Is there a clearer moment when a franchise died?

Lucas' involvement doesn't affect the product. It does insofar as it's his baby, so to speak, and he is a master storyteller (even if I do think he has a lot of "misses", he still gave us the OT, American Graffiti, and THX-1138), but in terms of the product, it's either good or bad. Frank Miller wrote The Dark Knight Returns, but he also made Holy Terror, and I don't have to like the latter just because the former is awesome.

My dislike of the prequels comes from my perceiving their lack of quality storytelling, and Lucas is responsible, I suppose, but I don't think Empire Strikes Back is worse than The Phantom Menace even though Lucas didn't direct (or write) Empire, but he did write and direct TPM.

I've got another post floating around somewhere about the special edition changes; I'll sum it up here: I think some of those changes are superfluous (unnecessary, but I don't care), some were bad (made the movies worse in a small or large way), and one or two were good. Quick examples:

Superfluous: The Death Star explodes bigger - I didn't need this, the explosion was already big, but it didn't make the movie worse.
Bad: Vader yells "No!" in ROTJ, Jabba gets added to ANH, etc. - there are a lot of these.
Good: Ian McDiarmid replaces the old hologram of the Emperor in ESB.

The OT is pretty much untouchable, and for good reason. The excellence of the storytelling is self-evident there. Beside that, I'm not too proud to admit that a lot of this has got to come down to nostalgia. But I think that's true for a lot of the PT fans, too. When they first came out, there was basically a cycle of excitement and disappointment, and many fans stayed happy, but many more got cynical and resentful of the lower quality. I see more and more love for the PT these days, and I think what happened is that a lot of kids who watched the prequels grew up and remember them fondly.

I do think there's a difference, because I think the OT just does have higher storytelling quality, but I won't pretend like none of the goodwill for those films comes from rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia.

It will be interesting to see in 10-15 years' time what the fanbase thinks of the ST. I have a theory that the love for those movies will grow, too, as the children today who watch those movies and grow up loving them will retain that love, continuing some kind of bizarre Star Wars cycle of Trilogy Defense.

I'll also quickly note that there seem to be three groups of fans: OT fans, PT fans, and ST fans, but while all three love the OT, the only disagreement is whether or not the PT and ST are good. PT fans hate the ST, and vice-versa, but all three groups seem to respect the originals. I think they kinda have to, because that's the germ of the story, whether we agree on the quality of the follow-ups or not.

In the big picture of the whole franchise, Lucas is better for Star Wars in a more supervisory role, rather than writing all the screenplays and directing the movies himself. The original 1977 SW was of course outstanding. It was 'lightning in a bottle.' All the right factors came together to make a rousing, straightforward adventure film. Considering everything that the production had going against it, it was almost a happy accident that the movie turned out as good as it did. Early cuts were actually rather plodding and dull, but the movie was really saved when it went to the editing stage and Lucas took more of a back seat.

And then when the first movie turned out to be a smash success and a sequel was greenlit, Lucas was so burnt out from that he turned the reins over to others to do the heavy lifting. And it was good for this burgeoning franchise that Irvin Kershner, Leigh Brackett, and Lawrence Kasdan developed a more complex plot and characterization for the Empire Strikes Back, based on Lucas's initial story.

And then with Return of the Jedi, Lucas got more directly involved in the creative process again, writing the screenplay along with Kasdan. And it wasn't as strong of a movie as ESB.

Years later, Lucas got to make a prequel trilogy, and he had tight creative control as screenwriter and director on all three movies (with Jonathan Hales as co-writer of the AOTC screenplay). He was trying to do something a lot different with these new movies, and they certainly were different. But execution likely would have been much better if he took more of a role like he had with the Empire Strikes Back, with others doing the screenplays and the directing.

The quality of the OT is certainly up for discussion and critique just like any other movie. It's not untouchable, except maybe for a small yet vocal contingent of fandom. As for the later revisions, there are many of us who wish the OT "Special Editions" with all the contrived whiz-bang CGI stuff had never happened, or that at the very least the theatrical versions of the movies would be officially available in a modern format. The Special Editions were Lucas's baby, and they made for a weaker trilogy.

