Both of you make fair points, but the OT also had an entire generation of existing alone (at least as far as movies are concerned) to “stand on its own.” If the ST was made immediately after the OT (which I believe was the plan at one point), things would be very different. But because an entire generation went by (16 years for the PT and 32 years for the ST), both of the latter trilogies had to in some way or another metaphorically “respond” to the pop culture influence of the OT. I’m in the minority in that I don’t think the OT is as “holy” as most people do, but I’ll stop trying to push that argument because, frankly, I forgot that I was posting on a forum called originaltrilogy.com