Not quite as brilliant as the hype suggests after all this time, sure, but at the time all that stuff about the force and, yes, LASERS! and SPACE SHIPS! was pretty spectacular in its own right. But most of what keeps Star Wars going, I think (apart from, obviously, merchandising merchandising merchandising) is that thin vapor of pop-philosophy and Ralph McQuarrie's visual legacy. It looked like nothing anyone had ever seen.
Read this: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1bp44q/til_ge....
Basically, Lucas did the funding on his second movie, which encouraged him to use clever marketing strategies (since the profit was all for him).
So he came up with this idea of selling his boring movie to nerds (even though it's entirely unrelated) and it worked! He simply spotted an under-exploited demographic, an age-old business strategy. He's comparable to Steve Jobs, who found the hipster design demographic, for fabulous marketing genius.
L Ron Hubbard
As for Steve Jobs, people have always loved beautiful and desirable objects. As long as there have been objects to love. And designers were hipsters way before Jobs' return.
The modern incarnation of My Little Ponies is substantially more intellectually challenging than you might expect.
Not defending Bond movies. I agree, they're pretty damn stupid. (Although at least the earlier ones were done with a sense of fun. I like stupid fun.) But... ewoks.