I think the major difference is that the prequels quickly curdled into dread.
But as an example. My very small town’s one movie theater showed those on 4 of their (at the time) 6 screens. And we had a few hundred people camp out and line up for opening night. I graduated highschool with 80 people. And that theater has never had a line of more than 20 people for longer than 20 minutes before or since. It didn’t really make much sense at the time. And still doesn’t. But lots of people were incredibly excited.
From what people tell me the originals never opened out there during their initial run. People talk about driving an hour to see them. Something we still did for the prequels. Just to get to a better theater, or see it at midnight.
Of course the wait is easy when you can watch the previous entries literally whenever you want.
But for all that they didn’t have much staying power.
