Ok well I'm starting the rumor that Lucas put all those cars in American Graffiti to sell Hot Wheels.
Orson Wells made Citizen Kane to sell snow globes and sleds.
Yea, idk if anybody else feels this way, but Kurtz to me has always come across as a little bitter that he didn't get his way in the end and this sounds to me like more of that.
When ROTJ was written,that was the point at which there were some VERY deliberate decisions made to cash in on the franchise, because George needed the money to fund the developement of Lucasfilm and escape from the system that had, in all honesty, treated him VERY badly.
Having seen them all upon original release, I had come to expect basically three acts/environments from ROTJ, the recipe was predictable at that point.
The rumors at the time... Luke will die. The expectation was we were losing one of our heroes.
I distinctively remember thinking the first act was incredibly silly with all the muppets and nonsense, the barge battle helped with Luke finally show off his stuff. So I thought ok what next?
I was giving up after the second act basically. Ewoks was simply too much to handle, blank eyed chubby fursuits. the speeder bike stuff was ok, but nothing we hadn't seen on CHiPs. LOL The third act pulled the film out of the fire for me, now we were getting into the more serious issues to face.
I remember being let down by John Williams some.. There was more re-used stuff then I would have liked to have heard.
I still cringe at things in the third act though. That horrible Chewie Tarzan yell thing just was a spit in the eye to dignity.
So all that was my perception in 1983 when it was new, it hasn't changed much since.
I recognize George Lucas on all that he's accomplished and I am very grateful for it (THERE WOULD BE NO ALIEN OR STAR TREK: TMP!), but he's not the best thing that's happened to the movie industry. I dare say he's not even the best thing to happen to Star Wars. He just... ugh. He's kind of like the story teller who is willing to share his stories with those who want to hear it, but keeps insisting that they only interpret it from his perspective rather than their own. It's that line of thinking that makes me feel like he doesn't respect his audience simply because they don't see his movies as he does. And it sucks even more because the way he sees his own stories keeps on changing.
At least when Richard Donner recut Superman 2, he did so with the admission that the cut he was making would never truly represent the film he would have made had he not been fired during it's production. Not because there wasn't enough footage or special effects to complete the new cut, but because he's changed as a film maker and as a person over the years that the decisions he makes today would not have been the same decisions he made in the new cut would not be the same decisions he would have made almost three decades ago. That kind of admission is really telling because it clearly describes how Lucas has dealt with the Star Wars films over the decades, but you'll never hear him admit it.
Another galaxy. Another time. The Galactic Republic is the Old Republic of legend. For most, its origins are lost in the shadows of the distant past. For them, it has always been, and that is enough.
However, any structure that endures long enough will fall victim to corruption, and ambitious individuals will pursue opportunity at the expense of those who cannot fight back.
Now, turmoil has engulfed the Republic Senate. Taxation of outlying trade routes has seen unchecked corporate interests threaten to blockade member worlds to force settlement in their favor. The Supreme Chancellor of the Senate has secretly dispatched his trusted friend, Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan, to the remote planet of Naboo to enlist the aid of famed negotiator and Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi....
Responding first to the comments from @batguy...
When George made Star Wars, he didn't expect it to do anywhere near well enough to justify a sequel, so he felt no worries at lifting elements from later in the notes to solve story needs in the film he was making. The Death Star was supposed to be far later in the story. So when he got there, he had to make it bigger and badder to compensate, and not just repeat himself. I find his approach very weak, though. A skilled writer could come up with a viable alternative to a Death Star. A skilled writer could also come up with a solution to developing Chewie as more sophisticated as his people were supposed to be when we got to them at the end of the arc.
I'm still not gonna reveal my "it's a trap!" twist, but my solution for the Wookiees was simple -- if the Empire is keeping them as slave labor, they'd be denied access to technological items in their pens/camps/whatever. But they're intelligent and innovative, so they'd come up with low-tech alternative made from what they did have on hand. And I still have some fun "Lord of the Flies" stuff going on with the Wookiees' kids that the Empire is holding hostage in their own encampment. A lot of the Ewok stuff from the film we got was Wookiee kids going tribal in my rewrite.
You know none of us were there with Lucas and Kurtz and all the other people behind the scenes on any of the movies so building an opinion on hearsay and conjecture is kind of silly.
Lawrence Kasdan, had been approached by Lucas who was about to do the Prequels to the Star Wars Trilogy. George had wanted Lawrence Kasdan to script the prequel trilogy and in exchange for Lawrence's work on the prequels, Lucas was willing to let Lawrence Kasdan direct one of the prequels. But Lawrence felt he'd already paid his debt to George and passed on the offer.
The Rebels show up, arm some of them, but the rest are required to use lower-level tech and improvise booby traps. Kinda like the Viet Cong that inspired Lucas in the first place.
I'm sure folks can come up with other good versions, too. That's the thing that was such a disappointment about them: there were so many better ways you could've gone. I honestly get the sense that Lucas lacked focus in his story, and wasn't viewing each prequel film as building on the next one. It feels more like he had moments he wanted to show, and so he made films built around those moments. But the moments themselves are only loosely connected, and the story overall ends up hurting for it.