Baronlando, I totally agree.

Everytime Lucas tries to make SW too serious, its comes off as more ridiculous, IMO.

The great thing about SW 77-83 is that they were fun movies, yet they had a mix of drama, comedic moments, and good action. But the bottom line is they were FUN to watch over and over!!!! Baron is right, they shouldn't be compared to the Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, or Schindlers List, they aren't those type of movies. No one watches SW for the great academy award winning performances, you watched them because the actors played their roles and if you bought them in that role, it worked. Han was cool, Luke was the farmboy, Leia was spunky, and Obiwan was the old sage, and thats it.

Once Lucas turned the Trilogy/Saga (about midway through ROTJ) into Darth Vaders tragic story, that is when SW sort of lost me. Luckily it was just a subplot of ROTJ, so I still enjoyed the movie, but once the PT was going to be about the rise of fall of Darth Vader, to me that is too serious for the SW universe.

Lucas turned a bunch of well made fun movies into War and Peace, and now the 'Saga' is laughable, because you have too much cheese in what is supposed to be a serious story that Lucas was trying to accomplish.

Remember the reason we all fell in love with the OOT was they were fun, yet well made movies, nothing more, nothing less.