rcb said:... The main point of both movies was to just meet the characters who will be in the next two films of the OT and PT... Han and Leia/Anakin and Padme. Only difference is the acting... i'm sure there's more we can contribute here.
I have to agree...
The main point of SW77 is not to meet the characters who will be in the next two films... as you're no doubt aware, Luca$h wasn't even sure there would be any more films, so SW77 was written as a story that could stand alone... conversely, the only point of the entire PT was to meet the characters we followed in the OT...
The second point I've picked out is your idea that the only difference between the Han & Leia and Anakin & Padme romances was the quality of the acting... while I may agree that it was one of the differences, it is by no means the only one... right from the get-go, we're required to believe that she's interested in someone she first met as a little boy (I mean, at least Luke & Leia didn't know they were brother & sister before they snogged, which is the ickiest moment of that kind in the OT)... she somehow, for reasons not made clear in the film, can look past the fact that Lil' Orphan Annie is a whining pain in the ass, not to mention that he seems okay with genocide as a panacea for grief... add to that not just poor acting but also poor writing, design, direction, editing, etc. and you've got enough reasons right there as to why AOTC and ESB are on completely different levels...
Lastly, you've managed, possibly inadvertantly, to explain why the PT was so superfluous... it's basically a bad rehash of the OT that only exists to set up the OT in the first place... which it didn't even need...
Congratulations! ;D