Fun fact: George Lucas is a terrible writer. That much is obvious from the screenplays of the Star Wars prequels, where he manages to reduce acting powerhouses like Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor to confused young men trying to make sense of lines which are actual nonsense, to the point that it's impossible to imbue them with any sort of emotion or affectation or anything approaching a performance. So how the heck did the original films turn out so well? And how did they end up with such iconic moments and lines of dialogue which have become part of the fabric of popular culture, referenced by everyone and everything? Simple - because he probably didn't write them. Lucas certainly came up with the basic structure of the Star Wars films, and a lot of the ideas featured therein, but he didn't write them. Lord no. Remember, in film school he fell in love with all the visual elements of movie making, and was severely lax at picking up any experience in actually writing decent stories or convincing human speech. No, that was left to much more talented people like Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett, who revised all of his crazier ideas and terrible dialogue into something more palatable for the cinema going audience. It's only when Lucas got total control over the franchise that his terrible, terrible writing got an airing. And we did not relish that opportunity one bit.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
