In retrospect I think the original trilogy was a happy accident. You could see it beginning to become a victim of its own success as Lucas obtained freer reign over it. The last episode of the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi, was already starting to include some of the cheesy and overly juvenile elements that would prove unbearable in the prequels that followed. My sense of nostalgia chooses to interpret this sale as an admission that Lucas lost whatever it was that made his original movies successful and loved by a generation, and now maybe the franchise can find better stewardship.
It wasn't an accident - t was
Joseph Campbell Campbell understood story and Myth and helped Lucas craft the whole story arc, and helped extensively with Star Wars - which is why it turned out as it did. There was nothing wrong with the story in the prequels either. It was the execution. Lucas obviously began to believe his own hype and failed to understand that he needed to
stick to the blueprint The story had the right elements, but Lucas didn't understand their relationship to one another and hence he told the story wrong. Darth Vader was meant to be a true tragic character. Instead Jake Lloyd (who convinced Orson Scott Card that a child actor COULD play ender)
was instructed by Lucas to turn in a wooden performance. I don't think Lucas ever saw Anakin Skywalker as ANYTHING but evil. He was dull and arrogant as a kid, and worse as a teenager. If the story had been told correctly and Anakin was portrayed as a good person, one we sympathized with, and wanted to see succeed ( even though we already knew the ending) and focused on events and loves that trapped an otherwise noble man and brought him, ever so slowly to the darkside and madness , we would have loved it. Instead we got CGI and Jar Jar Binks. We know we should have bawling our eyes out at the transformation of Anakin into the Dark suited Vader, and when we didn't we knew we had been robbed of our due. I suspect that Campbell told Lucas all of this, but Lucas was simply too stupid to understand and too interested in making marketable toys from the enterprise.
Other people ( like the game makers) GOT IT, where Lucas missed, because this is NOT and NEVER HAS BEEN Lucas' story. We all know the story, and how its supposed to go. We all know episodes 1-3 were supposed to be a Tragedy. We knew episodes 4-6 were about the Quest of the son. Our generation didn't have this old story told to us in modern terms and we flocked to it for that reason. The Cheesy crap Lucas added didn't help, but that is not what killed it. He told the story wrong. Given the sort of people depraved individuals who inhabit Hollywood - who generally spit on classical ideas of nobility and heroism (because they themselves are as far as you can get from those qualities, and as such are continually wanting to tear them down - killing Ivan's cultural goat) its unlikely we are going to find someone there who wants to tell the story right. But the story is there to tell. If the right person is placed in charge, there is still hope that the remaining 3 movies can be great.
