Well, I was thinking recently about the prequels, their flaws, and what I'd do if I could redo them, and I've arrived at a few conclusions;
1 - The original trilogy was sort of pieced together from pulp sources, a influenced from this or that, westerns and samurai movies, and then it was all launched into space, which just made it more awesome. The prequels on the other hand seem to have been made with the goal of "a Star Wars movie", so it just kind of feels like they're aping the old ones.
2 - This one is just my personal grievance, but their was WAY too much CGI in the prequels, and it's all really obvious. Worse of all, It's on stuff that didn't need CGI, like the clone troopers. Why did they have to CGI their armor on? It probably would have cost far less to just outfit a few dudes with plastic armor.
3 - The story. Just.... The story. So boring. I think one big mistake was that they pretty much just wasted Episode 1 on setup, then half of Episode 2. Did the original waste time on settinf up the backstory of the Rebellion? Hell no, they just dropped us right in. Also, how mundane was the story of the prequels? The Trade Federation tries to secede because of bad trade agreements or some shit? Boring. Maybe if the prequels had shown a younger Empire headed by the charismatic Emperor Palpatine slowly wresting power from the Republic, that would have been interesting.
4 - Timeskips, the original trilogy told more or less one story, with only necessary timeskips, the prequels had one when Anakin was 10, then they skipped 10 years, thn the skipped 3 more, it was all over the place. Plus, who in their right mind timeskips over a goddamn war? War is interesting okay? It just is, seeing to massive forces duke it out in the SW universe would have been awesome.
5 - Bad characterization. Jar Jar, the love story. All boring.
And now my breakdown of the individual movies.
Ep. 1 - My least favorite, because while all of the SW movies have been at the core, kids movies, this is the first one that really felt like it was meant for kids and only kids. Plus, the story that it tells really doesn't feel necessary to the mythos.
Ep. 2 - Tons of unnecessary and glaringly bad CGI and an awful romance. I think that this probably would have worked better as Ep. 1. Just straight to the good bits without unnecessary exposition in the Phantom Menace.
Ep. 3 - Not terrible in my opinion, but Anakin's fall to the Dark Side wasn't as great as it should have been. I did however, like Order 66 and the fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, the rest of the movie was flat though.
Overall the prequels had a lot of cool ideas but didn't execute them well, still I did like some elements of them, such as Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, Count Dooku, Grievous, Jango Fett and Boba Fett's definite origin story, the improved lightsaber duels, and that sort of stuff. Still, all that stuff was misused and pushed to the sideline in favor of angst.
As for the original trilogy.
Ep. 4 - My least favorite of the originals, it was really slow and spent so much time building things up.
Ep. 5 - The best, by general consensus, and my favorite. All the set-up was out of the way and they were able to just dive right in without explaining everything.
Ep. 6 - Great, save for the whole, ANOTHER DEATHSTAR thing feeling uninspired and the goddamn Ewoks. If only they'd gone with the original Wookie plan.
Also, I think the prequels would have been way better if they'd gone with this fan theory. (It's # 1.)
http://www.cracked.com/article_19266_5-movie-fan-theories-that-make-more-sense-than-movie_p2.html
