Would Star Wars be popular without the social context

[Darth Yan]

In general the 70s were a miserable decade. The economy was in the shitter, Nixon had resigned in disgrace.....had those things not been in play would people have been as eager to embrace star wars?

[Broomstick]

You forget the ground-breaking special effects - people went to see it more than once in part because the effects were simply orders of magnitude greater than anything seen before. It looks dated now but back then it was mind-blowing. Sure, it wasn't the only reason but in this days of ubiquitous CGI it's easy to forget how revolutionary it was.

[Lord Revan]

I'd suspect Star Wars would be popular though not as as popular as it's now without the social context. While the social climate did help Star Wars to become as popular as it is, the films themselves are decently entertaining as well so while I dout SW would become the phenomena it's now without the social context there's plently of late 70s and early 80s films that were popular without becoming modern classics.

[Shroom Man 777]

There are some roughly sorta universal aspects that great works can generally touch on despite the difference in specific details of contexts... which is why the Mad Max movies were at the same time likened as cowboy lone ranger tales, Viking epics and ronin stories by their varying audiences that found the works very resonant.

[Formless]

You might have this backwards. Without the social context, Star Wars wouldn't have been as lighthearted as it was to begin with. George Lucas seems to be the kind of nonconformist that intentionally makes movies that contradict the popular tone of films at the time; which I think is part of the reason the Prequels are as dark as they are, besides the fact that Anakins fall sort of requires some darkness. By the time the prequels were made, the tone of the most popular movies had lightened up quite a bit. So I suspect that if the tone of filmography were more lighthearted in the 70's, the original Star Wars would have been darker so as to stand out because of it. Would such a ploy have worked? I don't know. It is hard to say if Lucas himself would have been the same kind of director he is now if it weren't for the social context.