Seriously?!

This option of yours is one that must ignore the fact of history. The PT could not have been made in 1979.

The PT would have to have been made in the last ten years, and, in that case, people would have probably been impressed by a use of special effects they had never seen before (assuming nobody had made something like Star Wars by that point), but they still would have thought the movies were stupid, dumbed-down flicks with bad acting, bad dialogue, and very little emotional attachment.