The problem is that all these cult/fan followings have to give in to marketing in order to draw in the non-fan base. For example, with Star Wars, in order to make the prequels so successful, Lucas couldn't just do the same thing he had done 20+years before. It would have only appealed to that fan base. So he had to spice it up by throwing in stupid, ridiculous characters, he eliminated the idea of a guy in a costume and had all alien races computer animated, and he had to throw in a bad ass actor to portray one of the calm, serene Jedi. Utter ridiculousness. This can also be seen in the recent Spider-Man film. With out going into to much detail, rather than staying true to the 50+years of comics, the movie had to reach out to a younger audience to draw in the cash. A lot of the story and character development is lost in the transition from comic to film, and the characters in the movie are foreign rather than familiar to fans of the comics. So like JH said, it is all about the benjamins. These classic stories are being butchered into sloppy films that do not always pay homage to the original medium, just to appeal to todays hustle and bustle, action-craving population. And to further continue this rant a bit longer, the video games that are based on movies continue to suck. These games are produced very sloppily just so that their release can be within a week or so of the film release, and due to this deadline they keep (in order to make money off the success of the film), the game suffers. I remember buying RotS a week before the movie came out, and the game sucked so bad I actually sold it back a week later. It took me only a few hours to beat, and was simply horrible and not worth $50. Then the new Spidey3 game sucks also. Reports are that Spidey and other characters will occasionally fall through the sidewalk or the sides of buildings since the game was so rushed and little kinks like that were not worked out. It saddens me how, while movies tend to be more visually pleasing, the story suffers due to it.