LootHunter: 100% pure propaganda can't be coherent.
Sure it can, good propaganda has to be (and you should know this my Russian friend ;) ).
I have the result of the Brexit vote in my country to show how a well run coherent propaganda campaign can get the desired result, and that one was a good 10-15 years in the making!
kai2: A little OT but if you enjoy American Graffiti, please check out Big Wednesday by John Milius (Dir Conan, Writer Apocalypse Now). It's a somewhat forgotten coming-of-age movie set in Southern California around the same time and IMHO very close to the same level as Lucas' film. Milius, Lucas, and Coppola were all quite close friends... in fact Lucas was originally supposed to direct Apocalypse Now.
Big Wednesday is one of my top ten films of all time (i grew up in the 'west-country' and surf) and on balance i find it a stronger film for character development and filmography vs American Graffiti.
The idea of Lucas (old pre-darkside fallen Lucas!) doing Apocalypse Now is interesting. Coppola made that an amazing film, and i'm not sure what it would have been with Lucas doing it?
StingingVelvet: There's so much potential there, it really is a shame. It will go down as a glaring example of the need to plan a series and have creative voices that are on the same page.
Though they're all relatively huge hits at the box office, so who knows if Disney will learn anything or replace Kennedy. We can only hope.
The money aspect is a big problem (and i discussed this with a friend over xmas as we re-watched the originals), and why i claim that Star Wars is dead (in terms of what Star Wars was in the original trilogy), as you just can't have an opportunity to 'save' it in the current climate of Disney's financial success with it.
Mafwek: Since you focus on film-making aspect, and I skipped TLJ and RotS (as well as spin-offs) which one would you say is the weakest from that perspective? I found TFA to be mediocre at best, but as I understand RotS is the weakest one by far. TLJ is controversial one, because from the reviews of friends and critics I heard its actually good in its film-making skill (even if the plot is complete fucking mess).
I have not seen the latest film yet (i got my info about it from the RLM review i linked earlier) but i own TFA on DVD (out of interest to see how JJ could mess it up in different ways compared to Lucas with the prequels!), and have seen the others at friends with less discerning Star Wars tastes than my own ;) Solo i have not seen. I do own (to my shame) all the prequels on DVD.
Honestly from my perspective they (New Star Wars) are all 'bad films'; all have terrible scripts with no seemingly clear direction to guide them, all have plots so clumsily driven as to be near incomprehensible, all use pace and special effects bling to (try to) gloss over the core weaknesses of the films (being able to tell interesting stories via interesting characters).
If i had to pick one (like on pain-of-death or something), i might go for the first one (TFA), just because at that point the less overall damage to 'Star Wars' had been done, and it was just a 130 mins of potential damage during it. As a Star Wars fan (that wants to see good Star Wars films) that is important to me.
As an aside i just finished watching the original trilogy over the xmas period, it's kind of a family tradition, and i also have access to the original release films (not the enhanced versions where Greedo shoots at Han first etc) so we could enjoy them at their best.
I also watched the last prequel just to remind me of how bad the chemistry was between two of the prequels main characters (Anakin and Amidala) and just how poor the 'best' of the prequels really is vs the original trilogy. It did not disappoint.