But SW came from the tradition of dumbed down science fiction, namely Planet Stories (not counting Bradbury stories.) Dumbed down but great fun, just like SW was great fun.
…well, if you wanna get right down to it, none of it was horribly original… except when it was.
Star Wars got made because Lucas couldn’t get the rights to Flash Gordon. Flash Gordon got made because it was a hit newspaper cartoon. The newspaper cartoon started out as a ripoff of Buck Rogers… which wound up eclipsing the original due to the artist’s superior style and imagination (Buck Rogers’ art was about what you’d expect for the 1920s funny pages).
I suppose you could call it an evolution.
Trek’s ancestors include the Lensmen series and several other classics, although I am led to consider a story of organized space exploration: Voyage Of The Space Beagle, as one of its spiritual ancestors. But it went its own way. Except when it was ripping off and codifying ancient tropes (computer wakes up and tries to kill you, hostile androids, negative space wedgie threatens the ship, alien horror runs loose aboard, shapeshifting alien impersonates important crew, and so on).
Eventually, someone will put a new twist on either or both, file off the serial numbers and paint it a different color, and we’ll be off again. Complete with action figures and coloring books.
If you strike Star Wars down, it will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Hasn’t that happened already? Last I heard, Lucasfilms, at the point of sale to Disney, was the seventh most powerful economy on the planet.
…oh, wait, no, that was Deathklok. Never mind…
Mostly they put out movies similar to movies that have already sold well, of course. (Or turning bestselling books into movies, e.g. Hunger Games.) And what can be more similar to a movie that has sold well than a sequel to that movie? And if it can be turned into a whole string of sequels, then so much the better.