Bingowings said:

danny_boy said: Why didn't you bash him in 1981 when he appended the Episode IV title onto Star wars for that year's re-release?

Believe it or not some people did but I guess the bulk of us were pumped by the prospect of ten more episodes as good and maybe better than The Empire Strikes Back.

The first time I ever saw SW was back to back with Empire in April 81'---and whilst I don't remember the content of the crawl I do remember seeing the crawl!------and this is the point----the advent of home video from the early 1980's onwards has allowed an entire generation to analyse every frame of a movie like SW to the point of saturation.

SW was never designed to be seen that many times----Lucas even says as much in the DVD commentary------the prequels on the other hand---being made in an era where home video was firmly established have been created with the "pause,slo-mo and rewind" generation in mind---hence why every frame is densily packed with visual info.