In the early 1980s George Lucas asked Mark Hamill if he wanted to reprise his role in 30 years to "hand excalibur down to the next generation": https://www.yout

In the early 1980s George Lucas asked Mark Hamill if he wanted to reprise his role in 30 years to "hand excalibur down to the next generation": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UGV7WVB-bA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UGV7WVB-bA The original 1977 movie was titled 'Star Wars' (without any subtitles). The temporal ambition started with titling the next movie "Episode V: Empire Strikes Back" and renaming the original movie "Episode IV: A New Hope". I agree maximizing profits plays a big part, he made things up as he went along and in interviews over the years he switched between saying it's a 6/9/12 movie saga. But whatever his motivations, he still had the temporal ambition to "start from the middle" and leveraged that idea to build a lasting franchise. And that really impresses me.