In many ways he made life more difficult for himself creating contrived PT-OT links that familiarised the two trilogies, but at the same time greatly disrupted their continuity. Anakin creating C3P0 is a HUGE continuity problem, and it really only served to bring a familiar Star Wars character into the prequels. In fact, the droids being in the PT (with the exception of perhaps seeing them at the end of ROTS with Antilles) at all is probably the biggest continuity problem of them all. My theory is that George planned on embodying all the comic relief within the character of Jar Jar Binks, and the overwhelming negative response to him meant that he needed to embody the comic relief within some other characters - tried and true like-able characters - he no longer wanted to risk creating an all-new character for comic relief. I think that the thing he missed altogether is that the humour in the OT was divided amongst all the main characters - there was Han Solo with his wise cracks, Leia with her bratty attitude, Yoda with his flashlight hijinx, 3P0 and R2 of course, and I even thought there was a funny interplay between 3P0 and Chewbacca (starting with "let the wookie win" and culminating in ESB with his reconstruction and confinement to Chewie's back). Having one court jester in a movie is a very hit and miss strategy, and more often than not, such a character becomes the object of the audiences scorn rather than their laughter (think about when they introduced Scrappy-Doo to Scooby-Doo).
In many ways he made life more difficult for himself creating contrived PT-OT links that familiarised the two trilogies, but at the same time greatly disrupted their continuity. Anakin creating C3P0 is a HUGE continuity problem, and it really only served to bring a familiar Star Wars character into the prequels. In fact, the droids being in the PT (with the exception of perhaps seeing them at the end of ROTS with Antilles) at all is probably the biggest continuity problem of them all. My theory is that George planned on embodying all the comic relief within the character of Jar Jar Binks, and the overwhelming negative response to him meant that he needed to embody the comic relief within some other characters - tried and true like-able characters - he no longer wanted to risk creating an all-new character for comic relief. I think that the thing he missed altogether is that the humour in the OT was divided amongst all the main characters - there was Han Solo with his wise cracks, Leia with her bratty attitude, Yoda with his flashlight hijinx, 3P0 and R2 of course, and I even thought there was a funny interplay between 3P0 and Chewbacca (starting with "let the wookie win" and culminating in ESB with his reconstruction and confinement to Chewie's back). Having one court jester in a movie is a very hit and miss strategy, and more often than not, such a character becomes the object of the audiences scorn rather than their laughter (think about when they introduced Scrappy-Doo to Scooby-Doo).