Spielberg says Lucas never gave him the opportunity for any Star Wars, though he's been interested. I don't think his directing style would bring anything to the saga; he's never made a film set off Earth or outside regular human history. Kershner and Marquand were on the set with the actors because Lucas couldn't be there, then - he was dealing with the big producing picture, writing, running his new empire. They both had heavy instruction from him about what the films are about, and what they are supposed to achieve. Not every director can do that, deal with a heavy producing hand. Indiana Jones, Lucas and Spielberg were absolutely 50-50. Star Wars, SS wouldn't even be given the whole picture and have to ask Lucas continuous questions, like Marquand did.
The other two finalists for the ROTJ job were David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Lynch dropped out, said he couldn't deal with so many instructions.
How can you say SS would make a bad director for star wars, I think he would have done a very good job directing. He would have known which scenes were very important and which scenes needed more dialogue.
Originally posted by El_NINO
How can you say SS would make a bad director for star wars, I think he would have done a very good job directing. He would have known which scenes were very important and which scenes needed more dialogue.
I'm saying his style isn't compatable with the style Lucas had established with the first film, onward. The panavision frames composed with Kurosawa-like statleness, the constant-crosscutting between multiple characters and plots - his style is to follow one character or a small group in one place at a time.
Interestingly, with ROTS, the rerelease of THX-1138 and thinking back to American Graffiti, Lucas has shown to be less sentimental and more prone to ambiguous, harsh realities than Spielberg - who's films, no matter what hell the charcters go through, almost always end happily. How could he direct Anakin to cause the death of his wife and the Jedi order? Evil isn't supposed to win!