Interesting perspectives!
As a third perspective, I’ve gone from loving the prequels as a kid for the spectacle, to disliking them for their flaws as a teenager, to coming back appreciate their strengths and accepting their weaknesses, acknowledging that they can have both good and bad, but I can still enjoy them as a part of this larger story.
I think I’ll always be able to enjoy them, that part of me has never changed. For the last few years though it’s been hard to watch them and not think of all the could-have-been-betters (as someone who’s trying to make fan edits of them, this is even more heightened). For me this has been especially in light of the ST, which in my opinion puts the PT to shame in nearly every respect (in fact I almost gave up on my PT edits after TFA). But I will say this, I’m sure eventually I’ll come around to thinking “who cares, they are what they are,” and probably sooner rather than later. Especially since, for the last few months, I’ve been reading all the PT “Making Of” books, and watching most of the BTS features, and that’s making it hard not to appreciate a lot of the work that went into the films (even as it shines a light on why some of the problems might have occurred). Honestly probably the easiest way for me to enjoy/appreciate them is just to take them as their own things, divorced from the weight of the rest of the saga (which I guess is ironic considering the thread where in).