The exact opposite is also true. And both examples of the worst of too much have been given to us by Disney. Too much restriction gave us TFA, while too much freedom gave us TLJ. I'm not sure where to put Rogue One and Solo in this since they're an odd bag. Kennedy demanded complete re-shoots for both films midway into production and in the second time around there was either more freedom or less freedom.
I agree George had way to much agreement in the creation of the prequels, and they are middling to terrible for me.
As for the new Star Wars it basically suffered from no one questioning any decisions that were made on an executive level. The producers didn't care what was produced because it was going to make them money regardless and so basically this meant that Kennedy had the greenlight to do whatever the hell she wanted.
At the same time you have Abrams dicking with the story, and while he is a decent director his writing skills have always been questionable at best. The reason he was likely brought on was because of the paint job that he did for the Star Trek franchise and the big whigs at Disney wanted the same sort of thing.
So you have a director/writer and a main producer who wanted to create something new with the Star Wars universe, but without realizing that while you want to bring new characters in to the story and continue the universe, you have to do it in a way that is going to appease the fans of the series. Instead the first film was all flash and no bang with a terrible rehash of A New Hope, plot holes glaring through it, and it doesn't follow the Lucas formula which is recognizable to fans. Add in the new Socjus shit that Hollywood seems obsessed with at the moment, and you have a recipe for a beloved film franchise producing mediocrity.
The sad thing too is that the stories films are alright, and they could have been better, but again its a case of the Kennedy bringing on terrible staff and writers to head the project, and no one else putting their foot down on the side of the fans.
Sadly the way Disney views, or at least did until people stopped forking money over for their crap adaptations was this. Fans don't matter, because they are fans, you could serve them dog shit with a Star Wars logo on it, and they'd still buy it. Sadly I think that's been reflected in its approach to the EU and novels as well.
Lot to take in, but its interesting to see what Lucas used and what Lucas didn't in terms of the production for the films. It was made clear in the article though that he did as I suspected, and didn't have a grand over all scheme in place for which he was writing the prequel episodes, and as a result the story suffered from it when there were changes that needed to be made. Effectively the focus on Anakin in the 3rd film was the right direction to have taken, but again I feel that it was a missed opportunity where you had the opportunity to tell the story of Darth Vader and his fall from grace, and that wasn't effectively communicated over the course of the three films.
It would seem that Lucas only realistically settles on the denouement of this idea in the 3rd film, and by that time in terms of real character development it is lost.
As for the final article, while I agree that the film didn't need to build on the existing lore that had been set up for it in the previous films, it could have taken the point that the empire must rise, and Darth Vader with it, and made it more of a focal point for the story. Even if the consideration wasn't that things were going swimmingly for the republic and they literally were at the point of having to become a dictatorship or crumble, etc, it would have added more interest in the first 3 episodes, rather than waffling along with the first two and then making the magical decision to actually make some effort with the story.
You know, when Hux popped up in TLJ, I didn't even know that he was a character from TFA, cause he was such a lame and boring buffoon that I didn't even know he was supposed to be the dude that gave the speech in TFA.
A shame, I get the feeling the actor would be more than capable of delivering a really good performance if the script wasn't shit.
I always thought Darth Maul looked silly and I could not take him seriously as the villain, but killing him off made him even more of a joke.
The ST suffers from the same issue, amusingly, only to a much larger extend. The OT suffered from villains being replaced by some other dude that the viewer didn't care about. The ST now pretty much the same, only applied to pretty much every aspect of the movie.
Hux was a waste of a character. They basically made a clone of Tarkin and not a very good one, there is no character motivation, nor any development, if you wanted him to have any clout with the audience, then he needed to be just as seductive and powerful an enemy as his counterpart. Tarkin worked well, because he was just as powerful in terms of manipulation as Vader, but without relying on the raw strength.
I don't blame the actor for saying yes, it is a Star Wars film, the money from which alone can fund a lot of years working in lesser paying though more rewarding acting jobs. His best work to date has to be as the clone of himself in Black Mirror. Not a failing of the actor, it really it just a lame ass character, and might as well have been given to an extra.
Maul could have been good, but again suffers from the above. You cannot have a mustache twirling enemy without it coming across as unbelievable. All of the best baddies in any medium make you like them as much as hate them. Maul had no character aside from his super duper light sabre, and being the emperors lackey.
Agreed, with the originals it was General Grevious, Dooku, Maul, they all were essentially there to make toys, and without a proper introduction you couldn't really relate to them as characters.
Now in the new stuff you have Hux, Snopes, Phasma, and to a lesser extend Kylo Ren, no one gives a fuck about the characters because any sort of story arch that they might have had, has been lost when Rian Johnson shit the bed, and so now it was just a case of cookie cutter disposable characters, that you don't feel anything for when they win or lose, because they are irrelevant. At the same time people were genuinely upset with Luke's death, because they love the character and wanted to see something better done for it.
