Marcia Lucas in fact won an Oscar for her film editing of Star Wars. George Lucas was up for two that year and won neither (he was beaten out by Woody Allen for both of them). He has still not won a competitive Oscar.
George Lucas REALLY wanted to impress Spielberg, Coppola, et al, but the first time he showed them Star Wars they laughed him out of their little boys’ club. He then gave it to his ex-wife to edit, and she is the only reason it became a hit.
She did not work on the prequels. Take it as you will.
When they were shooting Empire Lucas kept tinkering and screwing up the story, they wound up shooting super narrow coverage so Lucas couldn’t fuck it up in the edit.
That's what Good editing does. The other thing which they have menrioned repeatedly is how important John Williams' score was in pulling everything together and creating gravitas.
Yes but it was saved by George Lucas, who fired the original editor for doing a bad job, then hired three editors to work with him to fix the movie. One of these was his talented wife.
The entire “Death Star approaching Yavin 4 to blow the rebels up” was created wholecloth in editing to add needed tension to the attack on the Death Star. They reuse the same “pull the lever to fire” shot both times they attempt to fire the Death Star laser.
To be fair, Marcia Lucas worked on the original edit of the film (the one everyone hated). It was completely reworked when the studio brought in Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew.
Here's an early trailer for it without the Williams score and with terrible pacing/editing and it feels like it's going to be the most terrible SF slog ever - www.youtube.com/watch?v=onik...
