They don't realize that probably 95% of SW fans who grew up with the OT in the 70's/80's don't even post on the internet, or never have in their life about the present state of SW. I have so many friends I grew up with who love the OT, but they have never even gone to a SW website to post. To them, the saga is done with, and probably has for them for a long time.
Most people I know who grew up with SW love the OT, have varying opinions about the PT. Some think they are good, some think they are alright, and some think they suck, but nobody I know has ever said they loved them more than the OT. Now are there fans out there who love the PT more than the OT, of course they are, but that is a niche audience just like any movie that comes out every week.
What Lucas doesn't realize is that the highest grossing prequel was TPM. Does anyone know why? Because every SW fan who grew with the OT saw that probably once or twice or maybe even three times because it was SW again for the first time in 16 years.
TPM - 431 million domestic
AOTC - 300 million domestic
ROTS - 380 million domestic
If TPM sucks like everyone says than why did it gross the most? Because that was the last SW movie that every old fan came out for. Alot of my friends I know were done after seeing TPM, or after one viewing of AOTC. They kinda gave up on the saga, and the drop is obvious.
Now ROTS is supposedly the best prequel by all the gushers, then why couldn't it beat the lowly TPM? Because all the older fans didn't show up once or multiple times. ROTS had the advantage that many older SW fans were going to see it once just to see how Darth Vader came to be, I mean this was the reason for the prequels, so it was going to do better than AOTC. But the fact that it came up 50 million dollars short of an average TPM, tells me the older crowd didn't come out multiple times as they may have done with TPM, when they still were naive about Lucas being a genius.
This goes to my point that I don't believe the PT fans are as big as everyone says. If they were, the grosses for the movies wouldn't zig zag so much. Look at LOTR and X-Men, each movie has grossed more than the other, so the audience built up through each movie, and you can see the fanbase building.
For the PT, TPM hit the mountain top, and the audience never came close to that again. That is why Lucas is so lucky with the money he made for the PT, how many people do you know who grew up with the OT, saw all 3 PT movies in the theater, and now think they are average, crappy, or alright. Never has a movie trilogy had two movies that have been bad and the fans showed up in droves for the third one, but that is why Lucas held off Darth Vader til the end, he forced us to see all 3 movies whether we thought they were good or not.
Who here said in 2005, "Well I didn't think TPM & AOTC were that good, but I have to see Episode III, this one has got to be the one that Lucas gets right." I'll bet over 75% of OT fans growing up said this. Don't be fooled, the PT is a niche audience of fanboys who do love their movies, I don't doubt that, but they know they are not perfect movies like SW & ESB are, and that is the difference, they accept movies that may not be great.