He became too reliant on FX and lost his ability to get good performancens out of his actors.
Did he ever really have this? For all the nostalgia, Star Wars had pretty terrible lines (Harrison Ford once said ""George, you can type this crap, but you sure as hell can't say it."). Empire Strikes back was directed by Irvin Kershner and Jedi was directed by some other guy (name escapes me at the moment).
Agree with the rest of your post, though. I deliberately avoided watching Indy 4 for a long time because I knew it was going to be terrible, and it was
Watching a new Lucas movie because of his 80's cred is like playing Rage because Doom 2 was so awesome.
