You can't take the sky from me . . .

It's kind of the same as Firefly, where people all over bonded because of their love of a show that was unjustly cancelled long before its time. Having something important taken away only serves to underscore why you need it in the first place, even if you hadn't given it much thought before. And sharing that enthusiasm can be a sort of bond you'd never discover otherwise.

I came here for the same reason a lot of others did. I used to prefer the '97 SE's, and found the prequels to be at least acceptable to some degree, but once it really sunk in how far Lucas' disdain for the original movies actually went, and that the butchered 2004 versions were meant to replace all others, suddenly the 'real' movies took on a whole new level of importance as I rediscovered them. The quest for high quality preservations also triggered an interest in the technical aspects of movies, which I probably wouldn't have thought much about otherwise.

So really, I owe quite a lot to the existence of this forum and the people who make it what it is. It would be easier to just not care and buy into the party line, but ultimately I find it rewarding to reject the revisionist crap that has piled up and just think about the context of Star Wars the way I did when I was young. Thank goodness there are others who feel the same way.