Remember, original Star Wars was only 2 hours, so no ep 4 and 6 would still make plenty of a movie.
Sure, but there are certain problems with omitting Episode 4.
- Obi-Wan goes from being bad and unfocused with the force, bad with the saber and a shadow of his former self, to (skip ep 4) suddenly doing all very well again - using both the force and his saber with ease in Ep 5. This creates no pay off to his broken character arc that he starts out with, and the pay off is therefore little to none.
- Tala becomes a rather short appearance of a character, and her death - for a “movie goer” not having watched the series - will probably be very underwhelming and emotionless. Ep 4 is where we really see her shine, and she has great chemistry with both Leia and Obi-Wan.
- We are losing the arguably coolest location and CGI of the series thus far (with decent competition from ep2) imo.
- And again, just have to state this, Obi-Wan’s character growth loses a lot of meat.
Episode 4 is actually a pay off to Obi-Wan’s entire character arc, as it is the episode where he overcomes his fear, shock and doubts to save something more important than himself - and therefore, also overcome his fear of what Anakin has become because of his new meaning and purpose.