Re: Star Wars Episode VII
I think that they may recognize that the PT stuff is at least somewhat controversial. Little kids dig it more than the OT because it's more oriented towards them and the kind of entertainment they watch now, but the older fans are decidedly split on the matter. And besides, the goal here is to build the franchise, not retread the same old ground for the umpteenth time.
Packing in characters from before...just because...is a bad idea. It's the kind of stupid marketing choice that suits make without understanding that, once you include them, you have to explain WHY you brought back, for example, a cybernetic Mace Windu, and how you explain away his obvious lack of aging because Sam Jackson is refusing to do the kind of heavy makeup required for him to play and 85-year-old half-robot Jedi.
I get why fans do this. they don't have a clear story in mind, and really, it's not their jobs to come up with one. They think about what a cool scene might look like, involving Mace Windu with robot arms or whatever, and they say "Yeah! That'd be awesome!" And as a visual sequence separate from any kind of plot, sure, it'd be cool. Hell, Sam's duel with Palpatine would've looked cool as just an isolated 15 second sequence in some trailer or whatever.
But you've got to be able to fit this stuff into a story and then not screw the whole enterprise up with poor execution. Including characters just because one can imagine a cool scene or some hastily imagined justification ("Well, he survived his fall and now he's turned to the dark side, so.....yeah.") probably will mean the story itself will suffer.
