In any case, all these wars among fans are primarily an American thing. We never really had that kind of thing in Italy, at least not to the same extent. Granted, I was very young back then, so I can’t really say what the situation was like first-hand. But based on the articles and other material from that time that I’ve managed to dig up online, my impression is that the general consensus in Italy was, “Yeah, they’re not as good as the Originals, but they’re still enjoyable,” with a small minority of OT purists who hated the movies. I think the Italian dub definitely helped in that regard, as it did a great job of compensating for many of the shortcomings in the original performances, making some of the dialogue sound more natural and helping certain scenes land better.