Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back were both classics due to the sum of their parts. Good actors, good story line and a variety of different settings(space, ice planet, desert and jungle), costumes and interesting characters including: Darth Vader, Luke Sky walker, Yoda, C3PO, R2D2, Han Solo and Princess Leila, etc.

There seems a lot missing to the new Star Wars trilogy films. They seem to add little or no value to the Star Wars saga, the story lines are weak, acting is poor and too dependent upon CGI/special effects created by modern technology.

It still irritates me that some people consider Return of the Jedi to be the weak link of the original set.

There are certain things that George Lucas has done that I don't like, but for the most part, I'm more forgiving towards him than most people. As far as the changes in the Star Wars movies are concerned, newer generations of fans will be more accepting towards it. I think a lot of older fans hated the changes simply because it's not what they saw when they were younger. However, if it were your movie franchise and you had complete say about everything, who's to say you wouldn't do what Lucas did? It's easier to look at things from the perspective of a fan with nostalgic memories than it is to look at it from the perspective of the creator of the franchise.

Also, Star Wars fans seem to have a memory too. In Episode IV, a lot of people back in the day hated R2-D2 and C-3PO. In Episode V, a lot of fans hated the fact that Yoda, the Master of all Jedis was a little green puppet. In Episode VI, a lot of fans hated the amount of puppetry that was used. However, fans are very accepting of all this now. I think the prequels in time will become more accepted as well.

As far as Lucas is concerned about retiring, it's not just fanboys that are making him feel disgusted. It's Hollywood itself. Just look at the latest release from Lucas Films. They had to finance the film themselves and while 20th Century Fox is distributing the film, almost nobody has been marketing it. As much as he has always hated Hollywood, George Lucas has done so much for Hollywood, only to have them not do anything in return for him. That's terrible.

Oh, and one more thing. Even with all the changes and color corrections and voice dubs in the Star Wars movies, they are essentially the same movies. That being said, what would you rather have. modified versions of older films or mediocre remakes?

I can understand people not liking it as much as the first two movies, but I don't think that it was substantially worse than them ...

I just had to post this...

How can you be that indifferent to circumstance then whine as quoted?  Also, unless it's genetics, that picture is convinving me that excercise as I get older is clearly the way to go - Ford is still in amazing shape for his age, while Lucas shows us the other end of the spectrum.

LOL, as much as I love Ford, he looks sick in this picture. I mean litterally sick. :B

I'd look like that if Lucas was standing in front of me wearing that T-Shirt.

That's unreasonable though. You shouldn't let things affect you like that :P And plus, he's wearing a T-Shirt with you on it, can't be that bad! A tad on the geek side, but not sickening! :D

Dangit I love Lucas Film. George did an amazing job with all six StarWars films. Phantom Menace was my least favorite but I still enjoyed it. Starwars was an amazing series arrg I am guessing this means his live action tv series is dead now too awes I was really looking forward to that.

I hope Lucas is just talking about Star Wars when he says leave the business. I like his other work too. Egen though Red Tails wasn't anything to write home about it was still worth the money to watch. George is made for the film industry I have no doubt he is capable of releasing another amazing film.

George appears to have my problem. He can't make his vision short. He already said that Red Tails was the second movie in a three film franchise. He had three movies written a prequel and sequel. So I kept that in mind while watching the film. I think if he was able to just create a single movie maybe a three hour epic adventure he could hit pay dirt again.

I mean when Spielberg creates a movie he doesn't make it three parts right off the bat usually he creates a single mov