On paper, the Prequels are a better story than even the Original Trilogy. The Prequels have an outright amazing story - a darker, more sophisticated and tragic tale of friendship and betrayal set against the backdrop of the fall of a great civilization and the rise of a totalitarian dictatorship. I’m getting excited about this story just typing out that description.

But somehow, the actual implementation was so severely botched in so many intertwining ways that the incredible story ended up buried under layers of mediocrity and incomprehensible creative decisions.

I mean… it’s really amazing to think about. Let’s start with the basic premise: “A young Obi Wan Kenobi meets ace pilot Anakin Skywalker, who becomes Kenobi’s star pupil and close friend. The two head off to war together on a Crusade to save the Republic. But along the way, Anakin is tempted by power and betrays his mentor as the Republic crumbles and the Jedi are hunted down.”

Holy shit, this story sounds AMAZING. Now let’s examine George Lucas’ thought process in actually writing and implementing this epic Shakespearean saga:

Okay firstly, let’s spend a whole movie with Anakin as a 10 year old kid. I know he’s supposed to be this awesome star pilot when Kenobi meets him, but… you know we can just make him a pod-racer. That’s close enough. We can always establish the Anakin/Kenobi friendship later.
Actually, let’s forget about Kenobi for now. Let’s focus on a completely new character, Qui Gon Jinn, who wants to train little Anakin due to some prophecy I just made up. We’ll make Kenobi kind of apathetic towards Anakin. We can always build up their friendship later.
I know this whole thing is a tragedy, but let’s go for a much lighter, juvenile tone, and add in a goofy cartoon lizard for extra laughs. This way I can showcase those new 3D rendering algorithms ILM just developed.
I know the story was supposed to be about Anakin and Kenobi going off on a Crusade together, but you know we’ll just put that off for now. We’ll make the story about this evil shipping company that invades a planet to somehow lower their taxes, and the good guys need to stop them.
For Episode 2 I guess we need to have something with the clone wars. I probably should have started that in Episode 1 but I’m sure we’ll have time.
So Anakin is a teenager now. But he needs to be really moody and kind of psychotic so the audience understands how he could turn evil.
Okay so Anakin needs to fall in love with Luke’s mom somehow. The only possible way to write that is to send them off together alone to a really romantic Italian villa. So we’ll have Anakin off on a romantic getaway with Luke’s mom, while Obi Wan goes off to discover the clones.
This separates Anakin and Obi Wan for most of the movie, but I’m sure we’ll have enough time to establish their close friendship in Episode 3.
Okay so with Episode 3, we’ll establish the Anakin/Obi Wan friendship in the opening act. I guess I should have done this earlier, but I’m sure the audience will get the idea.
I need Anakin to turn evil somehow. Wait… I guess he’s already kind of evil because he killed those Tuskens, but now he’s a good guy again, so we need to get him back to being evil.
So Anakin has this dream that Luke’s mom is gonna die, and then Palpatine comes along and tells Anakin he knows of some Sith magic that can save her. But the only way to make it work is to go on an extended killing spree and murder pretty much everyone you’ve ever cared about (except Padme). This murder spree also includes slaughtering a Jedi kindergarten class.
We’ll throw in a philosophical discussion about how the Jedi and Sith are similar in certain ways, so the audience can buy into Anakin actually doing this.
Now Anakin and Obi Wan need to have a really emotional climactic fight. We didn’t really build up their friendship that much, but we can compensate by putting in this really awesome lightsaber fight where they fight over lava and John Williams comes up with another incredible score and lava is flying everywhere and stuff is collapsing all around. It will be awesome, trust me.

And… that’s how you take an absolutely incredible premise and implement it in the worst way possible.