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Aspects of it were, for sure, but they made magic and the writing had a lot to do with it.
Whoever wrote this wrote one of the most powerful, magical, inspirational monologues I had ever heard.
Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
Left to his own devices Lucas would have failed miserably, but for the first two films he had a LOT of help. And it showed.
He got a lot of help but I think post prequels there was a bit too much focus on downplaying Lucas role when ultimately he was the driving force of the original films.
The original he obviously wrote(albeit with plenty of advice) and directed it but with Empire I do think he deserves a lot of credit for changing what the film was. He had his original plan for Starwars which was much more standard heroic adventure, Luke learning the force, defeating grand moffs and then finally Vader and the Emperor but I think with Empire he shifted things significantly and instead besided to make a film about deconstructing the idea of heroism.
I think that shift was really what turned Starwars from a shorter term fad into something which lasted as Luke's story became something of real moral depth in Empire and Jedi. Its also why I feel people had a right to feel pretty agreived at The Last Jedi, not for the typical cultural war nonsense but that it misrepresented SW as this simplistic heroism it was now deconstructing in an inteligent fashion, in reality that had already happened with Empire(and indeed even in the original Leia is playing against the damsel role) and had done so very effectively. You had a film setting up a strawman then attempting to nick plot elements of Empire/Jedi and redo them but doing a far far worse job of it.