I know what you mean, cause I am also a very very big John Williams fan and apologist. But you have to agree it gets boring to repeat the same tried accusations over and over again against the Media Ventures horde, and even the best OG film composers aren't above scrutiny.
Duel of the Fates is obviously very thoroughly made by an excellent craftsman, and I looved it as a kid, but even a very thoroughly made Orff rip off will never really be more than an Orff rip off. Yes, a lot of the music in "A New Hope" takes its cues from Holst and Bruckner and Stravinsky, but by a different order of magnitude imo - in other words, maybe every great artist steals, but I would argue not to the extent that John Williams ripped off O Fortuna with "Duel of the Fates." Or I guess with a title like that, you can call it an homage, but it's the same thing at the end of the day.
Which, honestly, would be fine except that to me the #1 criterion of film music is not originality, but whether or not the music fits the movie, and helps the movie's identity. As far as problems with the Star Wars prequels as films, I think there are about a million you could get at before you touch the score, but that doesn't mean it's still not a big step back from the original trilogy. Star Wars at it's heart is a space fantasy film, a modern day Flash Gordon serial. It simply doesn't have the pathos to support a style of music that was originally conceived to try to encapsulate the nature of fate and luck - it seems pretentious as fuck, because you end up with movies about space cowboys and space wizards fighting each other to the tune of a piece called "Duel of the Fates," and that's going to be pretentious no matter how well written it is. As we all know, when you follow this line of thought you end up in a cycle of dramatic and musical inflation where everything has to outdo what came before it in being "totally epic bro". If George insisted, well, it's still John's fault for not standing up to him - Lucas has notoriously bad taste (watch "Empire of Dreams" read between the lines to see how his ex-wife saved the original film through editing) and Williams would have absolutely had the clout to say "no bombastic choirs George, remember what film you're making here."
Sorry I brought this so off topic :)