What really bothers me, is that Lucas had enough good ideas for the prequels he didn't stick to in the end. Take the design for example - the idea was to have many different designs in the beginning (that sometimes might even look alien compared to the original style) and then reduce that film by film to the amount and look and feel of designs from ANH. What we got instead was more vehicles and different designs stuffed into Ep3 than in any other SW movie. People who watched the film with me in theaters (and didn't now the vehicle designs from old rpg-books and the zahn novel trilogy) sometimes couldn't even tell apart which vehicle belonged to which fraction.

Just one example were he not only didn't stay true to the concept of the old movies, but also the concept he had originally in mind for the prequels.