Yeah but everyone is two decades years older they need to mature and develop critical faculties by now.
Why should “maturing” and “developing critical faculties” coincide with having the same opinions as you on the Prequels? It seems like a rather biased reasoning on your part.
In contrast, the popularity of the OT can’t be as easily explained as entirely the result of nostalgia, because the OT films have many devoted fans among the younger generations as well, I assume.
As someone who has had the opportunity to speak with many people who were Star Wars fans during the 1980s and 1990s, I feel compelled to express my disagreement with this statement. After the release of Return of the Jedi, the Original Trilogy practically faded into obscurity. Yes, they were considered very good films, but Star Wars was essentially dead between 1983 and the release of the Special Editions in 1997. Without the Special Editions and the Prequels, Star Wars would have remained nothing more than an old trilogy of 1980s movies. Sure, many people would certainly still love it, but it would never have become the massive franchise it is today. Star Wars would have ended up like Back to the Future — a well-loved series, but not a cultural phenomenon. So yes, objectively speaking, the almost blind devotion to the Original Trilogy that many people exhibit today is primarily a product of the older generation’s nostalgia, because again, between 1983 and 1997, nobody really cared about either the Original Trilogy or Star Wars in general. Had it not been for the Special Editions and the Prequels, Star Wars would be dead right now.
Perhaps the prequels are uniquely suited to appealing to kids, which is why they are getting more love these days from people who grew up with them, as well as kids today who are seeing them for the first time. If that’s true, then perhaps the only cohort who can’t widely appreciate them are those who were already too old when the films premiered.
I genuinely do not understand where this reasoning comes from. I know many people who watched the Prequels as adults and still appreciated them. Sure, many people consider them inferior to the Original Trilogy, but they certainly do not dismiss them entirely, as many users on this forum tend to do. I, too, watched the Prequels for the first time when I was 18, and I had absolutely no idea that Prequel hate even existed until my sister mentioned it a couple of years later — after I had already seen the films. Even on YouTube, there are countless reaction videos of adults watching the Prequels for the first time and still being able to appreciate them. So I truly do not understand where the idea that “only children who grew up with the Prequels can appreciate them” comes from.