I find that ROTS plays well as a stand-alone movie. In fact, to me it truely is the only "prequel", a filling in of back story to the main story which is the OOT. It introduces everything so you don't have to have seen the first two, and you even get the impression that Anakin has always been a heroic warrior, that he and Obi Wan are best buds and that he and Padme have a somewhat believable relationship. Its ironic that after all this "set up" in the first two movies--none of it was necessary! And treating ROTS as simply a "prequel" and not "episode III" of the Tragedy of Darth Vader, the OOT is mostly unaffected in its perception. For me, i can re-watch ROTS as an interesting-but-not-great prequel to the OOT trilogy, and TPM even as an unrelated stand-alone space fantasy film. But the trilogy as a whole doesn't work. You get back story (ROTS), then a back story to the back story (AOTC), then a back story to the back story to the back story (TPM). All that was needed was ROTS. Everything in AOTC and TPM that was actually relevant to ROTS is in ROTS itself--all you lose are a few expositories pieces (ie how Anakin is found, how his mother dies, how Padme falls in love) but those were conveyed in ROTS in a better manner than the poorly written corresponding scenes in the previous two films. Lucas screwed himself because he numerically bound himself to three films. He didn't need three. He only had enough story for one.