Aggressive pre-release marketing is one of the things Lucasfilm has always been great at. Boba Fett is never addressed by name until Attack of the Clones. Palpatine was not named onscreen until Phantom Menace came out. The Force Awakens is still two months away, but we already know the names of several major characters because of how their merch is being marketed.
By the time anyone knew what an Ewok was, there was umpity-trillion other Star Wars toys for sale, including action figures of every minor character to grace the background of an alien crowd scene. It’s not as though Ewoks were the selling out point.
Especially after being stepped on by an AT-ST. 
One of the few good things about the re-re-released editions was changing the Ewok scoring to something less… Teletubby.
They did. They didn’t completely redo the SFX in CGI like they did for TOS, but they did go back to all the original elements and remastered everything to HD (it was filmed on real film, but it had been edited in SD, so they had to recreate the entire series from scratch using the original film and re-editing in HD.) It’s on Blu-ray and Netflix in HD.
Makes you wonder if they’ll go back and do it all over again in twenty years… to update the special effects.
After intervening years of exposure to Lost In Space, Star Wars, Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc. I’ve been watching “Fireball XL5”. The plots seem a lot less riveting to me than they did in 1963. The model work is still good, I have to say. At least, the launching of the ship. Those little scooters are still as laughable as they were in 63.
Rocky. I think the increasingly cartoonish sequels and Stallone’s follow on work of mostly action movies has eroded the legacy of a legitimately excellent movie.
Unlike, say, Jaws, which has even lower quality sequels, but has remained above the fray.
Me too. My companion burst out laughing during a tense, serious, very quiet scene, when I suddenly dove for my purse, pulled out my lighter, and flicked it to see what time it was. I must not have owned a cell phone at the time. I turned to her and said, “Is this fucking thing sinking yet?”
It takes about 2:40 to get that damn boat sinking, which was about two hours too long IMO.
For a while I would have put in Big Trouble in Little China, but it seems to have come back to the top again.
Hmm…Tango and Cash perhaps? You really can’t get more quintessential 80s schlock than that. It’s quite fun.
It’s not sudden in my case. I hated on Forrest Gump when it came out and Titanic when it came out because they’re both crap. The former sets out to try and explain to me what “real life” is like which, well thank you, I live in the real world and a) that’s not what real life is like, and b) I do not appreciate being patronized. Titanic is just a crappy movie surrounded by fancy special effects. I would have preferred that they just made a re-enactment if they couldn’t be bothered to come up with an actual story for the movie and were only interested in creating a re-enactment (see also: Saving Private Ryan).
I haven’t seen Juno. I’ve only ever heard it was good.
Not technically true. Han says the immortal “Boba Fett? Boba Fett, where” before accidentally knocking him into the Sarlaac Pit.
Also… ROTJ is the most watchable of the OT. It’s fun and has a better sense of adventure than the other two. ESB may be a better film overall, but ROTJ just has way more going on.
How exactly did Forrest Gump try to explain what “real life” was like?
Ain’t that the truth!
If you’re just dogged and earnest and down-ta-earth everything wonderful will come to you.
Technically true. Movie shoulda been named “Beautiful Fictional Love Story Set Aboard A Doomed Ship Which Will Likely Sink At Some Late Point.”
And Boba Fett first appeared, and was named, in the Star Wars Holiday Special, which remains canon despite George Lucas’ best efforts.
Well, I can see that as being the story element, but I didn’t see it as way to show us all how to live. I mean, I didn’t walk out of the theater thinking if I was more like Forrest, than things would go more my way.
And now that I think about it, I can say that the *Star Wars Holiday Special’s *reputation has decayed over time, as well… 
That’s like watching someone get beaten up and then, when the victim asks if you’ll go to the police and report the crime, you’re like, “When exactly was there a crime?”
Everything about it, in every scene was made to try and show what life is like - in the view of the author and/or director.
Boba Fett was named in the holiday special too and that came out before ESB
eta: beaten to it
I didn’t say that the movie showed you how to live, I said it showed what life is like.
Thats art, isnt it?