Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
I would even go so far as to say that TPM has hurt the general public's image of Star Wars, by moving the franchise from the realm of moviedom to the realm of computer-based kiddie fare. The AFI might put Star Wars in their top-20 films of all time, but to most people you say Star Wars and they think light futurama video game pablum, and we have the PT, especially TPM, to thank for that.
That perception could be one of the reasons that more people aren't upset by the lack of restoration of the OT. Something like TPM, most people wouldn't care if its theatrical release is preserved or not. They'd say, "it's just a movie". But I'm not sure many people who blurt that out if the topic were preserving "Citizen Kane", or "Casablanca". Nor should they about "Star Wars", and yet they do. And that too is something for which we can thank the PT, particularly TPM.
That's an interesting theory, I had never thought of it like that. In 1997, the OT was sure considered a classic; in fact, I would say this is the height of its reputation. It had all the popularity and hype and financial success of 77-83, but now it also had something else: prestige, because it was a re-release of a series of classic films from the past. And you had all those "Power of Myth" and Smithsonian things debuting. That was something new. It was now a modern classic. The issue of "preserving the OOT" didn't exist, because the SE was brand new and available in VHS (LD was obsolete by then) so the versions were totally equal, and there were still a ton of the Faces tapes in stores.
But there were huge voices clamoring for the original versions into 2001 and 2004 and 2006. I think by 2006 when the GOUT came out, the prequels had been so far in peoples consciousness that they stopped caring. It was tiring, and SW's image was shifting. Stuff like the Clone Wars cartoons, even though its very good, further orients things towards prequel-era and cartoon stuff. I'm not sure I would pin the blame on TPM or even the PT as a whole, but rather the re-orientation that LFL enacted towards the content and style that now people think of when they think of Star Wars. It began with TPM, but it didn't end there.
On the plus side, it won't last, its just the way things are now. In 30 years from now, Lucas will be dead, there will be much less Star Wars stuff, and the original versions will be available in high-def. People will look back on the OT as classics and everything since then as not-classics. It's the same thing with Star Trek: TOS is considered more of a classic now than ever (it was derided as silly in the 70s and 80s and 90s), despite forgettable stuff like Voyager and Enterprise and spoofs like Galaxy Quest. No one remembers the crappy spin-offs, except as a footnote to the classic original. King Kong had a sequel; so did Wizard of Oz; French Connection did too; Breathless was remade with Richard Gere. Etc. At the time, it cheapens the original, but after a while people don't pay attention. Rocky is still a classic even though Rocky V exists.