You know how folks say we should never have put man on the moon, because that’s the bar that everything gets judged against? Well it’s the the same with Star Wars because we had The Empire Strikes Back. If not for Empire we might find Ewoks and Midichlorians and ‘Greedo shot first’ and the conga-line of cantinas/Death Stars much easier to bear.
Probably. SW '77 on its own is essentially a live-action version of an animated Disney classic — impressive on a technical level, with likable characters, but there’s not much substance to it. All the non-TESB spinoffs are equivalent to the direct-to-video sequels — mediocre-to-poor, but easily ignorable.