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Of course anticipation was high for the Phantom Menace. I recall reading about hundreds of people going to theaters on their lunch break and paying full price for a movie ticket just to watch the Phantom Menace trailer. They'd dip in, watch the trailer, and leave. It only played before 3 films-- Meet Joe Black, The Siege, and The Waterboy, and all three films saw significant jumps in box office due to the trailer. According to Variety, around 500 people came into a screening of The Siege in Los Angeles one afternoon, and about two thirds of them left as soon as the Phantom Menace trailer concluded.

You mention people spending hours downloading the trailers online, but 1998 was before the internet was the omnipresent part of our lives it is today, so the 10 million downloads, which seems small by today's standards, was then a record. So yes, you are absolutely correct that everyone was excited... IN ADVANCE.

The original Star Wars hit theaters on my 7th birthday, and all 3 of the original films were important to me as a child, so of course I was one of many who eagerly awaited The Phantom Menace. And like most, I was disappointed after watching the film. I don't think there's much reverse nostalgia going on here. My friend and I walked out of the opening night showing dismayed by how disappointed we felt, and what a mess of a movie we'd just seen, and the others exiting the theater were expressing similar sentiments.

Same thing with the criticism for The Phantom Menace. Adult Star Wars fans who grew up with the originals may have not been so warm on Episode I, but every kid who was at least 4-years-old or older who saw it as their first Star Wars films and first Star Wars experience in theater loved it and kept begging our parents or guardians to take us to see it multiple times. And plenty of kids who grew up with Episode I and ever had any genuine love for the film still love it or least like it and given in to the hate bandwagon hivemind on the Internet like unfortunately so many other millennials have.

Nostalgia aside, the film has absolutely stood the test of time because it's always genuinely been not just a great Star Wars movie, but a great movie in itself period. And there is no way anyone possibly prefer the next two Prequels or the Disney films over this film unless you're just really mentally ill, or have really bad taste in movies.

The other two Prequels on the other hand...yeah that's definitely when things started to go downhill...they have always been a mixed bag among the general public even with Episode III's so-called "return to form" reception.

Around the time that The Last Jedi came out, I rewatched ROTJ for the first time in about 20 years.

I wouldn't say that "any criticism" is "revisionist garbage." There are things to criticize about that film. For one, it's tonally inconsistent. A lot of the stuff with the ewoks feels like a children's film with juvenile comedy, whereas the final act is very serious, and touches on interesting philosophical themes and gets relatively dark. There are scenes in the film which, when stacked up next to each other, don't even feel like they're from the same movie.

No, I was disappointed by "ROTJ" in 1983. It seemed childish, flat, and poorly edited compared to the first two films, and I was disappointed by the redwood forest setting as I lived near redwoods at the time. I wanted to see other planets, not something that looked like the park in the next neighborhood over!

Oddly, I wasn't as disappointed by "TPM" on first viewing, even though it's a vastly inferior movie. I suppose it was like seeing "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", I wanted to like those movies SO badly that my critical judgement was offline.

ROTJ was very popular i recall when it came out in 1983, i for one loved it and still do , lots of action and good ending , no idea why it gets so much stick.

I was truly hyped when the prequels were announced, the story of vaders demise, it all came crashing apart when i first watched it , i hated the cast , mace windu, anakin , jar jar , thought palps , obi wan and qui gon were fine but man i thought it sucked on the whole, the storys there, i just thought lucas went ott