I think we're inclined to see the original trilogy through rose colored glasses,
It made incredible amounts of money, it changed the movie business forever (not in a good way, which is the topic of discussion in another thread here - movies being pitched at 12 year old boys is what's keeping
Star Trek from ever being really good and smart again, like it was on TV at its best), and the first two movies were very good examples of what they were trying to be, while the third had its moments.
So it's not so much rose-colored glasses (I still think that overall
Star Trek is far superior to
Star Wars) as acknowledging a powerful cultural force that was greatly damaged by its creator being a loose cannon who had no one to tell him when he was frakking up catastrophically, yet now seems to be turning around, because that same creator is now listening to the kind of people he should have had on board for the PT.
It's an interesting turn of events, very dramatic and unexpected. A good story in its own right. And it's unusual because most mass entertainment is made by corporations where the worst they generally do is uninspired but workmanlike. The PT was a rare example of something so bad that even a soulless corporate machine would have recognized its amateur quality and refused to allow itself to be embarrassed by releasing such dreck.
Star Wars is culturally irrelevant and widely seen as "crap for kids and insane fans"?
I don't know anyone who watches
The Clone Wars or reads
Star Wars novels - certainly not any grownups. The situation is completely different from
Star Trek, where millions of grownups were willing to show their faces to see the new movie in a theater and showed no embarrassment at saying they liked it. The only complaints I've ever heard about it have been here, among the TOS die-hards who hate Pine's Kirk and other idiosyncratic problems. The movie was as intelligent and sophisticated as you can expect any summer action movie to be, and as respectful of TOS as could be hoped.
Lucas might be able to turn the situation around, but he would have to do what Abrams did - acknowledge that he has a damaged franchise on his hands (that
he damaged) and take intelligent steps to correct the problem.
In Lucas' case, it's easy: he could do a high profile live action TV series or release more movies, but depend on Dave Filoni and other
TCW collaborators to ensure that he produces quality work now. Lucas has definitely assembled a talented team who is capable of producing work just as good as Abrams did - and
TCW proves that he has acknowledged the problems with the PT - but he has to actually
do the work of revitalizing the franchise. Just relying on cartoons and novels will keep the franchise at the kids-and-nutty-fans level.
But he's scrapped the live action TV show idea, which may indicate that he's making plenty of money from his current approach, so why bother with the general audience? Kid's merchandise is where all the real money is, anyway.
