7 Reasons To Give Up Star Wars
2. There Should Only Have Been Three Movies (Six Tops)
If George Lucas had died right after making The Last Crusade, it would’ve been perfect. He wouldn’t have made the prequels and out of respect for his vision, no one else would ever have tried. It would be left to our collective imaginations and fan fictions, without a definitive answer, without a flying R2D2, without a Jar Jar.
Lucas probably got a swell head after Star Wars originally came out. Prior to that, his claim to fame was American Graffiti, a movie about 1950s life that may or may not have inspired the show Happy Days.
Star Wars made him rich. Star Wars made him a “genius.” It was expanded to allow for two more sequels - none of which were originally planned. Yet, Lucas was quick to claim he’d always intended the story to be a trilogy.
Riding the wave of goodwill that came after the originals, he then claimed to have originally envisioned a six-part saga, which later became nine parts. These claims of having written the saga years before is contradicted by A) the many, many rewrites the original Star Wars went through B) the fact that Luke and Leia kiss each other and C) videos of Lucas included in the special features for episodes 1-3 that show him writing the scripts for the movies shortly before filming begins. But hey, Lucas has always been about revisionism.
Sure, the Special Editions had him tinkering with the OT, but he’d already updated the opening crawls to those movies when he applied the 4, 5, and 6 numbering long before that.
Star Wars is a great movie with a good sequel and a not so good sequel, but it was never intended to be an epic saga. If Lucas hadn’t instituted the episode numbering, there would be no “need” for prequel movies. He liked the spotlight and bloated the franchise to keep it shining.
Once you accept that Lucas never had a vision, you realize that the original trilogy were perfect storms of greatness that can probably never be replicated - which is why the only way to make a good Star Wars is by pretty much remaking one of the originals.