Joe Tracy, Publisher of Digital Media FX Magazine has a new article on the visionary style of Star Wars. Its a well-written piece, and here's a few paragraphs from near the end to get you excited to read the rest:

So what went wrong with The Phantom Menace? How is it that one of the greatest sci-fi visionaries of all time could ruin the first part of the new trilogy? It's not like his vision had completely vanished; there are great moments in The Phantom Menace. In fact, the first 10 minutes of the movie was well written, executed, and showed signs of that great visionary who did the original trilogy. The worlds created were awesome and inspiring.

As a great visionary, Lucas may have suffered from taking on too much responsibility in an attempt to control all aspects of the production. And, frankly, it's his right to do so since it is his story. But I've noticed that the best work from Lucas seems to come when he has help with the script and other areas that he can staff with other visionaries. In fact, Lucas seems to have done more delegating for Episode II, which allows him to focus more on his strengths and leaves me with A New Hope that we may yet see that vision played out in Episode II and Episode III. I'm ready to see the Return of the Jedi visionary and I hold high hopes that Lucas won't be a continuing Phantom Menace to die hard Star Wars fans.

I'm not holding my hopes too high, though, as there still are signs of trouble (i.e. the name of Episode II - Attack of the Clones) and the fact that Jar-Jar will still be given a few minutes of (hopefully mute) screen time. Then there was the whole controversy of N'Sync appearing in Episode II until Lucas heard the cries from fans and promptly announced they had been removed from their non singing background Jedi roles.

It's important to remember that visionary stories avoid typical movie humor related to things like farts and characters stepping in poop. Lucas never had to rely on this type of bathroom humor in his original trilogy. He didn't have to try to force humor through the use of annoying characters or The Three Stooges tricks (i.e. running into objects). Visionary stories are original, relying on new ideas and techniques to grab and hold the interest of the audience.

Visionary stories also have a strong sense of strategy. This is apparent in some scenes of The Phantom Menace involving the ground fighting. However, the space attacks in The Phantom Menace are another story. A refresher course may be in order for Lucas from a great visionary in space strategies - Babylon 5's J. Michael Straczynski. Just watch his recent Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers movie to see how strategy (versus luck) is used to defeat the enemy. Of course, Lucas doesn't really need to rely on the Straczynski for his space battles because he has shown us his own great strategies in the original trilogy.

Most important, however, is the following: Make us care about the characters.