Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
By that rationale, we didn't even need ROTS.
By that rationale, all we -really- needed was ROTJ. After all they touch on the fact that there was a first Death Star by saying the one in ROTJ was the 2nd Death Star. They go over why Anakin fell to the dark side on Dagobah, and even recap why Luke was kept in the dark about Anakin.
I guess perhaps the divide here is between people who can't get enough Star Wars, and people who only want as much of it as is absolutely necessary.
A lot of your questions equate to "Who cares"?
Well -I- care.
By that rationale, we didn't even need ROTS.
By that rationale, all we -really- needed was ROTJ. After all they touch on the fact that there was a first Death Star by saying the one in ROTJ was the 2nd Death Star. They go over why Anakin fell to the dark side on Dagobah, and even recap why Luke was kept in the dark about Anakin.
I guess perhaps the divide here is between people who can't get enough Star Wars, and people who only want as much of it as is absolutely necessary.
A lot of your questions equate to "Who cares"?
Well -I- care.
ROTJ seems like the only "needed" film because you are looking at with the pre-conceived Tragedy of Darth Vader "Saga" mindset. The PT were built to support this so once you strip those away, ROTJ hence becomes useless in that regard, and because ESB is part 1 of 2 it becomes unneeded as well. Hence, all you need is Star Wars. And yeah--the back story was not necessary. Star Wars became the biggest hit ever made in 1977 without that story, and as Lucas has admitted on many, many occassions--"the back story was never meant to be a movie." But it certainly had the potential to make a good one.
I think the divide, as you have indicated is indeed between two groups of fans--one group who just wanted more Star Wars films, who love the PT, and the other group who wanted more Star Wars films but only if they were good, and these people love the OOT but hate--or tolerate/sorta-enjoy-parts-of--the PT. The PT as a whole was just a badly written series but with a lot of really good moments sprinkled about. ROTS fares much better because it is constructed the way a dramatic film should be--which is unsurprising given that Lucas has admitted that the actual story only begins in ROTS.