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Notes -
It's a hilarious theory, and I thoroughly enjoyed championing it when everyone decided the prequels weren't that bad (they were), but it is ahistorical. I think until the Disney trilogy, every generation had their own "George Lucas = Grand architect" myth - the early gen xers had "George always planned it as 3 trilogies - one about Luke and Leia, one about their parents and one about their children". Then the late gen xers and early millenials had "George had to make the first one for kids so he could show how anakin develops from an innocent and good boy to a conflicted adolescent and then the dark side, the next two movies are going to be much darker and therefore better" and then the late millenials got "George actually planned for jar jar to be the villain but everyone hated him too much"
But the truth has been the same all along - George didn't plan anything. He was blindsided by all of it at every stage, constantly reacting to the last round of criticism without ever understanding it - and aside from A New Hope, the Star Wars movies have always and only succeeded in spite of George's best intentions.
Isn't it an old "joke" that the less George had to do with any particular Star Wars movie, the better it ended up being? (pre-Disney acquisition)
Yeah pretty much - which is why Empire remains the best of them.
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