But as time has gone on, the prequel fandom has gotten more and more fervent and unironic and sensitive to criticism, which is a shame. Now you have all these video essays about how the prequels are masterpieces and how the flaws aren’t actually flaws.
I feel this, at one point I was on this side before I kinda came around to the realization that they’re just not that well-written. Even ROTS I still mostly like more for it’s mythological motifs, themes, visuals, and music more then the writing. The best scenes are the ones with either Palpatine (because Ian McDiarmid is fucking awesome) or the ones where no one is talking. The opening act and third act are also pretty awesome.
A lot of time headcanon or supplemental material (a lot of which isn’t even canon anymore, which is why you’ll see people mixing up Legends and Canon all the time) is used to explain bad writing. “The Jedi come across as too bored and uncaring… actually you see, it was supposed to be that way! They’re supposed to be an emotionally repressed cult! It all makes sense now!”. Nope, George is just a flat dialogue writer who failed to get his intent across, making many people misunderstand the entire point. Among other things.
There’s a lot I love about Lucas because when you read what he was intending for for the prequels it really is brilliant, but man he needed someone else helping him with his scripts.
That is the unvarnished truth. And it is somewhat ironic that he had help credited on AOTC and that one turned out the worst. He needed some quality help, like Kazdan, who showed he still had it with Solo.
I think the success of the originals are George’s genius story telling coupled with a lot of outside input to refine the story and the dialog. The various interviews reveal how much help he had on A New Hope and we can see how much he had on TESB And ROTJ. When it came to the prequels, no one evidently wanted to help him with the scripts or direct them. So what you have is more purely George than in the OT. The PT definitely reveal his flaws and where his genius lies. And I personally feel the ST would have been a repeat of the PT, perhaps worse, if George had done them himself. At least this way everyone can blame Abrams, Johnson, and Kennedy for the flaws (even blaming them for some decisions George made before selling to Disney).