Poetic forms eventually dropped the words all together and became sonata, rondo, theme and variations, ternary etc. etc.. Lucas has described the use of these forms as "visual jazz".
yeah, everything is a remix did a segment about the original star wars. took ideas, characters, shots from many westerns & wire fu movies.
agree, difference btw IV and VII though is IV used words, shots, characters, general story arcs. VII uses major plot points & ended up being an updated version of IV.
I did get the feeling of "this has all been done before, but with more conviction"...indeed VII was slick, but I feel it lost something (down in the heart area) in the update.