I don't think people should appreciate the prequels more, as it is I think they get way more credit than they deserve. Anyone who is honest with themselves will realize that the prequel trilogy consists of three awful films riding on the name Star Wars. Without that SW attached to the titles, The Phantom Menace wouldn't have gotten any sequels...

Not everyone hates the prequels, a lot of people like them, and that is fine by me. I didn't feel the story was amazing, I thought the story sucked through and through. I simply don't enjoy them at all, I get about as much enjoyment out of them as I get from watching day time TV (and I absolutely f ing hate day time TV...) I don't feel like I should appreciate them more, and I never will appreciate them, I dislike them, plain and simple. There are others like me that feel the same way. They really are not good films, but it is just dandy that some people really like them.

You also have to keep in mind that some of us waited for these for close to 20 years, even though most fans didn't expect them to be as good as the OT, they were expecting something slightly not as bad as what we got. This is a factor that adds to some of our dislikes of the film, also as Gaffer pointed out, not only did these films fall about a billion miles short of expectation, but since they somehow managed not to fit with the OT very well, we end up getting revised version of the OT that have been molded to fit the akward hole the PT left for them. Not only where the films changed, which is something I am prefectly fine with, doesn't bother me a bit, but then the originals are not availble and we are told to get the VHS tapes if we really want them so badly, but they will never be on DVD. Then we finally we do get them on DVD, they are nearly on watchable on many modern TVs. Just to let you know where some people are coming from, and why the quality of the PT is such an insult to them.