10 Movie Franchises Ruined By One Dumb Decision

10. Letting George Lucas Direct Again - Star Wars

As much as George Lucas is responsible for the existence of the Star Wars franchise, he's also the one to blame for almost every major complaint fans have about the legendary sci-fi series.

Though Lucas directed A New Hope himself, he was far from the "secret sauce" which made that film such a success: as a more modest filmmaker he collaborated with teams of artists to deliver a vision that, ultimately, sensibly strayed far from the goofier vision of his original script.

For The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Lucas handed off directing duties to more experienced filmmakers Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand, while the true creative masterstroke was bringing screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan aboard to pen the two sequels.

Lucas of course returned as writer-director for the prequel trilogy, an ambitious upward-failure in which Lucas desperately attempted to embrace new digital filmmaking techniques while confirming that he, as a sole creative force with nobody to answer to, was a recipe for dramatic disaster.

This had the knock-on effect of causing J.J. Abrams to over-correct the problem with the overly safe, nostalgia-baiting The Force Awakens, before Rian Johnson attempted to steer perhaps a little too hard the other way into unpredictability for The Last Jedi.

From what we've seen so far, it appears that The Rise of Skywalker will once again veer back in the opposite direction with safe, nostalgia-fuelled storytelling.

Lucas did such a number on the IP with his maligned prequels that he's permanently dented a franchise still struggling to figure out its identity and find firm creative footing.