The devil is in the details. George Lucas had very little to do with the dialogue and much of the post filming production of the original trilogy. His then wife (Marcia Lucas) helped him with nearly all the dialogue (and a bunch of post editing), as did the actors on set. The credited directors for all the original films (whom were all very competent directors, with plenty of real world experience) certainly had a huge hand in guiding Georges vision and delivery.
Now the prequels, that was ALL George. He had surrounded himself with yes-men (and women) and convinced himself of his greatness due to the vast wealth he had accrued on the back of the success of the original films. Even his arty earlier stuff like THX (that i personally rather like) he had proper outside help (Marica again for some of the dialogue etc), and American Graffiti was being looked over by the Coppla and Kurtz (so seriously good film people).
A great idea's guy and someone with a vision and understanding of great film (his admiration of Akira Kurosawa a big step in what guided his thinking around Star Wars etc), but terrible at dialogue (prequels as exhibit A) and by all accounts not a great on-set director (Actors find it hard to pull the emotion from his directing and understand exactly what he wants and they should be doing).
Now don't get me wrong, i'm a bigger fan of his than say Spielberg, but the difference in quality from those original Star Wars films vs the prequels is telling.
Disney just does not understand the Star Wars of the original era. It is much more in tune with the prequels and mostly because they grossed more at the box office (modern films do this often, not because films are better but because they are more common and people more numerous to see them) so probably got the attention of the accountants the most.
The examples you give of poor stuff in Empire are really non-issues, not on the scale of the constant disasters (film wise) that are the prequels or 90% of the new Disney era stuff. I guess until we get to experience a planet blockade it is hard to tell if a film depiction is real enough or not? Would an ion cannon be enough to knock the blockading ship out long enough for ships to escape? And maybe deep enough inside a huge creature living inside an asteroid there would be pressure and an atmosphere of sorts, we have to find one to be sure?
But terrible stories, told badly due to modern era films fascination with action and explosions and jump scare thrills over building characters and plot, that stuff is so in your face as to be unmissable. Nostalgia is often misused in this kind of discussion.
I watched a bunch of Star Wars films recently (as many as i could stomach in relation to the prequels and Disney stuff) and those originals hold water where all the other leak everywhere. We could do a detailed blow by blow, scene by scene analysis, but that takes time and really you just need to see the Redletter Media stuff on the prequels to understand how it works in this discussion. But no it was not (is not, nor ever has been) nostalgia that makes me love the original films over everything since, nor was it an 'age' thing. They are just much better films in all aspects baring the improved special effects that is normal for improved technology now vs back in the 70's and 80's.
Here is the first batch on the first prequel:
Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace review
All seven parts of the 70 minute Phantom Menace review in order.
www.youtube.com
And you can look through the playlists of theirs to see episode II and III and some of the Disney films before they lost interest.
Also the Hackfraudmedia guy (a 'tribute' channel to Redletter media in some ways) does some good stuff on the new Disney stuff:
Why watch some youtube channel? To help you understand why people like myself dislike the nostalgia jibe, why we consider Star Wars post the originals so disappointing and why many Star Wars fans now no longer have as much interest in the franchise.
If you don't care to understand that, then just say so and i can save myself some time
Also if you simply don't care about Star Wars as maybe as much as you once did (so are content to see it dragged through the Disney mire) then please also mention it. I have a passion about Star Wars, and it still (annoyingly) matters to me, and if you had shown me where we are now like a year after Jedi (RotJ) i would have laughed you out the room as an impostor from the future, no way in hell could they have screwed up the franchise as bad as it is, but they did and will carry on doing so while we support that vandalism with our money
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