Why Star Wars Is Better Off Without George Lucas

While George Lucas has been expressing quiet pangs of regret after handing Star Wars over to Disney and J.J. Abrams, the rest of the nerd world has let out a sigh of relief. After the overwhelming success of The Force Awakens, Lucas' relinquishment of the beloved franchise has proven to be the best possible step for the films' legacy, especially for the sanity of its dedicated fans. Lucas came up with a universe that was just too big for one man to run. After the original trilogy was complete and was influencing pop culture on a large scale, the series was better off without him. Let's find out why Star Wars is in a better place far, far away from its creator.

George Lucas, despite being known as a director, has incredibly limited experience when it comes to actually directing movies. While he's an excellent producer, a solid businessman, a serviceable plot writer, and a responsible beard owner, that's the absolute limit of his expertise. Even though his IMDB page lists 18 directorial credits to his name, twelve of them are essentially student films. Of the remaining six films, only two fall before A New Hope. The remaining three, which pick up 22 years later, consist of Episodes I-III, and we all know how those turned out, because we're still barfing. We love you, George, but it's time to move on.

Lucas is a revisionist, and has a pathological need to revisit, time and again, the trio of movies that made him a household name, and edit them into oblivion. Understandably, he's a man obsessed with special effects and computers, because he founded the amazing Industrial Light & Magic effects company, and he wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't keep up with modern special effects, but like McCartney without Lennon, Lucas is a madman without a filter. If Star Wars is an ice cream sundae, Lucas' use of revised special effects is a reservoir of hot fudge the size of the Atlantic Ocean—it just doesn't work. An artist needs to know when to step away and put the brush down when the work is finished.

Granted, there aren't a whole lot of reasonable, attractive options when it comes to film transitions, but George Lucas was simply in love with the screen wipe, which is like the Comic Sans of the transition world. When used effectively, a wipe can be an amazing thing, seamlessly transitioning the viewer from one scene to another, but Lucas never seemed to know the difference, abruptly ending scenes and jamming them up the noses of other scenes with nothing more than a weird diagonal wipe to separate them. The viewer shouldn't always notice each scene transition, but George "Wipe Guy" Lucas didn't get the memo—and a different kind of wiping was needed after Episode I.

Over his lifetime, George Lucas came up with five or six really cool character names, and even then, everyone was either named after their personality, or just got a name that was blatantly stupid. Han Solo? A guy who flies solo. Luke Skywalker? A guy who wants to walk in the sky. Count Dooku? That just sounds like a toilet paper mascot, and don't get us started on Jar Jar Binks, Yarael Poof, Yaddle, Sio Bibble, and Elan Sleazebaggano. Star Wars is a universe made up of anagrams and puns, and that can only go so far before you cringe yourself so hard that you form a black hole.

Lucas deserves a break. He's made a bigger impact on the world than most politicians, and it's been overwhelmingly positive. It's time for him to lay back in Skywalker Ranch and do whatever he wants to do, whether he wants to write Star Wars fanfics, crochet scarves for kittens, or star focusing on Indiana Jones' future. When Lucas eventually passes away, he'll be remembered as the guy who created Star Wars, that awesome series with The Force Awakens, and not as the guy who crashed the franchise with The Phantom Menace. Go out on top, George!

When you have over five billion dollars to roll around in, you've got a bit of breathing room when it comes to living comfortably. It's those billions that allowed George to donk up the prequels, because he had nothing to lose. Maybe he felt like making a movie for his kids, which is obviously no way to treat a franchise worshiped by millions. Money doesn't create irresponsible fools, but it may have made Lucas a bit too comfortable and relaxed when it came to directing Anakin's younger years.

If there's any proof that Star Wars is better off without Lucas, just check out the box office numbers for The Force Awakens, which is now the best-performing film of all time, mathematically speaking. It's not just because it's Star Wars, because we've seen some pretty bad flops in the franchise; Attack of the Clones suffered pretty badly after the terrible reaction to The Phantom Menace, and it didn't even earn Shrek 2 numbers at the box office. George Lucas was an amazing architect for the Star Wars universe, but he's just not qualified to run the electrical and plumbing. You didn't see Frank Lloyd Wright hooking up the toilets at Fallingwater, so let's keep it that way.