I've heard that the critics initially gave good reviews but fans pressured them to "negatize" their reviews. Also, I thought Rotten Tomatoes goes by more than the critics.

Red Tails was okay... I mean there were bits of it that I was a bit flummoxed by, but overall it was pretty good. No Raiders, but nothing bad. I think it would have worked better as a HBO series like Band of Brothers, but that's just me.

In my opinion, he has made statements that were much more 'revealing' about his personality/mindset than this, anyway. I'm thinking in particular of the one he said about LFL and himself as a film-maker becoming the very thing he didn't want to become - the head of a movie-making 'empire'. Remind anyone of someone/something from Star Wars?

Sounds like a conspiracy-theory, to me. The only 'about-face' that I'm aware of, had to do with Roger Ebert's review of TPM.

lol, the prequels were not well panned everywhere. At rottentomatoes TPM=57% AOTC=67% ROTS=80% and they all sold a boatload of tickets and merchandise.

Yeah I still don't get ROTS high score on RT. But I'll give you that.

And Harry Knowles' review of AOTC...

I just think Lucas's statement refers to not having much more to do. He's written his treatment and notes, and conveyed this to Kathleen Kennedy and Michael Arndt and whomever else is important in all this, Disney people, and will just be there for some consulting or stuff.

The PT is far from great. There are some great ideas...but the films are wooden, stilted, and are far far too serious in tone. There is nothing wrong with the stories that are being told, it's just the way they're being told. I respect Lucas for his vision....that's all. He cheapened the brand inadvertently. That's MY humble opinion.

Newsflash!

George Lucas says, "I just clipped my toenails and now I'm off to change my load of laundry."

Come on people. In the very first video interview, Kathleen Kennedy stated exactly what Lucas stated about the definition of his role. Why is this suddenly a surprise??? Got a question about the SW world? Ask Lucas. That's it. No final say on the designs, no co-scripting, no nothing....just answering questions. Pretty simply. Move along.

Selling lots of tickets and merchadise is not an indicator of quality. Bay's Transformer movies made tonnes of money and they aren't very good, Avatar made more money than any movie ever but it's not the greatest film of all time.

The Prequels had largely mixed reviews, generally 3 stars (which is what they deserve, good movies but not great ones) with some going for less and a couple higher for ROTS. Few said they were really appauling apart from fans who were burned by the disappointment and still today go on like the PT is junk.
Some over the years have changed opinions, as many do. But I've seen reviews get better rather than worse at times.

Well, it was directed by someone with TV experience so maybe that would have been a better option.

Because it’s a good film.

Because people were thinking that Lucas was still involved creating the stories and supervising everything....
Because people wanted to think that this was the ST that would close the narrative...
Because people needed to believe that Lucas is involved, otherwise it doesn't feel like Star Wars (that's why he's being credited as a consultant and the Disney people are saying that he's very involved).

Lucas is being fairly consistent. He said the Saga was over. That the story was over. He said he wouldn't be making any more of them. He said that he would let other people play with his universe. He said he wouldn't be involved in that. That's it.

He is involved in creating the stories. He wrote the treatments and is collaborating on the scripts. Haven't we seen the videos posted on the official site?

Agreed-that is what a consultant essentially IS. I would imagine (or at least hope) he'd also have some say in choosing the look of certain characters-outfits, aliens, ships, etc. like he did so much before.

I'd imagine getting restless would be possible, especially someone like him, who is used to having to do so much more. In fact, I'd imagine it'll be difficult for him to NOT have more involvement, because of that. And even though Horn said he's "very, very involved," that could be true-but it's just not all that much work at this time...

Either way, I am glad that he's consulting on a creative/story level. That's the part that is most important to me that remains consistent with the SW saga/universe.

George Lucas "99 problems and having 4 billion dollars ain't one"

He gave away half of that money.

He says he's not doing much... He said he handed off the "treatments and all the material he had" to let others write the script, so he's not really collaborating.
And "treatments and all the other material" is fairly ambiguous, how many treatments did he write? He never wrote all the treatments for the prequels at the same time. And he used to refer as "treatments" to a bunch of notes about the backstory for the prequels, when in fact it was just unorganized information.

No, this is wish-thinking. He said he had treatments on 7, 8, and 9 and that he and Kathy had a plan for 7, 8 and 9 which is the end of the trilogy. No where did he ever say that he was collaborating on the script, while both he and Kathy stated that his job was to answer questions. Jeesh, it's amazing what people read into things.

IIRC, Kennedy talked about "we," indicating Lucas and herself, were "sitting down with a couple of writers" for the script. So I don't see how that's wish-thinking.

Sad to hear it, really. However it does make me interested in what we'll get in the ST.

Makes me wonder if Lucas' decision was partly because he got sick to death of people moaning on about the prequels constantly and he just thought "screw it".

But, does "we" refer to her and Lucas or her and other involved parties at LFL. They don't make that clear.

Do you guys think the treatments Lucas handed off are dusted off old material from bygone days or something he wrote recently?

I personally think a little bit of both, with the majority of it being new material, likely hammered out within the last year or so. The mythical ST was never really as fleshed out in Lucas' head as the PT was. I think the last year was truly the first time Lucas would have actually sat down and thought "What would have happened after ROTJ?".