There is a pretty strong argument to be made that it is the most important movie ever made in the history of cinema, which would explain the ongoing discussion.
Nothing is great to the jaded.
Let me offer some clarification. I add indentations and bolding:
Star Wars looked like a great summer movie back in 1977. It didn’t look like something with multi-decade appeal. In fact without the special effects it looked like a bad movie. And yet it’s one of the biggest movie franchises in the world, beating Star Trek, James Bond, Matrix and LOTR.[1] That’s a paradox, or so I argue. Any franchise that lasts from 1977 to 2015 is a surprise, but back then I suspect I would have put my money on Bond, Star Trek or hell the disaster movie.
I don’t think you can understand this alleged greatness without acknowledging the film’s weaknesses. My take is that the Star Wars has a certain market to themselves and that there are fortunes to be made with world building franchises. Something like Avatar, the Last Airbender, though their movie efforts were reportedly awful. The key exercise I think would be to break kiddie movies into parts, identify the bits that are cheap moralizing or treacle, then remove them. Then take that and plug it into a film framework made for adults. But somehow retain the innocence, something I can’t really define and may have wrong. I suspect msmith was on to something.
[1] I see from here that Harry Potter now has it beaten. So does “Marvel Cinematic Universe”, but that’s a pretty broad bundle of properties.
Certainly the new Star Wars, good or bad, will gross enough to knock Harry Potter off the top spot.
Then again, a new Potter film comes out next year(a spin off). Then again again, another Star Wars comes out next year as well. 
That list doesn’t account for inflation, which invariably results in almost all the most popular movies being ones that just came out. Adjusting for inflation, “Star Wars” - just the first movie - is as valuable as five Potter movies. Gone With The Wind is still number one. An inflation adjusted list offers a view of movie popularity that, to be honest, makes more sense and isn’t as weirdly tilted towards comic book movies that just came out two year ago (no Marvel movie is in the top twenty.)
Different inflated adjusted lists will have slightly different orders but the top two are always GWTW and Star Wars.
I refute you thus!*
I also saw Star Wars in 1977, during its original theatrical release, and what set it apart from Logan’s Run and 2001: A Space Odyssey was the scale. That opening scene of the rebel ship zipping away from the viewer, then the enormous, ominous Star Destroyer emerging from the top of the screen; that told us that this was a big movie, on an epic scale. I had certainly never seen anything like it in my nine years.
*Yes, yes, I know that’s from Return of the Jedi, not A New Hope. But for those of us who were in the throes of puberty - I was 15 when ROTJ came out - Slave Leia was a barrel bomb to the libido, an image of pure eroticism, the effects of which can still be found in men in their forties all over the country.
I agree about the importance of adjustments for inflation. I’d go further and say the worth of the franchise has to include all media including books, toys, vids and video games. Sound tracks. TV rights. TV spinoffs. Breakfast cereal. Lunch boxes. All of it. Not just box office. Box office is nothing relative to the rest, at least for these sorts of franchises.
I guess to be fair, that might involve merging the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Spiderman and the X-Men. They are given separate line items because they are each owned by 3 different companies.
One of the most amazing facts you’ll ever hear about movies; merchandising for the characters from the movie “Cars” has made more money than the box office take for all the movies Pixar has ever made combined.
having not quite read the rest of the thread, I was a young’n in the 70s. Market size was maybe 100g households and that was across 4 counties and a state line in the northwest. We had the Big 3 networks and PBS. Watched Star Trek every afternoon and twilight zone at least twice a week in the evenings. When we got our first independent in the early 80’s (now a Fox affiliate) wooohoooo man did [del]our[/del] my entertainment horizons broaden(John Wayne as Ghenghis Khan, truly awesome)
If I’m reading it right, the chart (a) is pre-SPECTRE, which (b) means the James Bond franchise is, technically, beating the Star Wars franchise right now.
On taking a closer look, that seems to be domestic gross for each franchise; worldwide, it’s still the Marvel Cinematic Universe on top, followed by Harry Potter, followed by James Bond – followed by The Middle Earth stuff, followed by Star Wars.
Which is a stupid position to take as it was about Star WARS.
The prequels could have been called Star Minor Trade Disagreement that Escalated into a Regional Conflict Between Two Armies of Emotionless Automatons.
An Han is no more a “murderer” for shooting some bountyhunter moments before he was about to get shot or abducted and shipped off to the Space Mafia.
I always enjoyed Randal and Dante’s exchange in Clerks about the Death Stars:
“Randal: Now, the first [Death Star] was completed and fully operational before the Rebel’s destroyed it.
Dante: Luke blew it up. Give credit where credit is due.
Randal: And the second one was still being built when the blew it up.
Dante: Compliments to Lando Calrissian.
Randal: Something just never sat right with me that second time around. I could never put my figure on it, but something just wasn’t right.
Dante: And you figured it out?
Randal: The first Death Star was manned by the Imperial Army. The only people onboard were stormtroppers, dignitaries, Imperials.
Dante: Basically.
Randal: So, when the blew it up, no problem. Evil’s punished.
Dante: And the second time around?
Randal: The second time around, it wasn’t even done being built yet. It was still under construction.
