Well, then I guess you kind of missed the whole point of the THREE movies in the OT… Luke being tempted by the dark side of the Force is supposed to be subtle, and failing to stay true to the Jedi way is not supposed to be as in-your-face as depicted in ROTS. I actually don’t know noone who went into the theaters for ROTJ without knowing a fair bit of the story from the first two movies.
Regarding the reviews I’m still astounded by David’s more or less first statement that TPM is NOT the worst one - cause simply it’s actually one of the worst movies of all time considering the resources and exceptional talent (both actors and crew) at hand for the executive production management. And then follows a lengthy explanation shifting focus from the decision-makers to circumstantial causes and elements.
The fans actually reacted to something. Not the other way around. There was no pro-active movement that had to fix anything. Claiming that the audience, the receivers of a piece of art, broke fandom is perhaps bold, but I actually would say the opposite. It’s the responsibility of the fans to steer the entertainment industry towards our needs instead of blindly following the commercial lead.
Trying to deny the essential foundations of praise for artistic work is to lack insight into basic human psychology - there will always be love and there will always be hate, the original Star Wars would never have been the universal success if it wasn’t for that same insanity of the fans. And David actually does explore this topic - but the conclusions are way off the mark.
Importantly though it’s a dangerous view of only black-and-white and that’s why one need to be able to like the person of George Lucas, despite his failures as a film-maker. Or the other way around. The choices of George Lucas was his to make and he’ll be held accountable forever, not the fans! Some dead horses actually need a couple of extra beatings as long as there are these kind of revisionist attempts.
Fox and Lucasfilm did make quite a few bucks of TPM, didn’t they? And yes, if you put a 9-year-old at the center of the biggest marketing campaign the movie world has ever seen I guess there might be some backlash. What if we as fans actually dared to question the motives instead of diverting the attention to ourselves?