Even when ESB had the least and most tasteful changes of the bunch? Following this, ROTJ should have rebounded.

That it conforms to the original grosses, adjusted for inflation, is not a big surprise. That it conforms to the original reviews is also not a surprise.

I will grant one caveat in that the first 1997 release, no matter what it was, would have had the most interest. But it is pretty conspicuous that both ESB and ROTJ together couldn't equal ANH alone. On anecedotal evidence, I don't know many people who would have lined up for ROTJ that lined up for SW. On personal experience, I saw SW in 1997 about seven times, but ROTJ once and ESB only twice. My 9-year-old sister who is not a huge fan went to ANH with me, as did my dad, and we ran into family friends at ANH screenings even after two weeks, who were there with their children as well. The ANH reissue was a true cultural event, preportional to its original release. ESB and ROTJ were comparitively less eventful. This accounts for ANH's long-term popularity, but also ESB and ROTJ's comparitively niche-audience as mere "sequels", which all but the true devotees didn't bother with. If you consider that it was mostly true devotees that saw ROTJ, a film even many fans don't like that much, that gives you a good indication of the massive following the franchise had at that point (the height of the star wars rennaisance instigated in 1991) but also the great divide in which casual moviegoers embrace the original film, made with a mass audience in mind, but whom cared much less about everything made afterwards.