Okay, so #Star_Wars. I really enjoyed Episode IV. I saw Ep V and Ep VI many years later, shortly before Episode I came out. So I don't understand the people who say the first three were great, because Ep V was a big step down from Ep IV. Ep VI was a partial step up from Ep V, but still not comparable in quality to Ep IV.

Now, Ep I, Ep II, Ep III, etc ARE worse than Ep IV and Ep VI, but some of them approach Ep V's level.

Among the most grating things about the Star Wars flicks is that in the late 1970s, the story went around that ___ had written a screenplay that got too big, so he divided it into three. Then each of those likewise got too big and was divided into three more. The idea I got was that these nine screenplays were mostly already written before the first movie was made.

But every movie feels like there is so much "oh, we forgot to tell you this in the earlier movies" that they'd probably be improved if they'd been written as completely independent movies with some overlapping characters and background.

Nothing wrong with that. The William Tell and Robin Hood stories don't rely on each successive episode to build up to the next one. They give an origin story, some hint of how things end, and then mix-and-match the stories in between. Star Wars could have done this, or they could have systematically harmonized the whole series. Either one would be better than what they've done.