Endur said:Phantom Menace was the flop, not Revenge of the Sith.
Phantom Menace hurt the Star Wars franchise so badly that both follow-on movies could not recover from the damage that was done.
Lots of people who would have gone to see all three saw Phantom Menace and didn't bother to go see the other two.
Yep, that's the thing. On the momentum of the original trilogy, TPM made a lot of money. But it was a terrible movie and it badly hurt the franchise. RoTS was better, but still not very good. Many people like me, long term SW fans (but not fanatics), went to see it more with a grim determination to see how the whole thing tied together rather than with any sense of joyful anticipation. And, well, it was mostly ok. Better than TPM. Better than Disney's "The Black Hole". Worse than 50% of sf movies over the past 20 years.