anakin better, Lucas gets complete responsibility for the character of Anakin

Garfunkel and Oates? What's next, a movie by George Spielberg and Stephen Lucas about a boy, Indiana Skywalker, who loses his adoptive parents but finds them on an ancient spaceship which crash landed in Bolivia, manned only by the ghost Force of Adolf Palpatine?

I sure hope so.

Very cool. So, there's this story that when Lucas washed the rushes (early film edits) without music, he thought he had a total dud on his hands---it was after the iconic John Williams' musical score was added, that it suddenly fleshed out into the space opera that we know and love so much...

I wish Episodes I,II, and a good chunk of III hadn't, uh, gone astray (Jar Jar Binks must die!)---and Ewoks???
Sigh.

Still, Star Wars...

I didn't like it because I'd been a huge science fiction fan for almost a decade by that time. I was simply used to a better class of story. My distaste for Lucas came along later, as he earned it.

As someone who saw Star Wars when it first came out, (I was 12), it completely blew me away. I still remember the feeling. That's what films should be like. I can't imagine anyone not liking it for what it was. I can imagine people not liking it because it's sci-fi,, because they have no desire to let go of reality for 2hrs, because they have no capacity for wonder, or because Lucas now sucks and so retroactively sucked, or because they want to be different.

I can't say I agree with Simon, but I certainly don't agrfee with Ebert, Siskel, or (sorry) bluecliff. Star Wars was pretty crappy when it first came out, in every way but special effects, and none of the subsequent episodes got any better. A trite, cliched story combined with wooden acting and moronic, stilted dialog don't make for a good time, in my opinion.

The shameless flipflopping and revisionist history Lucas presented over the years since then pretty well sealed my distaste. First, it had nothing to do with Campbell's Hero's Journey (my guess is that he had no idea who Campbell was at that time), then later, when Campbell became such a fad, well of -course- it was inspired by the Hero's Journey all along. Even Hollywood types should be able to provide a better fake sincerity than Lucas.

Nah, they're not THAT bad.

...and to be fair, Lucas had no clue what the prequels would be when he did ep. 4-6, he just made shit up. At least The Hobbit was written BEFORE LoTR.

Just as Spielberg and Lucas were predicting.

What cracks me up about these reboots is the truly strange reaction they elicit. Reactions such as, "Don't ruin RoboCop!" and "Leave my childhood alone!" and the like.

So I always enjoy pointing out that, "Did you know when they reboot a franchise, they actually DON'T touch a single frame of the original film? Not even a little? It's true! I done looked it up." (George Lucas excepted, of course).

It's as though people think the filmmakers are going to go house to house, confiscating people's DVDs and replacing them with the rebooted version. <forehead slap>

A reboot of a film will only "ruin" the original if you let it.

In other words, derp.

Almost anything would have been better. To my mind, the single biggest flaw with the prequels was that the originals focused on a small set of largely likeable characters who were generally together having adventures in space. The Prequels were just all over the place and there weren't really any likeable characters, and... and... for the sake of brevity, let's just say they suck in every way.

Also, for the love of god, George Lucas should not have been allowed to direct. He is a terrible, terrible, terrible director. Everyone knows that. Everyone has known that since the first one, and George should have known that too. He isn't a great artist in any sense of the word. I'd say the prequels are a textbook example of why the role of director is so important. How can such an accomplished cast deliver a performance barely better than what you'd expect from, say, "Sharktopus."

I think the next three will be decent. They don't have to be great (and really, the original three weren't *great* per se, they were just novel fun, imaginative, and hit a sweet spot. I think JJ Abrams will do fine.

Anyways, this guys plot would have worked. So would have a lot of others though.

Williams is not alone in his ignorance of the script for episode 7, as usual (or perhaps even more than usual this time,) Lucas is being extraordinarily secretive. So far the only thing widely known is the proposed title "Rise of The Gungans"

You were so lucky to have met George Lucas. Wow, and got a picture with him even!!!

"And since George Lucas directs like he's got a stick up his butt"

True...but Lucas didn't direct 'Jedi'...Richard Marquand did.

I'm pretty sure Lucas Arts no longer holds that IP with the acquisition by Disney.

i think it may be that Lucas changed his mind about this a few times. Sometimes, during the making of a movie, he cared a lot and wanted everything to match. Other times, when he was not interested in the universe, he didn't care and anything goes. Also, it's very likely that the emails that people in the studio got from George were actually from a writer, marketer, etc...
The further you dig into the guts of Star Wars, the more you realize that Lucas made up much of it as he went and had no qualms about inconsistency if a scene he wanted caused it.