Well, Lucas didn't even direct them all at first. He did the first movie than let other directors handle it. He wanted to be drive the creative vision of it, but not direct them.
Until the Prequels where people started throwing a fit like they are now.
The prequels just didn't have the magic the originals had, they had better special effects and a great villain character that was killed off way too soon but there were things lacking that people had come to expect. They seemed more like kids movies with a little bit of darkness thrown in, it didn't help that they picked people who couldn't act to play Anakin, I can forgive the young kid because it's hard to find child actors that are consistently good but Hayden Christensen was a mess.