Let me put it this way, I don’t love the prequels, but when I do Star Wars marathons, I’ll still watch them now and again. I accept that they exist. With the sequel trilogy I’m at the point where I don’t even know if I ever want to watch them again. Especially the last two. I get depressed even thinking about them. I’ve only been able to get myself to watch fan edits the past few times I’ve rewatched them. Part of it is that they’re more cynical than the prequels, but also part of it is the inconsistency.
The prequels for all their faults felt like they had more of a vision behind it. There were some choices that didn’t work, but at the end of the day they felt like one vision. With the sequels you have two movies that don’t even logically go together because they had two directors playing tug of war to cancel each other out. They never committed to one thing and they paid the price for their lack of vision.
Again, there’s plenty of things you can criticize about the prequels, but they at least feel like a trilogy. The sequel trilogy feels like it was compromised.