i’m surprised by how popular TPM is here. everyone i know IRL or elsewhere thinks it’s the worst by far.
Most people only remember Jar-Jar and ignore or forget all the other flaws TPM had, and since most people loathe Jar-Jar, it’s not strange that they would consider TPM the worst PT movie, since AotC and RotS lack a similar character. They also seem to like what Lucas was trying to do in AotC and RotJ with Anakin and the Jedi, regardless of the memes that those movies spawned, and I don’t know why.
But I do think this is a flawed argument. Jar-Jar is to TPM what the Ewoks were to RotJ, K-2S0 to R1 or BB-8 to TFA. They’re very lousy, unnecesary, unfunny, pointless, forced one-dimentional characters, but they aren’t the worst elements of their respective movies. Not even close.
And if you are able to go beyond your hatred of Jar-Jar, and you start considering TPM’s flaws, the movie isn’t as bad as AotC and RotS. It shares some of the problems the latter movies had (clueless Jedi, boring, stiff dialogue, bad pacing, nonsensical, underexplained plots, bad CGI, filler, etc), but there is no forced romance or darkness and murder and younglings everywhere, or a bizarre, laudable explanation for a character going evil. Even the secondary villain, Maul, as pointless as he is, he’s not as awful as Grievous (although it is clearly not as good as Darth and the Emperor). It still feels like an adventure, kinda Star Wars-y movie, unlike the latter two, which aren’t even Star Wars-y.
The people who are saying TFA or TLJ are worse than the prequels have a very weird point of view.