People are too obsessed with the idea of trilogies. Honestly they should have never bothered numbering the Star Wars movies at all, and should have just filled things in with whatever movies they wanted to make. So like, for instance, they could have just made a bunch of movies about young Anakin at different stages of his life, or about other characters in that time period (which could feature Anakin as a supporting character or guest character), and we wouldn’t know the exact one where Anakin would turn to the dark side, but we would see the gradual transition. And then a later movie could just be about him hunting down Jedi. Others could be about other characters, like Obi Wan.
I mean that’s eventually what the Star Wars meta narrative evolved into, when you factor in Clone Wars and all the standalone movies and Disney Plus shows. There’s no reason they couldn’t have just written things that way in the first place, instead of forcing the prequels and sequels to mirror the OT.
Honestly, this.
While I think it would’ve been great to have a movie of just Darth Vader killing Jedi, all three of the prequels have important concepts to show. The Phantom Menace is more necessary then people think. It shows Anakin’s past trauma as a slave and introduces his relationship with his mother which is a huge part of his turn to the dark side, as well as introducing his strained relationship with the Jedi council. These shouldn’t be in flashbacks because as explained here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD2G0D-nyLA), flashbacks aren’t a part of the Star Wars format. It also shows how Palpatine became chancellor (that shouldn’t happen off-screen, Palpatine’s rise to power is literally the other half of the point of the prequels, that’d be like if Anakin turning to Vader was off-screen) and the corruption in the Senate. Just jumping into Attack of the Clones doesn’t work, unless you combine their plots together somehow.
I would do a saga like this:
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
A Clone Wars movie (using elements from EU novels and both Clone Wars series)
Revenge of the Sith
A movie with Darth Vader hunting surviving Jedi and the foundations of the empire
A movie adapting the Fortress Vader comic arc
A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi