Wook, for what it's worth, I don't mind. I like organic branching.
However, watch as I seamlessly blend this off-topic tangent with a return to the discussion of Legacy:
My (now) 5-year-old has just seen the original, restored Star Wars for the first time. In a theater. He freaked the fuck out. It is now, predictably, all Star Wars, all the time, in the house.
Despite growing up in what is essentially a Star Wars museum, he's never really looked sideways at the models, costumes, props, posters, even the life-size R2 in the house. Asked a couple of questions, but that's it. He's never heard me talk about Star Wars (because I don't), he'd never seen a frame of the film, and he'd never heard a note of the music. He was not excited about this plan I had for his birthday, to take him to a theater, and he was not excited to "see Star Wars." Those were just words, to him. He even asked, "Do I have to?" to which I merely replied, "Trust me."
In his periphery are things much more sophisticated than Star Wars, visually. I do a lot of VFX work in the house, which he sees. We've done some shooting of short films together, where we shoot him and his toys over greenscreen and do effects far more convincing than were ever in that film. I sort of wondered if it wouldn't ruin the film for him; his eyes are much more attuned to vfx work than ours were in 1977. It doesn't matter to me if he likes Star Wars or not, but I was curious to see how the experiment turned out: would a child born in 2010, surrounded by more sophisticated visuals, who works GUIs on tablets effortlessly, who is not being swept up into fandom and enthusiasm and hysteria about the film; for whom Star Wars has no intrinsic value, and is surrounded by enough iconography to take it completely for granted, still be affected by the film?
40 years old or not, that film has something special to it. And for my son, suddenly the house he's grown up in has instantly become a billion times cooler. It's like he noticed the stormtrooper in the corner for the first time. He's asked me to turn on R2 and drive him around so he can play C-3PO, etc. He's listening to the music, he's having lightsaber fights. He's doing the dialogue, he's dressing up, he's asking questions, he wants to be a Jawa for Halloween.
Also, he saw a picture of the upcoming Star Wars stormtroopers, and asked with a frown, "What's wrong with those stormtroopers, Daddy?" "Everything." I told him, and kissed him for an hour. The Force is strong with this one.
_Mike