Originally posted by: Tiptup
Yeah, he definitely ruins the drama and gets in the way a lot, and is perhaps the single greatest element in TPM that makes it lose its Star-Wars feel. But, I can still handle him as a character if I expect nothing from the film other than what it offers. Perhaps that's just me though.

I think this is correct. Had Lucas decided to market these films as, say, Clone Wars rather than Star Wars with a different logo, no opening crawl or at least a different one and so on, basically something along the lines of the Ewok films, then chances are most people would have had fewer problems with them, since it would have been much easier to just let the new "brand name" establish itself as the story played out over the years. However, when Lucas decided to market the new movies as a direct prelude to the OT, being part of the same story on the same level as the original films, he invariably created a lot of expectations since everyone used the older films a measuring stick for what these new films would and should be like. Of course, marketing the PT under a different name would most likely have generated a lot less interest in the project, and so less money for Lucas, which likely goes a long way to explain why he never seriously considered that option.