The Phantom Menace is bad, but still creatively interesting. Over the course of the trilogy though, it really just feels more and more phoned in. I think after the reaction to TPM, Lucas probably just wanted to get the trilogy done with. All the passion got drained away by the end of the trilogy. Behind the scenes content for RotS seems to support this.

I absolutely subscribe to the idea that the original plans for the trilogy before 1999 were going to have Episodes 2 and 3 go in a wildly different direction.

Really, I just can’t understand why Revenge of the Sith is considered by anyone to be some operatic masterpiece. The only good qualities it has comes from depicting the interesting events ANH describes, but even then it butchers them. It’s really just an uncompelling story, shot and directed as blandly as possible, with a healthy helping of bloat and a completely tangential VFX reel every 15 or so minutes to make sure you don’t fall asleep.

Fanedits of Revenge of the Sith that cut out the cheese and the bloat completely fail for me because once you cut that out, the movie has very little left.