ESB and ROTJ, though great and good films that remain among my favourites, warped and changed that perception to a degree that is quite insidious. Instead of a mass-audience classic film, like Lawrence of Arabia or Jaws, it became part of a franchise; while both of those sequels, I'm sure most would agree, are about as terrific as sequels can possibly get, they still don't hold a candle to the magic simplistic and direct power that Star Wars enveloped upon its audience. Not only that, but said sequels changed the story of that film to large degrees, even if the basic heart of it still remained the same. If it was just ESB and ROTJ I would probably say that its acceptable that Star Wars got diminished, because it wasn't that diminished and those two follow ups are pretty decent, all things considering. But the prequels are just so far removed from what Star Wars was like, so far removed from the story it was telling, so far removed from anything to do with that film, and it completely warped, distorted and in many ways destroyed the magic story on display in that film, building on the retcons of ESB/ROTJ and magnifying them. Aside from that, the public perception has totally changed due to these films, and new fans are entering that not only are totally oblivious to the original film's perception and power, but actually prefer the new identity--the contrasting, opposite version--that was brought in by ESB and the sequels and prequels. Taking this further, the EU that developed as a response to the sequels and prequels, and now has spawned countless books, comics and videogames, has changed Star Wars from a landmark cinema classic into an incidental film adaptation in this sprawling web of content, the vast majority of which is not only lousy in execution but completely removed from a direct relation to that original film. Additionally, the weakness of all of these subsequent entries has commulatively created a much more negative view of the original film, in that instead of being respected as a film like Lawrence of Arabia or Wizard of Oz might be respected my Joe Moviegoer (who may or may not have even seen said films), it is instead regarded as part of a dumb sci-fi franchise in the same manner that Star Trek and its various spin-offs are.
So, while I love ESB and like ROTJ, and while I may have been willing to accept the limited diminishing effect that those two sequels held on the original, it is a totally different ball game in 2007, where we have not two but five sequels, not one comic series (as there was in 1977-1983) but literally dozens, not three EU books as there was from 1977-1983 but nearly hundreds, where we have two--and presumably a third, final--Special Editions of the original film, where there are now three TV series being made or already made and where the sequels don't get nominated for Best Picture Oscars but Worst Picture Razzies.
What Star Wars lost is really only known by those who have continued to ignore all of those subsequent developments, and thus most Star Wars fans, especially those on the net who are into all that EU/SE/PT stuff that a lot of more casual fans don't care for, are largely ignorant to it. We here represent a specialised group with a high number of people who can actually see the growing diminishing effect on that classic film.
Because that is, above all else, what Star Wara is to me. Not "A New Hope," not Episode VI, not the first entry in an adventure trilogy or the fourth entry in an epic multi-generational melodrama, and not a singular filmic entry in a giant universe of other stories in books, comics and games--but simply a classic film, a landmark American movie that remains on "Great Films of All Time" lists usually somewhere between Godfather and Seven Samurai.