auximenies said:

I have always said I was the ideal age when Star Wars was released -- 5 years old --

...after reading Anchorhead's story, I'm not so sure any longer that I was the ideal age.

I think everyone was the perfect age. It was a serious film with some deeper issues alright, but there was still something for everyone. Older generations had a military\government\war story, my generation had a dishonest smuggler who traveled by space ship and the hero who rescued the girl, and the little kids had robots & Chewbacca.
Adults had actors from their generation (Guinness & Cushing), boys had Luke & Han, and girls had a smart, strong-willed princess.
And for everyone in the theater - special effects that made us feel as though we were actually there.

Star Wars was a perfect storm between honesty and innocence. The honesty was George’s passion for his film and his script - the innocence was the 1977 public. George cared deeply for his idea\story\movie – and we had never seen anything like it. We went in as blank canvases, ready to go on an adventure - while George made a movie he had always dreamed of making. A movie that took us on that adventure.

For George, as soon as he decided to commission two other people to come up with stories for a second film, he lost his honesty. Whatever the story was going to be, it wasn’t going to be passion-driven & penned by George, the way Star Wars had been. It was going to be sequel-driven and penned by other people. It couldn’t be as honest. That doesn’t mean the second story would automatically be bad, and in fact, it wasn’t. But the honesty was somewhat lost. Profit margin, copyrights, contracts, and merchandise tie-ins now had a say in the finished film. Han being frozen is a perfect example of how reality was steering the story – not passion. That’s the kind of loss-of-honesty I’m talking about.

For the public, since we’d been exposed to the story, the characters, the endlessness of outer space, other planets, and the awesome special effects - we now had expectations to go along with that lost innocence. We’d been on the adventure, rescued the princess, defeated the bad guys, and returned home safely to dream about it over & over. We weren’t emotionally innocent anymore.

The second time you fall in love – it doesn’t move you the way the first time did. That’s why people always remember their first love – it changes you forever.

Star Wars took the world by storm because that's exactly what it didn't set out to do. It was created with the idea of film first, franchise second. Once that changed, so did the quality of the story.