The Star Wars fans are just not as comfortable as the Trekkies with having loose canon on their dreck.
Personally I think Lucas, hence forth known as the man who sold out my childhood, will definitely make more SW films. Have you seen some of the bonus features on the prequel DVD’s (I don’t even like the films and I somehow I still own them) of him residing over Skywalker Ranch? He gets such a power trip from being the only authority on whether Yoda has green or red blood… it’s green btw. Every minor detail gets run by him, and his decision doesn’t even have to make sense beyond a 5 year-old’s understanding of the world, which might explain why the new movies suck so hardily.
What I would like to see is episodes 7,8,9 five or ten years from now based on the “Heir to the Empire” Zhan Trilogy, or at least written by someone other than the flannelled-one, done in photo-real CG. Say what you will about the Final Fantasy movie, it was mighty purty, 10 years from now CG is going to be damn near indistinguishable from real people I suspect. Someone get Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher to a 3D laser imager STAT before age (or drugs in Carrie’s case) takes any more of a toll.
What’s his motivation? Isn’t he already, like, a billionaire?
I guess some people can never make too many action figures and themed lunch boxes.
Ego. SW occupies a unique place because a trio of mediocre moves have achieved such a prominent place in Americana. Objectively, they first 3 were good movies. Not great, but good escapest fare. The true appeal of SW is that most, although certainly not all, hardcore SW fans saw them when they were 10-16 years old and they benefit from exploiting the childlike wonder that we all had at that age, heavily tinted by being viewed through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia. That makes Lucas the curator of the teenage fantasies of a signifigant portion of an entire generation of Americans, and that’s a heavy ego trip. Sadly, he can’t seem to replicate that magic for an older generation, but I doubt he’ll stop trying.
Eh, as it is, Harrison Ford’s not all that difficult to distinguish from real people. I doubt computers could help that much 
I agree, but I think they were even more than that. Some movie buffs consider Star Wars and Jaws the two films that heralded a new era in filmmaking: the big budget Blockbuster. Star Wars and Jaws didn’t have big budgets themselves, but after the money they raked in their predecessors surely did.
Other than that, Lucas actually had decent source material to rip off when he made those films. Just like the Matrix today is a highly polished amalgamate of Japanese Manga, Platonic philosophy, and noir thrillers, Star Wars drew it’s story from Joseph Campbell’s theories of mythology (the hero’s quest and the battle of good and evil), Buddhist or Pantheist spirituality (the force), spaghetti westerns (Han Solo and the bounty hunters), medieval samurai (Jedi Knights), and a director who didn’t suck, Akira Kurosawa (everything else in the movie), and it all blended together into a really captivating film.
The Prequels are schlock with glowing swords. They are just wince- inducing bad. It’s gotten the point where I left the theater of the second film pleased that it didn’t totally suck ass.
Odd. I remember seeing it as designated “Episode IV” here in 1977 at its initial release.
Actually, you don’t. This has been covered extensively here and on Lucas’ website, I’ll leave it to someone more into SW than I to post a link. “Episode IV” was added in…1981, IIRC.
I would definitely appreciate seeing that cite, Weirddave.
On the other hand, I’ve just found what i was looking for, here.
There were only two times I saw Star Wars (Ep. IV) in theatres here – in 1977, and watching a scratchy, worn out copy in the university drama room in 1982. That must have been from 1980 or so, and showed the new caption version.
To defend Lucas a bit, at least while he’s milking our childhoods for more moolah, he’s putting that moolah back into the movie industry, to make better films for the rest of us. Industrial Light and Magic, Skywalker Sound, THX, digital projection – we get these goodies precisely because we make George rich, and he enriches us back.
That said, I still think the prequels bite. 
You’d have to be a complete masochist to clamor for 3 more movies of this wooden, CGI-vomit dreck.
I for one am glad that the Pop Culture Non-Event Of The Century (the Star Wars prequels) are almost over and done with. Like almost everyone else who holds nostalgia for childhood (and the memories of begging my mom to take me to see Empire and Jedi over and over again) I got fairly excited when Episode 1 neared release.
And, like a lot of people, I felt utterly ripped-off. Though I’m one of the few people you’ll meet who thinks that Phantom Menace was actually a bit better than Attack Of The Clones, a movie I thought was utterly wretched in its stupidly Byzantine storyline.
I’ll bite for Episode 3, though; having started watching, I’ve got to finish…besides, some part of me enjoys reveling in these badly constructed and poorly performed misfires that never seem to rise above the level of pimply-faced fan fiction, the kind of thing that Star Wars fanatics make polite comments about but can’t quite force themselves to like.
The only way I can see the Star Wars franchise going on with any kind of credibility is if they go for pure animation…80 percent of the prequels are CGI anyway, so why not just dump the living breathing actors and make it pure CGI?
So George has a hankering to write a space opera, a modern myth. He writes up a little plot involving knights and princesses and heroes and dragons, but sets it in space so he can have whizzy space battles and laser gun duels.
He has a great middle act, but his first act ain’t so hot, and he’s not entirely sure how it will end.
he toys around a little bit until he gets something he likes, moulding the middle act into a two hour adventure, but including hints of what came before, and what is yet to come. In his wildest dreams, he hopes he may get to tell those additional stories one day, but doesn’t count his chickens just yet.
Movie gets made, is the biggest phenomena in cinema history, Lucas is suddenly confronted with all his wildest dreams becoming possible.
He decides that he’ll make the sequels, and one day maybe the prequels, and hell, why not a further adventure series afterwards that continues it on? Well, one reason why not is he hasn’t got any plot idea, but hey, maybe he’ll figure that out in time.
Halfway through the first sequel, he realises that he isn’t ever going to make any kind of third series, he may never make the origin trilogy, but he decides to number them like that anyway just in case…
The next sequel gets made, and the idea of further Star Wars movies is no longer as appealing as it once was. Forget any more sequels, lets end it all pretty squarely with this one. If he ever gets to making prequels, let it be a decade or more from now, when he can be bothered, and when he can make cooler monsters. He did number the movies as 4, 5, 6, so it’s kind of left hanging a bit…
You have just read the most likely way it happened. He isn’t really into making cash-cows, he just wants to be succesful as a moviemaker (as does anyone) and the magic that was the original Star Wars was something too good to let go of, not to mention he felt that his story was worth telling - which the fans seemed to agree on.
Unfortunately, he pretty much ballsed it up a bit, but he probably doesn’t care, and the fans who seem to take it so personally really have to lighten up a bit.
Yeah, but he ain’t like, yet a trillionaire already, is he?