Originally posted by: GoodMusician
well, I do have to say this:

The films were made for kids... they were made with them in mind... purposefully...

We just happen to see in the films what we wish to see in the films...

If I may be so bold, to look at the films through the lens of "Empire" is... well... nearsighted...

I can understand loving Empire... I can even understanding wanting to up the others to its level... but by looking at the other films through that sort of stigma, you will loose a great deal of wealth and depth available within the films.

.

The films were not made for kids, they were made for teenagers, and that is a huge difference. SW in 1976 was being advertised heavily at Comic-Con, which is where all the teenage and adult Sci-Fi geeks were all at, and could be targeted.

Lucas had no idea 5 year old kids like myself would love SW in 1977, or else there would have been action figures ready that Christmas. The big fallacy is that SW was made for kids, and that just isn't true. After Lucas realized there were a whole market of kids under the age of 10 who will see the movie AND buy the action figures, halloween costumes, etc, he realized that he couldn't go after the niche comic-con geeks anymore, he had to broaden the movie.

That is why ROTJ, and in someways the PT movies seem to hit every age group. You go from the cute, cuddly Ewoks in one scene, to the Luke/Emperor/Vader scene which is are way different in who they are maketed to. In TPM, you have Jar Jar Binks frolicking around the whole movie, yet you have a large part of the movie on Coruscant that deals with the Politics of the Galaxy which is more like watching C-Span.

Lucas just gave into what is going on in movies today: The dumbing down of these types of movies to get a wider audience, and it works. Look at all the summer blockbusters: Transformers, Pirates 3, Spiderman 3, all entertaining movies, but none will be remembered 20 years from now as compared to a SW movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Jaws, and the reason is those movie did not try to cater to kids, kids like myself latched on because they were more adult, and even though I probably didn't understand alot of stuff in the movie, it was cool to feel older for 2 hours, now it is the opposite.