Dante: So?
Randal: So, construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I’ll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers.
Dante: Not just Imperials, is what you’re getting at?
Randal: Exactly. In order to get it built quickly and quietly they’d hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average storm trooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms.
Dante: All right, so they bring in independent contractors. Why are you so upset with its destruction?
Randal: All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed! Casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. All right, look, you’re a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia - this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn’t ask for that. You have no personal politics. You’re just trying to scrape out a living.”
A roofer’s personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs. Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills … Then I realized whose house it was … Babyface Bambino? The gangster? … The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine … And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface’s house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn’t even finished shingling … I’m alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client … any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks; if they were killed, it was their own fault.
Is this one of those answers to the question “What is the shortest book ever?”
More like mid-40s+. I’m 49 now, 11 in 1977. A 39YO would have been born in 1976.
I remember seeing The Andromeda Strain once or twice on TV. Saw 2001 and Colossus: The Forbin Project in a double-feature in the early-mid-70s when I was 8 or 9. The next day, I couldn’t have told you what 2001 was about, but I remembered the basic plot of Colossus for years (still do). I also saw The Day the Earth Stood Still a couple times on TV. Also watched plenty of Star Trek reruns, and have vague memories of Lost in Space reruns.
I only discovered Asimov after seeing SW, but I eventually realized that Asimov had influenced Lucas in that way: Just assume that the tech works, and get on with the story. Only explain the tech if it’s vital to moving the story along.
I guess I’m in the minority, but my favorite “sexy Leia” scene was, and still is, the scene in her cell on the Death Star. Lying on her side, propped on one elbow:
That did it for me when I was 11, and it had the exact same effect on me when I saw the 1997 re-release when I was 33. To this day, that type of pose is still one of my favorite poses in, erm, “sexy” photos.
The fact is, you wouldn’t have the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Matrix, Battlestar Galactica, Avatar or any of their imitators without Star Wars. While Jaws ushered in the age of the summer blockbuster and sci fi certainly existing before Star Ward, Star Wars was the first film to bring sci-fi fantasy world-building to a new cinematic level. Without Star Wars, Star Trek would still be a bunch of Redshirts getting killed on a poorly lit sound stage by a dude with a latex mask on his head.
The original Star Wars proved that you could create these bizarre worlds in a realistic way and use them to tell a compelling story.
I was always partial to Leia’s Hoth snow bunny outfit.
I thought she was hottest in her Endor get up. Who doesn’t love a good poncho?
The day the earth stood still is a much more mature film then star wars…
It’s a more serious film, for sure, but that’s not the same as mature.
Oh yeah, that reminds me of another thing that made Star Wars great. Lucas just happened to know that–and this is freaking genius–there is no underwear in space! 
One of the best stories that Carrie Fisher tells in her latest book and memoir Wishful Drinking is her explanation for why Princess Leia was so, er, bouncy in the original Star Wars.[INDENT] Remember the white dress I wore all through that film [Star Wars]? George [Lucas] came up to me the first day of filming, took one look at the dress and said: “You can’t wear a bra under that dress.”
“OK, I’ll bite,” I said. “Why?” And he said: "Because… there’s no underwear in space."While that is a ridiculous statement in itself, it gets better. Recently, after Carrie Fisher told this anecdote in her one-woman show in San Francisco, Lucas came backstage to expand on his reasoning. He explained that in space you get weightless, and so your flesh expands. What? But your bra doesn’t, so you get strangled by your bra. That’s why I couldn’t wear a bra in the first Star Wars.[/INDENT]That you, George. You might be a little fuzzy on whether or not Han shot first/only but you got this one right!
“Windtalkers” is a much more mature film than “Finding Nemo,” but the latter is still a million times better.
I think some good points have been made about the genius of “Star Wars”'s set design (for which it won the Oscar, very deservedly.) I hadn’t really consciously noticed it, but sci-fi movies prior to SW do, to a large extent, look like they were shot wherever someone could get permission to shoot in a modernistic-looking office building.
“Star Wars,” of course, put a hell of a lot of effort into building sets that look like it’s an inhabited and totally different universe. The Star Wars world has a character all its own. It’s industrial, unfriendly, dirty, and old. Then Lucas takes some distinct characters and lets 'em loose.
People make fun of the dialogue, and I really don’t understand why. The dialogue is perfectly good; the characters say what they want to say, have some good lines and memorable catchphrases, avoid excessive technobabble, and wherever possible the movie shows instead of telling. The dialogue is SIMPLE, but that does not make it BAD. Good dialogue doesn’t have to be Quentin Tarantino stuff; its purpose is to move the story along and tell you who’s who, and Star Wars does that. I can understand why the actors might not have been overly thrilled with it, because it’s simplistic stuff in a day when acting was reaching new heights of nuance and complexity; everyone wanted to be Al Pacino in “The Godfather” or, if you’re going to be in an action movie, at least have a great monologue like Robert Shaw in “Jaws.” Star Wars isn’t like that. The only speechifying of any sort is Alec Guinness’s wistful comments on the past in his hut. Otherwise it just gets you from A to B, but holy moly, does it ever.