People were bitching and moaning twenty years ago about midichlorians, a one-off throw away line that nobody knows it even exists, outside of huge Star Wars nerds

That's fully true, and I guess it just exposes my oldness, more than anything else. I still have the prequels in the "new shit that just came out, last Thursday" category, in my head. But yeah, that was literally twenty fucking years ago.

Modified theory: I still think nerds used to be a little more "I know oh-so-much more about this media than you ever will" and a little less "I'm eternally uncomfortable about the changes being made to my media." Lucas came along and started tinkering with his own franchise, in a way that had not been very common, in past eras.

People were used to movies and shows being remade, and arguing about the merits of the original, versus the new shit. They were used to adaptations from books and comics often being disappointing. They were used to SEQUELS coming along and bringing new ideas. Ideas that sometimes even included some retcons, which would technically reach back and change some of the sacred original canon.

But Lucas made prequels very fashionable. AND he wasn't very careful with what he changed, and how he changed it. And he didn't listen to all the people telling him "hey, Jar Jar is annoying," and "hey, these Galactic Senate scenes are cringe," and "yo, we don't need to know about how the Force works, on a cellular-biology level." He just did what he wanted, in an entirely selfish, fart-sniffing way.

And that became the TEMPLATE for a lot of prequel media, up to the present day. I think film and TV producers started semi-deliberately antagonizing the oldschool fanbases, because it drives engagement.

That's no excuse for people to act like fucking morons, but I do think that we, the nerds, are being consciously manipulated, to draw out the most inflammatory responses, from the worst of us.