So I revisited the prequels a few months back and honestly I absolutely loved them. The acting is awful, the dialog cheesy, but the ambition and the world-building is magnificent. The sequels.. TFA got a good reaction mostly because people were relieved to finally have a Star Wars film and it wasn't completely awful. Sure it was a New Hope remake but there were hints that something could be built - Finn was potentially an interesting character. The problem is TLJ fucked it all.
I think in some ways before this Star Wars had a problem - it was split between fans for whom there was only the original trilogy and those who liked the prequels and the likes of KOTOR. For the latter, there's a little more room to experiment in the universe I think, but the former are valid as they were there from the start - without them there would be no prequels or sequels. Now it's also split a third way with the SJW sequel mob (though one could argue they've brought the other two sides together by being so shit). It means that now it's very very hard to make anything in Star Wars that won't suck.