feryl12 t1_iuhn4a7 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 12:24 PM

Lord of the Rings is the better trilogy but it’s not really a fair competition. LOTR was planned and executed as a trilogy from the start. When they were making Star Wars nobody knew if it would be a success and if they would be able to make a second one. In my opinion Star Wars had a bigger impact on the development of special effects in general but both are milestones of movie history.

Chen_Geller t1_iujy2t4 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 10:08 PM

>When they were making Star Wars nobody knew if it would be a success

That's to some extent a story Lucasfilm love to taut around "It was the little engine that could!" but its not quite like that. Yeah, it was risky. But it was also a big, fantastical blockbuster, coming on the heels of Jaws, by a star filmmaker whose last film was a huge hit with multiple academy award nominations.

Lucas had talked about two sequels and a possible prequel already in December 1975, and had taken some concrete steps towards making them including signing the actors and some of the crew for two more films in advance.

But yeah, he didn't bother fleshing out the plot for those potential sequels until he got around to making them: Star Wars was made very much one film at a time and as a result is full of inconsitences and retcons.