Since corny dialog has been brought up, yes, the original movies were full of it, especially the first one which Lucas wrote himself. Everybody acknowledges this. The original actors have made comments along the lines of "You can write this stuff, but you certainly can't say it." But the performances elevated it. Much of the acting in the OT was objectively better. The delivery comes across as natural and earnest, while the delivery of similar corny dialog in the prequels is stilted and hard to listen to. And guess what, Lucas was more closely directing the actors to give that kind of delivery rather than being more hands-off and letting them do their thing.

So, I'll agree that nostalgia is almost certainly a factor, but I don't believe it's the only, or even primary, reason people generally and I specifically prefer the OT.

I do think that the OT has better storytelling. The first film, in particular is a tightly-plotted script with archetypal, almost-mythic characters, and it's got an imaginative streak that makes it wonderful.

A good example of why its plotting is top-grade and The Phantom Menace's isn't is evident in the closer observance of a main character, better characterizations, and the different "steps" are more directly connected. They need to get to Alderaan, for instance, because of the recording and the Death Star. So they hire a ship, but the Empire are there to try to stop them! Contrast this to TPM where they wind up making bets about podracing and freeing Anakin, which is important to the bigger Star Wars Saga plot, but not to the plot of the Phantom Menace, which is about trade blockages. The crisis is clearer in A New Hope, as well, since the Death Star is going to blow up dissent and the Emperor has "swept away" the Senate (aka, democracy itself). In The Phantom Menace, things aren't as clear why the blockade is a problem. We aren't shown, we're told, and not told particularly well.

I could go on.

The Prequels present plotting problems, too - little, niggling inconsistencies like "the Jedi Master who instructed me," being wrong (it's clearly Qui-Gon, not Yoda, who is Obi-Wan's primary teacher). Those inconsistencies would be the onus of the OT, if made second, but they weren't, so the problem is with the PT. In that way, those frequent hiccoughs wouldn't be a fault if the PT had been made first.

As to the CGI, I still don't like it overused, and I think it was often overused in the PT. Why? I'll see if I can explain.

The Lord of the Rings films make use of a lot of CGI and digital effects, mostly to augment their practical effects, but sometimes to create characters like Gollum. I don't have a problem with this. They used them well, and although they used them a lot, they used them "sparingly" in the sense that they also literally forged weapons and armour.

Contrast this to the Hobbit films. That's overuse of CGI where it becomes a short-cut and winds up making the films seem sloppier and lazier.

In the PT, Lucas avoided location shooting, often even half-building sets and just making them with computers. This results in flat looks, boring cinematography (particularly in dialogue scenes), an artificial feel to the films, and actors who seem stranded and lost (doesn't help that Lucas is infamously bad as an "actor's director" and that his dialogue isn't that punchy, either).

Contrast again to the OT. Lucas was frustrated by the props department who kept giving him shiny armour and cool, sleek, chromed weapons. He wanted it dirty. He wanted this world "lived-in" and "used". Now, I know that it should be "shinier" during the Republic days, but the whole world feels too perfect, like nobody actually lives there. It's not all the time (the Tattooine stuff, for instance, is still more or less dirty), but it just gives a lesser "look" and "vibe" to the world of the films.

He still could have built his shiny world of the glistening Republic, but it would have vibed better.

A final comparison:

I'm told that Lucas visited the set of Gangs of New York while Scorsese was shooting that film. Those sets were built by hand, and apparently Daniel Day Lewis worked on them as a carpenter, too. Lucas took one look at the vast world Scorsese made and said, "You know you can build this stuff with computers, right?"

But the thing is, Gangs of New York's Five Points environment feels real. I watch that film and get a sense of what that world is like - what it's like to live there. It clearly informs the actors' performances for the better, allowing them to breathe the air of that bygone era. Whereas the environments in the films Lucas was making at the time aren't as special or remarkable and don't help the actors as much.

I'm not saying everything, but it's there.

I could go on about the PT's flaws vs. what works in the OT if you want, but I think you get my point:

Nostalgia is some of it, but nowhere near the complete picture.

[deleted]

It's just my opinion, the impression I get, I also do not know any of this for certain.
The force is not THAT strong wih me:-)