A missed opportunity. Like I said in another post, it was a chance to give my generation a Star Wars of their very own. They did not succeed at all.
The best they did was present a junk pile of poorly related effects shots and undeveloped characters. No sympathetic main cast, no nefarious villain just a series of characters, droids and aliens bundled onto the screen so that Lucas would be able to make action figures of these nothing personalities and...wait, we're not supposed to flame so I'll cut myself off here.