What proof does everyone have that Rick McCallum was the evil genius behind everything?
Interviews with Rick in the span from '97 to '05. I'd need to fine it down, but somewhere in there I remember reading multiple times him saying that was how he saw he arc and that was what he suggested to George, who went with it. Kind of a twisted version of...
Everything I've read (up to and including Dave Filoni on TCW) was actually the opposite, that Lucas was always willing to hear everyone out on ideas.
...that. Ironically. But, in the end...
In the end though it's his movie to make so he can take or ignore those ideas. Maybe he just writes bad dialogue and they kept it in?
...there's that. By the time of the Prequels, he was a victim of his own success. The people who stood up to him over and over to point something out as being out of place or poorly written or a bad idea or whatever gradually got burnt out and left. Marcia and Gary leap instantly to mind. Most of the people around him for the Prequels were afraid or reluctant to challenge him on anything because of his mystique. He was
George freaking Lucas, man! George said in an interview after TPM that if anyone during pre-production, or even production, had said "Jar-Jar is a bad idea", he probably would have rewritten or removed the character.
George has also said he doesn't like writing. He'll scribble down notes, but he doesn't like having to flesh things out, fill in the gaps, and create all the dialogue. For the original film, Harrison had no problem rewriting Han's lines to be deliverable, and his comment to George on the matter is somewhat famous.
So, given that, I'm not sure how much anyone gainsaid him or Katie for the episodes of the Clone Wars they wrote. They were probably almost entirely enthusiastic and supportive of anything he suggested/handed in to be animated. I haven't seen anyone involved in production, not Dave nor any of the story editors, say they told George his notion of how the Force works is stupid. I haven't seen any of them say bringing Maul back was contrived as hell. Et cetera. I've been wanting to see, since the Star Wars Special Edition premiered in 1997, someone say to him what Larry and Richard did during those spitball sessions: "That's a good idea, George -- but how about we do
this take on it?"
One of the things I
like as a writer, something that's made me stronger in that craft, is having people challenge what I've written -- tell me something doesn't work, or a line is clunky, or have me justify why something is a particular way. The process of thinking through it and explaining it over and over, I'll either see how I could have done it better, or more smoothly, or catch a blind spot where something doesn't work and I missed it. I
like the challenge of finding my way out of corners I've painted myself into with
out just ignoring the problem.
--Jonah