Originally posted by: zombie84
What Star Wars meant before it got out of control as a franchise has been lost. It could have been just a classic piece of cinema, a timeless fairy tale in the vein of Wizard of Oz that stands as a flawless family classic and a monumental piece of American cinema that changed the course of history and imprinted itself firmly on the pop culture of its time.

I don't think it's been totally lost- SW '77 is still the only film in the AFI's top 100 movies of all time (it even moved up a few spots in the most recent list) and SW is still the only one of the films to have been nominated for best picture, although I've always felt that ESB got cheated because it was a sequel, to me it was good enough on it's own to have been nominated for best pic. Times have changed though, I think if Empire were made today, it would have been nominated and may have even won. The academy seems to look differently upon sequels now, with one of the LOTR movies winning best pic a few years back, and I think the OOT did a lot to change those perceptions about sequels.

I do think the PT has brought down the franchise to an extent, but I think it only has limited power to damage the OOT and SW '77 in particular. The OOT is just too damn good.