Threads like this one surface all the time. I usually don't even bother with them anymore, but I am kind of bored and posting is slow elsewhere.

The whole point Hunter is making is that the prequels could have been a million times better in any number of ways. Some people have a hard time admitting that, and want to think they are still better than average movies. What the Star Wars prequels and the new Indiana Jones movie suffered from was lazy story telling. I admit, the prequels cause quite a conundrum. Thing's like "Vader betrayed and murdered your father" are a little complicated. We have episodes IV-VI that fit together for the most part seamlessly, they may have their flaws, but they are pretty close to water tight. Now we have to make three more films that take place before this block of original films. The outline of the story is already written, because the original trilogy relied so heavily on its own back story, much of it was mentioned during the course of the OT. So the outline is that there are

an ancient order of Jedi protecting and keeping peace within the Republic.
But their peace keeping attempts somehow fail and a massive war breaks out that involves the whole galaxy. This war involves cloning to the degree that it is historically labeled "The Clone War".
During the course of this war and perhaps the time following it, the Republic fails, the Empire rises, and the Jedi become "extinct".
Two men who fought in the Clone War had the names Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Obi-Wan was Anakin's master. And Obi-Wan's master had once been a man named Yoda.
Anakin was killed by a man named Darth Vader/Anakin was suduced by the darkside and became Darth Vader, which to the Jedi (or at least Obi-Wan) meant that the good man Anakin Skywalker lost the inner struggle between good and evil and was essentially murdered, leaving behind only his evil side.
Someone Anakin had managed to make pregnant somewhere along the way gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Anakin never knew about this. Obi-Wan did, and decided he needed to hide them from the man who had once been his best friend and commrade.
The mother dies somewhere along the way. The twins do not know of each others existence. The girl knew her mother and she knew her living parents had adopted her. The boy lives with his aunt and uncle and knows very little about his real parents, and what he does know are lies meant to protect him.
C3PO has a silver leg.
Darth Vader was in part responsible for the extinction of the Jedi by hunting down and killing the ones who managed to survive the war.
Obi-Wan and Yoda are the only ones who survive Vader's purge. Both moving to remote planets to live as hermets.

I think that is about everything. This is pretty much the mold the prequels had to fit based on information given in the OT. Not that hard right? Somethings like keeping the Vader suprise and the twins reveal is a little tricky, though not even 100% necessary. These things could have been revealed in a way that still made those moments meaningful in the OT.

There are millions of ways this outline could have been made into an amazing story. It is all vague enough that it could have been taken in any number of directions. With this information you could have made a whole seven season TV series. This is some fantastic material to work with. It should not have been hard to built three fantastic films around this framework. But what did we get? We got a guy who has been lead to believe he is the best story teller in the world sitting down with a notebook and lazily scribbling away silly stories that barely fit that framework even while stretching beleavabilty to the breaking point in order to make it almost fit the framework. A little imagination and some more careful thought, and it could have really been great. Instead of three great movies we get things like episode one, because George felt that the real story didn't begin until the third part. I think the most exciting part of Ep. 1 was Obi-Wan and Qui-gon sneaking aroung the Trade Federation ship. Why not just start the series as Obi-Wan and Anakin together. Dialogue between Obi-Wan and Yoda could have presented Yoda's past misgivings about Anakin's training. Didn't need a whole movie devoted to finding Anakin with a very loose action filled plot woven around it. Like I said, lazy story telling.

Now, to the point. This story could have been pulled off in one of millions of different ways, there really is no room for excuses such as, "Well come on, you couldn't honestly expect them to be as good as the OT, right?" Yeah, they could have been. Why not? But the fact is they were not. There are those of us who love them for what they are, and good for you guys. Then there are those of us who constantly lament and think of how much better it could have been. It will never get better, and all you can do is dream, if you enjoy that then it is fine, if not then it might be time to get over it. You still have three really good movies that are really fun to watch, use your own imagination to create the back story, just like we all did for over twenty years before the PT came out.