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Originally Posted by rcentros
Agree on all points. The irony is that they started writing the fantasy and SF trilogies (and now now the "forever-ilogies") based on the success of the three part LOTR (which, as you say, wasn't a trilogy at all). I don't know if it's true or not, but I've read that the reason The Lord of the Rings came in three parts is because Unwin & Allen thought it was going to flop and they wanted to save paper by printing lesser numbers of each succeeding book.
As far as I'm concerned, Star Wars should have stopped with the first movie. But that first one was really something. There had never been anything like it. "CGI" effects before there was CGI.
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Some scholar here will know the exact answer, but from memory I'm thinking there was a post W.W. II paper shortage, and Tolkien had planned for it to be released as one book.
I actually liked the second Star Wars movie. It was pretty neat that Lucas put his money where his mouth was, so to speak, and financed that movie himself. Some people actually consider it Empire the best of the movies. I like the first one best with the heavy use of archetypes and mythology. The Ewoks just make me think there was an eye on marketing as much as story and characters in Return. Now the whole thing is literally "Disneyfied" and marketing is everything with story taking a back seat.
I knew franchise was in trouble years ago when I read a Star Wars sequel book and Han was getting chased by zombies. Yeah, way past jumping the shark
On a more positive note, the animated Star Wars series are not bad. They are not made to be block busters. The stories and characters can grow a bit within that format.