RUR is an example of a work that is trampled by everything that came after it.  Stars Wars is another.  For people of my generation, Star Wars was a tremendous sensation that redefined science fiction films for better or worse after a decade of low-budget depression fests.  But my wife, who is younger than I, can't understand why Star Wars  was anything to write home about.  To her it's just another film and not a very good one of its type; one that was notable for having such bad dialogue that Sir Alec Guinness persuaded Lucas to kill his character off early so he wouldn't have to say those dreadful lines anymore. As a writer, I'm willing to concede that point, but it was still an incredibly influential film and every sci-fi movie since then shows its lineage.

And RUR was an incredibly influential play that set the pattern for robot stories up to the present day.  Its theme of robots rebelling against their masters could be seen as a warning of the dangers of technology; an allegory on progress and decadence, the looming danger of unresolved conflicts between Capital and Labour; or the perils of wasting a perfectly good evening by going to a plonking expressionist play that has characters with inexplicable motives, telegraphs every plot point minutes before they happen, and has an ending that undercuts everything that has been established by hauling on a character at the last moment that the audience has barely heard mention of to that point.

Still, it had a solid run in the West End and on Broadway, it was debated by George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton, and it introduced the world to the "Moe" haircut.

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