Basically, George Lucas doesn't know what he's doing. He's just not... a good filmmaker. Most of the good parts of the original trilogy weren't his ideas. For example, when Princess Leia says "I love you!" to Han Solo while he's getting frozen in carbonite, and Solo says "I know." That was Harrison Ford's idea. Darth Vader's super-iconic heavy breathing? That was James Earl Jones's idea. Most of the other good parts were lucky accidents due to the lack of a budget. AND A GREAT TEAM THAT HE LISTENED TO.
Nowadays, George Lucas has money to do whatever he wants. He never has to brainstorm and find creative solutions to financial problems. He never has to rely on his team for good ideas. He can just film in front of a greenscreen and have 100% control over the stupid aliens that they CGI in there.
Lucas also ruins ALL his classics, not just Star Wars. Look at Indy 4. Look at E.T.! In the DVD he went back and changed the guns to walkie talkies! Why? That actually RUINS the suspense! "Oh no these guards with walkie talkies are chasing me down!" He wanted to make it less scary, ya know, for kids. He completely destroyed his greatest movie, THX-1138. That film was almost all white, on purpose. It was minimal beautiful arty sci-fi madness (the lack of a budget forced him to be super-creative and badass). For the DVD he added a bunch of digital robots, huge crowds of people (ruining the claustrophobic isolation of the original's atmosphere), aliens, tons of terminals and random sci-fi tech gear for no reason, and even weird monsters in the parking lot. None of that was in the original!
One of the film professors at USC (I forget her name at the moment) taught George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola. She watched all three of them grow and mature as cinematic artists. In her words: all three are amazing editors and filmmakers. All three are just phenomenal at putting together a scene, masters of pacing, editing, atmosphere, and putting it all together. But only Coppola knows how to tell a story. BOOM!
You sounds like an elitist that just don't like star wars.
If Lucas is a bad film maker than all the blockbusters can be thrown in the toilet.
The prequels are great movies, great entertainment and great for true fans of Star Wars.
I think A New Hope was an amazing fantasy movie and a special effects revolution that changed cinema. I think Empire Strikes back is even better, but that wasn't directed by Lucas. (At first he asked David Lynch to direct it, and got denied, lulz.)
The original trilogy had a beginning, middle, and end, with logical reasons to connect all the scenes. We have Luke Skywalker as a boring sissy for us all to relate to, and he slowly transforms into a badass superhero. We watch him grow and become a jedi master, and we root for him.
The prequels don't have protagonists. Who is the star of The Phantom Menace? A kid who's only in half the movie? There's nobody to relate to, nobody to care about, and no logic connecting the scenes. If the whole movie's about an armada surrounding Naboo, why does it disappear halfway through the movie with no explanation? They have to sneak down to the planet on an enemy ship, and then escape by busting through the barricade, but when they come back, there isn't a single enemy ship, and no explanation of where all the enemies are. That's supposed to be the primary villain and the primary conflict. It disappears. That is the stupidest mistake you could make, and that script would have been laughed out of film school if he let anybody read it.
Just watch the parts at 1:14 and 4:36.. It actually has footage of the editors and producers trying hard not to cry, and trying not to tell Lucas "Oops we accidentally made the worst movie ever made." Lucas is like, "Hm, yeah those scenes don't connect well at all, and the mood is ruined when we keep jumping around from escape to comedy to 5 minute political discussions to fighting, but it's too late to take any out. Well, I guess we're done!" That's a bad filmmaker right there.
Also, another part of the video has Lucas saying, "If I forget to say action or cut, just step in and say it for me."
