Forty Years very soon

I must agree with everything you say here. Great take on the experience of this film and what went into making it so iconic.

It stirs my own memories of the first time that I saw Star Wars (now retitled ANH of course). Those iconic scenes are unforgettable. I think you nailed the most iconic ones. The scene without dialogue of Luke watching the twin suns set. After having so many years to reflect on arguably the most iconic scene in the entire SW saga, it came to have a deeper meaning for me. It speaks volumes about what the film is itself. Star Wars (1977) is a sci-fantasy. And perhaps the first legitimate one. IMHO every sci-fantasy film or show before Star Wars was either fantasy pretending to be partly comprised of sci-fi but transparently failing at it to anyone invested in the genre; or science fiction that attempted to crossover with fantasy and usually did a bad job of it.

There Luke Skywalker stood after a long day of his routine life staring at a sunset. Something so human and emotionally grounded in reality! Yet he was watching twin suns! Something so science fiction because twin stars are known to actually exist. But also so fantasy. Is it possible for a planet to have an orbit around or between 2 suns that would allow for human life to exist and both suns to position themselves in the planets rotation that they both would provide a sunset experience at the same time? Who knows? But who cares! Because in this scene the appetite for fictional reality and fantasy are blended and satisfied. And it's hard to find moments in the entire Star Wars saga where that isn't true.

And then there's the otherworldly dialogue, which itself has become iconic or satirically memed. For the most part it's been largely embraced by the fanbase borne to this saga. And I can't forget the initial experience of being taken into these imaginative alien worlds and societies! These clearly fantasy creatures that you could except being real races often because they were grounded in distinct cultures.

It also became clear to me that the visual spectacle and pacing of this movie would change the way movies were made forever. Some of it did harken back to a time of adventure serials like Westerns and Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers.

But what became clear to me in retrospect years later is that beyond all this, what Star Wars had also accomplished was that it became a modern fairy tale. Perhaps the first timeless fairy tale in Western culture in the modern era. The first in a long time. And IMHO that's part of secret for endurance and an appetite for expansion and continuation of a saga that many of us first saw in theatres 40 years ago.