The broad ideas of what Palpatine was doing are fine but the execution doesn’t really work when we’re supposed to believe that an entire army of clones was hidden, then used by the Jedi, then they killed the Jedi, all without anyone getting anything more than a “sense” something is wrong. Instead of some kind of actual hunt being shown. The Clone War should have been EPI, the purge should have been EpII and then the dark times EpIII. The whole trilogy should really have been re-structured to resemble a historical epic. The set pieces are there (chariot races and gladiator arenas) but the “Fall of the Roman Empire” style plot is complete shambles. And the wheel of time is again an interesting idea with a series about fated bloodlines and destiny etc but the way it mirrors the OT is far too sloppy. I don’t hate the PT… it’s just so boring and bad that it’s not watchable.
I think you’re absolutely right that the structure was way off. In this way I think Lucas would’ve been better served by trying to more closely align the trilogy with the OT. As is, the PT feels pretty disjointed due to the ten year gap. The first film is supposed to be the set up film but we end up with AOTC doing most of the actual set up (and the important set up from TPM, the characters, not really following through because of the ten year disconnect).
As for plot inconsistencies… I mean why are Luke and Leia in the films? Why is Vader’s resurrection? In fact why are characters like Yoda and Palpatine here? It should have been made to preserve all the twists and character reveals for new audiences but the toy line came first I guess. The OT had some much world building by referencing events and characters off screen, but here it’s all reduced down so that everything happens on Coruscant and Tatooine.
I disagree that the twists necessarily needed to be preserved (I mean basically the whole point of the trilogy was to give backstory to the twists), but I do agree that it seems to be a little too married to making sure that every single little piece is in order to tie into the OT. There’s definitely a distinct de-mystification going on in a lot of ways (obviously there’s stuff like midichlorians, but also things like Palpatine’s transformation).