chapotraphouse

I do this. Like unironically. Canon sucks, stories belong to the people, don't let anyone tell you that Disney's stories are more important than your stories because they paid some guy a billion dollars so they could profit from the stories instead of him.

Plus, Maria saved it in the edit. He didn't direct Empire or Jedi. Dude was probably the most important person behind the trilogy, but it was the combined work of hundreds or thousands of people and while it probably wouldn't have succeeded without George, it also couldn't have succeeded with just George. The prequels and the early seasons of the Clone Wars CGI show George's limits when he doesn't have collaborators to help him shore up his weaknesses. Apparently he actually asked a lot of people for help with the prequels but htey all said "Oh no I couldn't possibly, you are the auteur!".

Like you've got George Lucas, you've got Maria Lucas, you've got artists like Ralph MacQuarrie, you've got David Prowse and James Earl Jones coming together to create Vader, you've got Carrie Fischer being a badass and Mark Hamill being a dorky twink. A lot of people made Star Wars happen, a lot of people made creative decisions. That scene in Andor where the guy uses all the cool tricks to blow up the tractor beam? That's originally from one of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy books from thirty years ago. Thrawn's Star Destroyer ambushes Luke and captures him with a tractor beam. He cold-launches a torpedo that is pulled in to hte tractor beam emitter. It blows up and he's able to fly away. It's used as a character moment for Thrawn; Everyone expects him to kill the tractor beam operator but instead he says "That was a good trick, remember it so they can't do it again" and we learn that Thrawn is ruthless, but also more of a people person than his peers.

Also, I do like one specific cut of the Prequels which combines 2 and 3 in to a single film. The stylistic choice I was most impressed with was removing almost all of the battle droid dialogue. Without the goofy comic relief dialogue they're quite sinister in a number of scenes.