"If it's amazing, they'll know."
When talking about "George Lucas' vision" and the original six Star Wars films, there's one thing to bear in mind and that's Lucas' style of filmmaking.
These are movies for kids, designed to emulate the Saturday matinee serial format from the '30s, à la Flash Gordon. You see this most of all in the dialog. But something else you notice is George Lucas' filmmaking style, particularly in how he films and edits.
Take Darth Vader's introduction, for example.
Look at the composition: Vader stands tall, in contrast to the - as the script puts it - "fascist white armored suits of the Imperial stormtroopers". They're all in white, he's all in black, he's bigger badder, emerging from a cloud of smoke. What an entrance.
But if you think about it, it's just a single full shot. Very basic.
Compare this to Kenobi, wherein Vader is treated like a monster out of a horror movie. First, you glimpse his shadow, people reacting...
... then ominous bits and pieces like his boots or his lightsaber...
... and finally Vader himself, in all his terrifying glory.
That's a modern way of shooting it and it admittedly makes ol' Darth seem that much more imposing and absolutely badass.
But Lucas comes from a background of editing, experimental filmmaking and used to work as a documentary cameraman.
So what he did is just put the camera down and have Vader walk in. It's a faster yet differently-efficient way to introduce the character. It's more about dynamic pacing and visuals.
And that is Lucas' style. In his words:
"The way these films were put together, they're shot very much like a documentary film and the action of stage, and then I shoot around it. I don't stage for the camera. And as a result, there are a lot of things that happen pretty much by accident. It lends an aura of authenticity to everything."
- Star Wars - Episode I: Podracing Featurette, 1999
Another example: the introduction of General Grievous.
A door opens revealing his ugly mug and he walks in. Boom.
But in Star Wars Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, you find that - as envisioned by the storyboard artists - our introduction to Grievous would've been very different.
"We wanted to have the introduction to Grievous be a series of really close shots that would be a series of details: his creepy foot, his creepy hand...
... his scary alien eyes...
... but George brought up an interesting point. He didn't want the film to concentrate on one design detail or one element— but rather let the world be there and let the viewer find those things without necessarily having it shoved in their face."
- Derek Thompson, SW Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, 2013
"George nixed the idea, saying: 'I don't want something to be special because of how it's filmed, but because of what it is. Just put the camera on it and let it play out in front of the audience. If it's amazing, they'll know.'"
- Iain McCaig, SW Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, 2013
That's it in a nutshell. "If it's amazing, they'll know."
The above storyboards look awesome and seeing Grievous be introduced that way would be great... but it wouldn't be Lucas' Star Wars. It would be some other director taking a crack at it.
And this way of shooting can be weird, even boring, at times. I mean compare Mace leading his troops into battle...
... to Aragorn leading his, in Return of the King.
The latter is so much more emotionally impactful. For a number of reasons (eg: Aragorn is a deuteragonist, Mace is a secondary character with less development), but one of them is that the moment is just shot in a way that's more interesting.
First we have an angle on Aragorn as he smiles and charges. Then the rest of the other characters as they react and follow suit, then the troops do the same.
With Mace it's, uh, *checks notes* he flourishes his saber and charges, the clones follow. Hell, for half a second we're looking at just an empty screen.
But y'know what the shot does look like?
It looks like something out of a WW1 documentary.
It's that authenticity he was mentioning further up.
At the end of the day, you can call it campy or bad... it's Lucas' style. It's cinema. There's a logic to it.
"To me, the script is just a sketchbook, just a list of notes, and, sometimes, I prefer the documentary feel of free flow, so I let my instincts tell me where to go. I like to create cinematically; I don't like to have a plan. I like to have a rough idea of what I'm going to do-certain themes, certain issues I'm going to deal with-and then I try to do so."
- The Making of Revenge of The Sith, page 116, 2005
He doesn't try to make a character look particularly badass with camera angles or make the shot too choreographed, he just goes with the flow, and makes the deliberate choice to shoot it that way, because for better or for worse... it's his movie.
So yeah, just a tidbit I thought would be interesting.
@schilkeman added this very interesting point in the replies:
"He doesn’t stage for the camera, but he does compose for the camera. The documentary style, while somewhat detached, requires the filling of the screen with motion and light. The way things move through frame seem very important to him. These are things his films excel at."
