I think the prequels had some good ideas and a lot of creativity went into them but, I just think everything outside of the Original Trilogy was patently unnecessary. I understand why fans and writers and Lucas wanted to expand upon it, I understand the GNP-sized mound of money to be made from it, I understand that nothing short of Yellowstone blowing up would have prevented more Star Wars from being made, but I just feel it was unneeded. When you examine the story formula,
the simplicity of the villains, it's evident that Star Wars was made as a platform for young children with imaginations to role play. This is a healthy thing, and I'm sure it brought a lot of joy to young boys and toy collectors, but when you try to build a fully adult, dramatic story with lore and real world sensibility around it, -- when you try to "Games of Throneify" it -- you find yourself having to change the very nature of the series, and the new "prequel" movies just don't seem to gel all that well with the old. They feel "different", like they belong to a different genre (or genres) than the original trilogy.
It's sort of like how Tolkien's "The Hobbit" differs from Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings/ The Silmarillion." They all belong in the same universe and feature some of the same characters, but the Hobbit is very clearly a kids' story, while LOTR is more of a grown up Adventure story and The Silmarillion is more a Mythos Story. I feel that The original Star Wars Trilogy is firmly a kids/ young teen adventure story, and the Prequels try to be that, but they also try to pull off a whole lot of other things as well - lore dump, young adult romance, Shakespearean tragedy, etc. It comes across as very disjointed. The same series that has the comic relief lizard stepping into poop will then have dramatic character deaths, love scenes, boring Senate meetings, children getting slaughtered. and the main character melting in a fire. It's all over the place. It's like one of those shitty animes where the writers try to cram fantasy, gender-swapping, drama, comedy and porn all in the same series, and, while it may pull off the separate elements competently, it doesn't seem to gel overall. There's too much
stuff in there.
The fact of the matter is, the Prequel story works better as background backstory than it does as an independent story of its own. The Original Trilogy doesn't require you to see it to understand what is going on, and, in fact, works better if you DON'T see it in numbered order, since it spoils Luke's connection to Vader (the emotional lynchpin of the series) and spoils Yoda being a Jedi before Luke (and the audience if it
didn't watch the PT) learns of it.
I understand people want a more "adult" version of the Star Wars universe that they can enjoy. I understand that people want to see the events that occur in the Prequel Era of Star Wars. I understand they want to see what happens to Luke and the rest of the heroes after ROTJ, and that's fine. I know there are a lot of good stories, games and comics out there that cater to the needs of those fans. But I just don't think there will ever be a good Star Wars movie, because our society just doesn't produce the kinds of people who could write one anymore. (Or at least, those kinds of people don't tend to become Hollywood screenwriters anymore.) It seems we've been able to get a decent TV show out of the franchise, but who knows where that will go?