the truth is the first Star Wars was lightning in a bottle. a crazy combination of disparate influences tied together in experimental American film student sensibilities, released at the right time politically, offering people a simple archetypal tale following a decade & more of resigned/assassinated presidents, controversial wars, social and political upheaval.
George Lucas birthed these ideas but was tempered by shortcomings of current technical reality. they had no CGI in the 70s. C-3PO was going to be a more manic car salesman type, something closer to Jar Jar perhaps, and we were spared that due to the lack of tech. truth is, THEY INVENTED THE TECH while making this movie, building the camera systems, inventing new motion graphics techniques. this is something people forget when they demean the series, without Lucas wanting to build the crazy Skywalker ranch, we don't get Jurassic Park.
this is not merely a popular series, it is fundamental to pretty much every movie released in the past 40 years. rubber masks had a bad reputation as cheesy by then, which is why the cantina was considered a failure by them, tho the public loved it. the first film was birthed by George Lucas but heavily collaborated on. he spent years discussing SW with his film friends, many of them considered some of the most elite American filmmakers of all time. in addition you had actors, illustrators, matte painters, sculptures, pupeteers, etc. so many people contributing to the magic. creating this universe with their imaginations. it was pure alchemy, right time, right place, right chemicals.
how do you follow that up? they planned a cheap sequel taking place in the woods a la Raiders and SW's success caught them off guard. they could dream a little bigger, and did with Empire Strikes Back. ESB was an experiment, for the first time he tried to let the series go in the hands of another director/producer team, but he couldn't. considered a failure by George, it went overbudget with artsy reshoots and camera/dialog experimentation. he thought it could be done cheaper. never again would he let someone else handle a SW. ROTJ was done with a mercenary approach and it got a lot of flack for it. he fired his producer who had challenged him and decided to do it himself. the Ewoks were obviously there to sell toys. the re-use of Tattooine and another Death Star probably decisions made for budgetary reasons. Endor looks more or less like Northern California. still can you blame them? they were making indie sci fi movies in their backyard on the biggest scale ever. the prequels were this full-stop. he had to quit mostly due to haters, i mean sign him up next to everybody resigning over Twitter death threats, he has probably been getting them since ESB.
one of the many times TLJ rips of SW is the Luke death callback to the twin suns. i always loved this scene in the original movie, it was very magical, the warm colors of the desert, the glow of the lights at dusk. the way the suns have a liquified refraction when it zooms in close. the famous westerns, which heavily influenced this sequence, made use of such romantic landscape imagery. these are visuals he had worked with before, as far back as 1967. here is a cool student film of his that has shots that are sort of Tattooine-lite.