S_Matt said:

I do have to agree with Anchorhead that the films did kind of shift in tone and that kind of does hurt the continuity of something intended to be a single story split into different chapters.

I also think (as some have already touched on) that opinions on that tonal shift may be directly related to age when first seen. By the time Return was released, I was 21 years old, had my own house, had started my career in earnest, and was living with the girl who would eventually become my wife.

I was an entirely different person from the 15-year-old kid I was when Star Wars was first released. Sitting in the theater in 1977, I was moved by the mystery, the darkness, and vastness of story in Star Wars - the seriousness of the story.

As a young adult six years later, I had zero interest in the shrunken story, shrunken universe, the shift towards children's film, or with the softening of the characters. That's why I wanted to walk out of the theater. I felt very let down. It no longer resembled the story that had moved me all those years earlier.

The people here who first saw return when they were 6 - 10 years old may not have felt that shift as much. One main reason was the fact that the film was largely geared toward them. By default, they would almost certainly be more accepting of it.