Also Lucas hasn’t made a solid ending to a SW film since Empire. What’s sad is that I don’t even know all the specifics of what Lucas contributed to the ending of Empire so I wouldn’t be so quick to give him that type of props.
I dislike AOTC, but I think it had a solid ending. The war begins and we see the massive army ready to ship out to the front lines and Anakin and Padme sneak away for a forbidden wedding and whatever pleasure they can get in a galaxy about to be torn apart by war. Of course it looks terrible and you have to forget the last 2 hours.
In general the ending was competent, but everything that preceded the ending was garbage and endings are built upon the foundations of a story. Not even one person at the end continued to question the suspect nature surrounding the Clone Army and that tarnished the whole thing for me.