Re: Err, you got it wrong buddy
"He is a fantastic businessman and a studio CEO. Director or god forbid full artistic control - you might as well put Jar Jar Binks in charge."
Utterly this. He's actually really quite bad at many things.
Episode 4, he was so constrained by the studio that he couldn't control everything. Good movie. Episode 5, again, he didn't have full freedom. Good movie. Episode 6, he starts being able to dictate the terms. Ewoks.
1, 2 and 3 really just sum up the fact that Star Wars would not be the films we fondly remember had it not been for Harrison Ford re-writing half his only dialogue (why do you think Han is so great?), people other than Lucas handling the direction, script writing being basically removed from him completely, brilliant actors and support cast developing characters like Yoda, and more mature minds telling him not to be so bloody stupid before he ascended to Godhood. The man thinks Jar Jar Binks is entertainment, and he believes that the Phantom Menace is how you make a political thriller.
His cack-handed approach to the Special Editions included some frankly bad ideas that completely alter some characters (Han shot first), but worse still many of the CGI additions actually get in the way. Sure, some work - Bespin in particular goes from looking like an Apple-themed set of corridors to actually looking like a city in the clouds - but Mos Eisley becomes a jarring mess of CGI stuff strolling around in the way of the action and actually makes it harder to tell what is going on. And the whole empire-wide celebration thing at the end of Jedi makes no sense.
Lucas is pretty good for a big picture kind of guy (though most of the features of his work are actually very derivative), but he should be kept in a galaxy far, far away from any of the details.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
