[Borges]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Lucas is the weakest of those mentioned. He's more of a special effects and production impresario then a director. Star Wars was a mix of Kurosawa, Tolkien, Arthurian Legends and Flash Gordon all reduced to anodyne cinematic wall paper. Though I've long realized that arguing with SW fanboys is a lost cause. :-) As a director Lucas has yet to top THX 1138 (shopworn as those ideas were even then). What is Coppola's 'view of the world'? If there's any constant in his work its nostalgic wistfulness and the primacy of family. What's wrong with that? Spielberg is a genius of pure film making. And his subjects and themes...WW2, the innocence of childhood, missing father figures...have been clear over the years. No one in the last 40 years or so has been able to capture the epiphanies of childhood with the magic that he has.