I enjoy it all, Forbidden Planet is in my Laserdisc collection
I just laugh at the idea that other sci fi or fantasy movies from 1977 or before have aged better than Star Wars. 2001 nine years earlier is the one valid argument, Alien 2 years later could be argued...beyond that seems kind of crazy.
For somebody to say that, they probably just think it's neat to bash on Star Wars.
I think harping on the effects is a bit like harping on old video games because of the graphics.
Destiny 2 looks a lot better than, say,
Team Fortress 2, the original
Halo (even with the graphics update), and even the original
DOOM, but the latter three are way more fun to play than 95% of anything new coming out that looks better to a modern eye.
I have never heard a young child complain about the quality of effects in something, though. That seems to be something that comes with teenage cynicism. Young children have very plastic imaginations. I showed my cousin's son
Genesis of the Daleks (a
Doctor Who serial from 1975) and he loved it. He did not see the cardboard sets and terrible effects.
It comes down to the content of the story, the characters, and the emotion to me, and with those, the Original Trilogy is shockingly modern and not dated at all. The way things are shot and effects are used matters, too. The original
Godzilla was obviously a guy in a suit stomping on a paper model of Tokyo, but they work around that by shooting the creature in shadows and from low angles. They frame it in a way that makes you look past their weaknesses. The score to the first two, as well, are still two
SW of the greatest in the history of cinema. My wife even commented, watching it with me for the first time, that the score completely sells it.
Somebody brought up
Forbidden Planet earlier, and it is the same idea there -- it is imaginative and thematically rich, which means it is still easy to watch even nowadays.
The Wrath of Khan has some cheesy effects, but its story and performances get better each and every time that I watch it. I would way rather watch it again compared to any more J.J. Binks crap.
Being "dated" is just not about effects, though. Prevailing styles of cinematography and acting change, too.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of my all-time favorites, but that, "Gee whiz, that is a real humdinger!" voice and tone of a lot of Old Hollywood movies is something you just have to look past nowadays. Scenes lasted longer and films themselves were generally shorter. You have to adjust for those contexts when watching them.
That is not even mentioning the
Breakfast and Tiffany's and
Gone with the Wind types that are, well, #problematic, to say the absolute least.