Why are the Star Wars movies considered good movies?

Your like or dislike of the movies could hinge on what order you watched the movies in ... If you watched them ep 1 - ep 6 that could be the major reason. I run a Star Wars fan site and I've had 1000s of people tell me that if ep I was the first Star Wars movie they saw they wouldn't have bothered to watch any of the rest of them. To actually "feel" what made this these movies appeal to so many you need to watch them ep 4 - 6 THEN ep 1 - 3.

As for why they were considered good movies ... you can say that about the whole saga of 6 movies but if you separate them the Original Trilogy of ep 4 - 6 is not considered a "good" movies ... they are considered GREAT movies ... possibly the best movie story ever told ... when adding in ep 1 - 3 that brings it down to just good because they were not up to the standards of the OT ... they had their moments but as a whole they almost muddle the story. Of course my opinion is very bias as I've been a fan since I was 8 years old but it's a very informed opinion ... lol ...

When Ep IV came out in 1977, it was called simply "Star Wars" then, it blew people away with all the incredible FX in it, never before had any movie had the level of FX that this one did. It wasn't just that though that grabbed people and never let go. It was a classic "hero's journey" kind of story with a swashbuckling 3 musketeers feel with the 3 main characters ... Han, Luke, & Leia ... and the underlying "who's going to get the girl" theme. It was just a freewheeling story about good beating evil even though the odds were scaled to the side of evil. You also have to think back to what was going on in the US and the rest of the world at the time. The Cold War was at its height, in the US our status around the world was taking hit after hit ... we would soon have our embassy in Tehran taken over by extremists and our embassy workers held hostage, then would come the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that would take Cold War tensions even higher ... it also would lead to the American boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow in 1980 and the Soviet boycott of the Summer Olympics in LA in 1984. Star Wars came along as a "feel good" story at a time when Americans and others around the world needed something to feel good about.

The impact of Star Wars on the film industry was beyond anything ever seen before ... it was the close of the old era and the beginning of a entirely new film industry. Since "Dave" is a film student I will defer to his knowledge about the "BlockBuster" theory but myself I always thought that Star Wars was the dawn of the "Summer BlockBuster" era that we see every summer now. Lucas and his people pushed the envelope to the max and kept pushing until we have all the wild kinds of FX and sound that are the norm in movies today. Watch the credits to any movie that uses a lot of FX, CGI, and other modern things and you will find ILM, Skywalker Sound, or LucasFilm somewhere in the credits. There are other companies out there now that do these kind of effects but Lucas is still the absolute best and so far ahead of the curve that it's not even fair sometimes. There is something created by LucasFilm in almost every single movie today ... THX ... ILM and LucasFilm pioneered this tech and is at the forefront of every upgrade.

Another thing that Star Wars added to the film industry was the soundtrack. Yeah, they were for the most part, always a part of movies but Star Wars used it to tell part of the story. The music that plays when Luke stares out over the desert at the setting suns made the scene ... some idiot watching the sun set isn't really much to get wild about but when the music makes you "feel" what is going on inside the character then the music takes on great importance to the movie. Even as a huge Star Wars geek I will be the first to say that without the music of John Williams the movies would not have been anywhere near as great as they were.

Star Wars was also the dawn of the movie merchandising fad. Think about it ... have you ever seen a "Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid" action figures ... or a "Bogy and McCall" action figure ... with Star Wars ... I don't doubt that you could walk into any story anywhere in this country and buy a Darth Vader action figure. Yep ... you have George Lucas to blame for that dusty box of toy figures in the back corner of your attic ... lol ...

In the end, no matter how you look at it, Star Wars changed, most for the good, almost every thing about movie making and merchandising of movies. It's profoundly sad but if you weren't around for the beginning of the saga and saw it first hand then there is really no way that you'll be able to "feel" just what these movies meant to that generation ... all I can say was that it was a hell of a ride ... one that I don't see any other movie ever doing again.

May The Force Be With You ...

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Star Wars really brought back the old school style movie making of the original 1930s "blockbuster" When they came out, Hollywood movies had become very gritty, real, very cheaply made and produced more like television shows than feature films.

Star Wars brought back the sense of wonder and magic, and even classical scores. The story line itself is based upon Greek Mythology and the Hero's Journey, so it also applied to a more universal audience. Combine that with special effects that were AMAZING at the time, a great sound mix and a huge marketing machine- Star Wars literally changed the movie industry forever and had influenced how every movie since has been made.

Star Wars is considered a good movie because it was ground-breaking at its time. Thirty some years later, we've seen better visuals so the younger generation thinks Star Wars isn't as good. Its like Lord of the Rings. Everyone thought Lord of the Rings was amazing when it came out (all of the Oscars and stuff). But couple decades down the road, people will be so used to seeing stuff like that they won't realize its importance.

I hope I made sense..... ^_^

Its been said anawering this same question,but it was made using never before seen special efects.The storyline apealled to the people of the time.

If you look at many films made at the same time youll see lots like it ,lasers,star/spaceships and many other similarities,its just that star wars did it better that made it easy for George Lucas to turn it into what it is today,a culture for people like me.

I was raised on it.My parents loved and so do I,but I try to look at it more nuetraly.

I am 40 years old,and have been hooked ever since seeing the original Star Wars:Episode 4 in 1977.

yeah i agree but even seeing those walkers as a kid born in the 90's i loved the movies and still do