I think part of the disagreement here comes over how you define
what a STORY is. A story is the connotation of consequences, and
context, as opposed to a PLOT, which is the series of events in which the
story takes place, A, B, C, D. "The king died, and then the queen died"
is a basic plot. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a
story.

I preface this by saying I haven't seen ID4 yet, so take what
follows cum granus salus, but....

As I understand it, ID4 is an incident/plot driven movie. Bad
aliens come to Earth. Bad aliens smash. Good humans smash back. Good
humans win. The aliens are there to shoot and be shot at, and we don't
really know much about who they are, where they come from, their
cosmology, any of that. It's a series of incidents.

With Star Wars, you got the sense of things happening outside the
plot, and you got the sense of context and consequences. It delved into
matters of belief, the use of the Force, the Zen notion of letting go of
the conscious self. It carried with it a sense of history, the notion
that there had been prior wars, and the whole history of the Jedi
Knights, which carried with it a sense of mystery and wonder. There was
a fairly well realized political framework, with Imperials and rebels and
other planets that chose not to get involved. You got the sense that the
events in the story came from somewhere, and would lead to something.

There's not much question that Star Wars contains more actual
story than ID4. Which isn't the same thing as saying that one is
*better* than the other. That's a mug's game, because whatever's better
for us is a purely subjective decision. But one can point to the two
movies and say, with a fair amount of objectivity, which one contains
*more* story than the other, which involved the most creativity and
world-building.

Just to try and clarify the argument a little....

jms