Easterhay said:

Jar Jar Binks was the first completely CGI main character in a movie (who cares if he was loved or loathed, the technical achievement of that character is something to celebrate

Jar-Jar was not something to celebrate. The bottom line is that it may have been an interesting hardware experiment, but the prequels looked fake and the OT looks staggeringly real. There might just be a connection between that and the fact that all the ships and creatures and models were hand-crafted, the backgrounds hand-painted. They had so many craftsmen under one roof.

This has happened in many industries not just movies though.