I disagree. Within my lifetime, I can recall the same reaction to James Bond circa 1964/65. That series of movies spawned numerous action figures, toys, games, bubble-gum cards, rip-offs, spin-offs, etc. Likewise, a Bond canon was written that served as the anchor for numerous sequels. What made Star Wars different was that the creators were able to monetize the auxiliary product to an unprecedented extent.
In the same time frame and in a broader entertainment sense, The Beatles had an outrageous amount of associated product. Between they and 007, they raised an entire country out of the post-war doldrums via merchandising and impact upon popular culture.
Star Wars was a great movie but nerds have inflated it’s importance among the general public. I reckon that Jaws and The Exorcist were just as memorable to the movie-going public of the era, and that among non-SciFi fans, Jaws is regarded as a better movie.
The memorability to the audience is not the point. Star Wars is important for what it did to the perspective of the producers. Every single person in the movie business will tell you that the period leading up to Star Wars was a golden age in American film because movie producers were taking risks on small, inexpensive movies in exchange for small returns. Star Wars ushered in the era that required that for a movie to be made at all by major studios, it had to be a potential blockbuster. Before, a small movie was fine so long as it was profitable. After, profitability wasn’t good enough. Indeed, producers were willing to risk huge losses just to chase a potential blockbuster.
Toy Story would be the most influential film since Star Wars because it did what Star Wars did but to a much greater degree in terms of stepping outside the filmmaking industry itself, is that what you mean?
Why would you say this is more the case for Toy Story than Jurassic Park or The Matrix?
Toy Story is not the influence Star Wars was. However, it is the most influential film since Star Wars, because it ushered in the single biggest change since then; the prominence of computer-animated films, which are now practically a genre until themselves and built one of the industry’s great studios.
Computer-animated films are now being pumped out with such abandon that we forget what a revolutionary idea “Toy Story” was in 1995. An entirely computer-animated film? Some thought the idea insane. Well, now they’re pumping them out by the truckload, and while some are forgettable dreck, it’s also resulted in a string of movies of sensational quality. Had Pixar not had the guts (and the financial necessity) to give it a shot, we might not have had Rango, WALL-E, Kung Fu Panda, Shrek, Ratatouille, and the list goes on - or if we had, it would have been delayed years, and the expectation of genuine quality, which was set by Toy Story, might not have taken hold so early.