As a collective the trilogy is ireedamble but yeah TFA and TLJ in a vaccum can be perceived as good films. TFA was a meh film(especially for the OT people) if you don't know whats coming next and the TLJ is a good film if it's an indy film opposed to a franchise with characters people are invested in. Yeah ROS was a clusterfuck. A school project that was cobbled together during an all nighter because you need it to pass the class. I wouldn't call it a bad movie I would call it not a movie. In some way it wasn't the creatives fault because they had a really tough hole to dig themselves out of but no one forced them to do "somehow Palpatine returned". It's akin to if Hitler came back in the 2010s with a fleet of flying aircraft carriers he'd secretly constructed in the lost city of Atlantis.
In terms of the PT I meant the cultural consensus was they were horrible movies that destroyed Star Wars until the people who grew up with them came of age at which point the prequels became a divisive issue. Younger people(includng myself) preferred the PT to the originals(whose popularity heavily hinged on being introduced to a generation that had no prior exposure to Sci Fi) but until the 2010s the prequels were seen as bad movies by the adult population.
I was not talking about Sherdog I was more thinking about youtube and the Henry Plinkett reviews, "the people v George Lucas" etc. Lucas sold Star Wars in 2012 and he probably did this because of the intense backlash to the prequels and more specifically him as a director led him to believe it was better for Disney to develop the sequels then he did. When developing TFA Disney acted on every core complaint of the anti prequel movement whether it be using practical effects opposed to CGI and ignoring the world building and exposition that so defined the prequels. THAT is the fundamental reason for the ST's lack of world building because the internet was telling disney they wanted a personal story between a few characters and they wanted show not tell in regards to the details like in the OT. Heck in TFA they literally destroyed Coruscant which was the main setting of the prequels particularly ROTS.
But yeah the point is all that changed and all of a sudden people were showing interest in the prequel era and those stories. But it was a drastic shift especially in terms of George Lucas. People went from wanting George Lucas gone from Star Wars to hating Disney for departing from his vision in just a few years. The larger point is this history is going to lead to Disney ignoring further criticism and making whatever they want to make thinking Gen Z is going to embark on a nostaglia fueled campaign to rehab the image of all their projects.
Here's "the People v George Lucas" which was made 2 years before Lucas sold Star Wars. Shows you where the culture was at at the time. Prequel fans always liked the prequels but their voice wasn't being heard, this is what was being heard. And this is the climate that ultimatly birthed the ST. The Henry Plinkett ones are really funny even if you disagree with the points he's making he's playing a 110 year old serial killer who hates the Star Wars prequels.
There are always naysayers and shit talkers with any movie. I'm old enough to remember the OT being in theaters and those were among the highlights of any childhood, with the Kenner toy line being on every kid's birthday and Christmas wishlists. The OT was a phenomenon that younger folks can't understand if they weren't around then.
The PT was the first new SW content (other than EU stuff for hardcores) in 16 years. It was met with understandable criticism because it had been massively hyped for years, but was a different kind of trilogy geared towards a new generation. Lots of CGI, Jar Jar, and lots of trade federation political shit that I remember people shitting on. While the trilogy wasn't great (although ROTS arguably was IMO), it added world building, introduced many cool new characters - Qui Gonn, Maul, Dooku, Mace, Jango Fett, etc. and excellently closed the loop on Anakin's backstory, former BFF with Obi Wan and "young" Sidious pulling the strings. Critical consensus at the time was that ROTS was a good movie that stuck the landing despite shortcomings in the previous two films.
All of it was canon-worthy and this has been evidenced by the well-received side projects that began shortly after the PT wrapped. Clone Wars, bringing back Maul, Rebels and of course all the Disney series building on the events of the PT timeline. If it didn't have marketing cache, they wouldn't have used it. BTW I think you're mistaken on Coruscant being blown up in TFA - that was Hosnian Prime not Coruscant:
https://www.cultureslate.com/news/vvgwss2mbh38vhhjryh6e38xty5a5e
The ST by contrast has been followed by the sound of crickets since wrapping more than 3 years ago. Animated Rey/Kylo/Snoke/Poe/Finn spin offs? Nah, fuck that, let's wait for the stink to go away. The closest they've come is building the Grogu cloning storyline as damage control, without openly admitting the ST actually happened LOL.
