CT Is Lawrence Kasdan contribution to Episode 5 (& 6) overrated ?

I agree with this. However, Lucas is capable of writing great dialogue as well, it's just not his strongest suit.
(And let's not forget that a lot of the "brilliant" dialogue from Empire was in fact changed on set, and not writen by Kasdan).

I'm not thinking about disagreements, but they way the structure of the story changed because of the story conferences. The early scripts by Lucas were quite different in many substantial ways: Leia went on a solo mission to Endor, Han's rescue wasn't an independent first act, Vader was much more of an anti-hero, Moff Jerjerrod had a prominent role, Luke didn't go back to Dagobah, there was Had Abbadon (the capital of the Empire), two Death Stars....
The ELEMENTS of the story (Jabba, The Emperor, the Ewoks) didn't change, but the structure of the story changed radically after the conferences with Kasdan (therefore, he must've had an influence on that). In fact, Lucas had to write a very basic summary/list of scenes after the conferences were over, because the new script by Kasdan would be very different from the early scripts by Lucas.

With Empire, Lucas' second draft was already close to the final script except for the actual dialogue of the scenes. The story conferences with Kasdan and Kershner didn't have any impact on the strucure of the story.

 

It seems like you just want to drag Kasdan's name through the mud. I'm sorry I'm not praising Lucas as much as you'd like, but Lucas is better at structure and Kasdan is better at dialogue and characters. That doesn't mean the other party is terrible at them, just that that is the reason why their collaborations are so good.

 

I don't want to do anything of the sort, nor do I particularly care how much you praise Lucas. I'm just giving my opinion and regarding what you said. Again, I basically agree with what you say about their collaboration.

 

If by "collaboration" you mean Lucas the vast majority and Kasdan a minor but measurable part then that works. I wouldn't apply it to characters though since those are Lucas'. Kasdan's latter work in Solo indicates his abilities to do this in Star Wars without Lucas are not great.

Dialogue is and should be such a minor part of a Star Wars movie that having writers who depend on it to tell their story probably shouldn't get into doing one in the first place.

 

Dialogue is what makes a character fully-rounded. Everything a character says and how they say it informs the audience about that character. Now, that's not to say that a character who speaks very little can't still be excellently written and performed, but what little the character says should still say a lot about them. To say that dialogue is a minor part of a Star Wars movie just means you've heard George Lucas refer to his movies as silent films one too many times. That's a crutch he depends on for the PT. He hopes you won't listen to his characters because you'll hear them say things like, "I wish I could just wish away my feelings."

 

Yes. I meant it earlier.

By the way, it is customary to give mixed ROTJ to Lucas alone. And great TESB to anyone but him.

Great ROTLA this "teamwork". Mixed KOTCS this Lucas alone. Although in both cases it was a team effort. And in both cases, Lucas occupied the same writing and production functions. And Spielberg directed both films.