I really liked FOTR at the time, and still prefer it to what we actually got. Though imagination and our projections in filling in the blanks often triumphs reality. I’d love to see an animation or comic book form of it, even fan made, but then is so much of that early “what if?” stuff I’d like to see, along the lines of “The Star Wars” comics from 2013/14.
A common element across most fan speculation about the Prequels is that our imaginations concocted stories almost entirely based on elements from the OT. Things like Alderaan, Captain Antilles, spice mines of Kessel, etc. But Lucas obviously wanted to make the Prequels unique, with new settings, new characters, and completely unexpected plot developments. And since it was Lucas’ creativity and imagination that created Star Wars in the first place, it seemed likely that he would come up with amazing new things that far surpassed the mediocre imagination of the average fan.
And indeed he did come up with lots of new, unexpected stuff. Things like Gungans, mysterious clone conspiracies, a “chosen one” prophecy, Qui-Gon Jinn, General Grievous, Dexter Jettster, pod racing, etc. I mean, who could have expected that Episode I would go in an entirely bizarre direction - telling a Kurosawa-influenced side story about two Jedi Knights protecting a young Queen from evil invaders - a story almost completely unrelated to anything that happens in the OT. Lucas obviously wanted to flex his creative muscles, defying fan expectations to such a degree that the whole thing came off as wacky instead of cool. In retrospect, the pre-Prequel fan expectations - derivative and straightforward as they often were - sound like a much better “rough sketch” for the Prequels than what we ultimately got.