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I remember growing up in the 90s and Star Wars was huge. After seeing a lull in the 80s a few years after Jedi, it came back roaring in the 90s and there were action figures and books and comics and series and toys and video games and just anything that could have a logo plastered over it, and people loved Star Wars. I can't even describe how much there was and just the universe of Star Wars from that 90s perspective, because you had to be there. But it could be summarized as Star Wars was cool, and the 3 films were seen as perfect. George Lucas was a God to anyone nerdy or interested in stuff like that, and was considered a very good artist who had made this great thing, and we loved him. The only way to fully experience this feeling of the era would perhaps be to go into one of the many comic book/collector's shops with loads of action figures and other stuff and just look around, or to watch Clerks.

And then the prequels came out. And the universe imploded. They weren't nearly as good as the original, which is not due to nostalgia, it is due to them just being not very good; they had major flaws, just erased preconceived notions we had about what that era was, and replaced those notions with something not very good. Frankly, what we thought that prequel era was was indeed better than what George Lucas' prequels were and what their story and set up was. And frankly, the aesthetic was not Star Wars.
And the prequels really scarred the Star Wars universe and franchise, because fans didn't like the prequels by and large, the prequels were now the integral canon set up for the Original Trilogy and thus forced themselves onto the Original Trilogy (George Lucas is now and forever a little boy who became a whiny teenager who became Vader because he was a baby; if you thought he was a teenage to adult warrior who fought against Clone Armies and was a just and great man only to fall to the evil of the Dark Side later in life, well, tough), and George Lucas totally fell from grace to become either reviled or at least disliked, or considered incompetent and not what he was thought to be as this great artist. The prequels would also lead into the era of Lucas altering the Original films, much to the chagrin of the fans, and not even offering the original theatrical cut alongside his altered versions, which is I think the most despised part about the man for those who dislike him now. Its just a really sad period now, because Star Wars just isn't what it used to be and that golden age ended when we saw the Orange Jamaican Rabbitman.

So the question becomes, what if George Lucas had not gone and made the prequels?
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