>>720608262
The success of star wars always haunted him. It was supposed to be a one-off to pay homage to the trashy scifi serials that inspired him as a kid. He was a film school art fag and an apprentice of the great film auteurs of the time. He saw the corpo people serving up popular slop as the enemy. He was young and energetic when he made star wars, so he ended up getting into a pissing contest with the corporate studio system in order to get his way. He actually managed to succeed and beat them.
But in the process, his public persona became the corpo slop auteur, turning him into the very thing he hated, and he worried about being perceived that way by his peers, who were actually appreciative and respected his work more than he did. This is also why he tried to make the sequels all deep and political.
He's also very sensitive, so all the criticism was mentally damaging. He reluctantly sold it because he was salty over the criticism, and in a last-ditch effort to escape the slop-auteur reputation he garnered. He was hoping that the money would let him make all the shitty art flicks he always wanted to make.