what would george lucas's version have been like

Interesting question.

My guess

1) Less atmospheric

2) Shorter, more to the point

3) Better action sequences

4) Poorer dialogue

5) Different leads

Don't ask me how Star Wars would have turned out if FFC directed them, my head will explode.

these two trivas from imdb shed some light

Harrison Ford's character is named "Colonel G. Lucas", a nod to George Lucas. Lucas, of course, directed Ford in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), in which his character, Han Solo, was modelled after Francis Ford Coppola. The last film in that trilogy, Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) also featured Ian McDiarmid, who appeared in the television movie Heart of Darkness (1993).The climax of the film was also modelled after Lucas' original concept for the ending of this film.

Apocalypse Now - originally scheduled for 1976) was finally released in North America in August 1979. It was beaten to theaters (by less than two weeks) by More American Graffiti, the sequel to American Graffiti, directed by George Lucas and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. While a failure with critics, More American Graffiti was praised for its Vietnam sequences, which were shot on a low budget in California. Lucas was the executive producer on the movie, and helped photograph and edit the Vietnam scenes. Shot on 16mm stock, the sequence is meant to resemble a documentary. Lucas has said that his vision for Apocalypse Now would have been done in a similar guerrilla filmmaking documentary style.

What ever it would have been, it would be CGI'ed today.

he would have added Jar Jar, a race car, a Death Star, a galaxy far far away don't be gay add Padmé

it would've been more of a cartoon than a gnarly war story..

.. with 15 sequels/prequels.

Well Apocalypse Now came out right when George Lucas was on fire so it probably wouldn't have been that bad, probably less mature and less ambiguous but I could see it being a good film. A lot of the deeper themes however would have probably been way oversimplified and the action probably would have been turned up a notch.

Now if Francis Ford Coppola directed Star Wars I would imagine the pace would have been much slower, there would have been more focus on the characters and their interactions, definitely a lot more symbolism (subtle symbolism while I'm at it), Episode VI probably would have been told in a way where as the story progresses and Luke evolves as a character we would probably continually find out more about Anakin (much like Michael and Vito in GF II, Willard and Kurtz in AN, Dracula and Mina in BSD, etc.) there probably would have been some pretty artsy scene transitions and the last act probably would have turned into an acid trip which is something Coppola seems to be fond of.

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