"For whoever doesn't know, one woman was essential in the making of the original trilogy: Marcia Lucas. She fixed A New Hope in the cutting room, remaking the whole movie and saving what was considered to be a sure flop."
That's a classic feminist myth. Marcia Lucas only worked on the Battle of Yavin scene. Her contribution was to add the element of the Death Star approaching the moon that the Rebel base was on in order to blow it up, which she did by adding insert shots and voice overs. The person who did the bulk of the editing was Paul Hirsch.
"She got the Oscar because of it."
I guess you didn't notice the other two people on the editing team who won the same Oscar:
Winner
Oscar
Best Film Editing
Paul Hirsch
Marcia Lucas
Richard Chew
Additionally, Gary Kurtz had a lot of input that resulted in George Lucas' dumber ideas being discarded and replaced with better ideas.
"And probably the prequels would have been a lot better if she would have been still there:"
No. What the prequels needed was Gary Kurtz and Paul Hirsch.
By the way, all movies are "fixed" in the cutting room. Without editing, all you have is a disjointed collection of outtakes. The reason this "saved in the cutting room" story is so popular for Star Wars is because the first editor that Lucas hired did a particularly bad job of it, and no one had to tell Lucas it was bad either. He was the one who fired the first editor and hired Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew. Marcia just sort of tagged along because she was an editor and his wife. Another reason for the popularity is the feminist angle, to the point that the story has morphed into giving Marcia Lucas sole credit, even though she wasn't the primary editor.
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