I think a lot of people got a bad taste in their mouth with episode 1 and they couldn’t look past it. I saw all three in the theater and I enjoyed them all, but the whole Gungan / Jar Jar thing makes episode 1 the weakest for me by far. The whole tone of the movie feels like it was aimed at a much younger audience, even compared to episodes 2 and 3.
Which is bizarre to me, since you have to imagine the core audience for those movies were middle aged people who saw the originals as kids.
Still, nothing is worse to me than episode IX. I’d watch a Jar Jar spinoff before I’d watch that again.