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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1937138" data-attributes="member: 13654">Original trilogy.  I read and enjoyed the Han Solo trilogy but no other SW ficiton.  The whole of Star Wars kind of skewed off into directions I had no interest in.  Even the original trilogy became harder and harder to really get into.  For example, I saw Star Wars IN THE THEATER perhaps 150 times.  I LOVED it.  Empire, I lost accurate count at around 60 but well under 100.  Jedi, only a few times in theaters and I found it VERY difficult to willingly accept it.  There was a great deal I just did NOT like about Jedi, having a lot to do with Ewoks and a perceived targetting of SMALL children as the audience for the franchise, not the audience who originally latched onto SW and then grew older.  But after a few years I suppose I made a certain peace with it.But the rest of it?  I ran the WEG SW RPG a few times.  A good time was had by all (I put a LOT of energy into those campaign sessions and it burned me out), but I found it difficult to decide where/when to place the campaign in association with the events of the movies.  The universe felt too tied to the events of the movies and the RPG material catered to the movies more than attempted to define a greater galaxy to run a campaign in.I read none of the novels beyond the Solo books.  They just didn't interest me, in part because I felt that they were NOT canon.  They were all just someone elses RPG speculation.And when the prequels finally came along... well it's difficult to put my disappointment into words.  Suffice to say that they were NOT the same SW as the original trilogy, much as they wanted to be.  There was none of the banter and adventurousness, it was somber, overcast for the viewer by knowledge of what was to come, and NOT well-plotted or paced.  II was better than I, which gives me hope for III - but I'm going into III expecting disappointment so that I can be pleasantly surprised, rather than going in expecting greatness so that I can be bitterly disappointed - again.SW was a great franchise that could have been Earth-shattering, but was instead sqandered by... lack of vision if you can believe it.  I still recall reading an interview with Lucas after SW first came out.  He was talking about how he was giving up a certain amount of control to others.  Something along the lines of, "I've put up the basic castle walls and now I'm going to let others draw in all the gargoyles and stuff."  At the time I thought that was a cool attitude.  Now I see it as biggest mistake he could have made.  SOMEBODY needed to maintain TOTAL creative control of the franchise and MOVE IT FORWARD, if it was indeed to be a worthwhile franchise.I'd liken it to Rick Berman having control of Star Trek.  Much as I have cried in the past that somebody ELSE needed to try to take Trek in a few new directions I have to give kudos to Paramount for understanding that you ultimately need to have ONE vision to follow and not allow it to be UNguided, or worse, guided by committee.  Same with their fascist/Nazi protection of the Trek intellectual property.  It may have been obnoxious at times but it DID keep the Trek universe in their full control, not to be muddied by casual licensing of the characters and settings.  If Lucas did not want to maintain a position of full creative control of all things Star Wars, then he should have chosen someone else and handed over all his notebooks and said, "Let it be YOUR vision that defines Star Wars from this point onward."I don't DISLIKE what Star Wars is, or has become, but I am rather disappointed in that it could have been so much better than a lot of it has been.  The soul of Star Wars was sold for the money from merchandising tie-ins.</blockquote>

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