There is nothing badass about killing a bunch of kids. That is the work of a worthless coward, preying on those far weaker than himself, even sicker is preying on those who rely on your for their protection.

I don't think Anakin being a badass instead of a worthless coward is a better story.

Once again, it's the way you show it on screen that determine if it's a good movie or not.

If the script was well made enough to make the killing of the younglings credible, everyone would have said "ho shit Anakin is really becoming Vader now!" instead of "what's the fuck he was a good guy at the begining of the movie". You can make interesting movies out of mediocre plots and mediocre movies out of good plots, I feel like the PT belongs to the second category.

Another major failure of the PT that is often cited, is its loss of the black vs. white theme we had from the original.

I really don't want to sound too much like a Lucas apologist (well I guess it's too late I'm afraid!) but it's what the PT are all about: showing us that the galaxy was not black vs white twenty years before the OT. Lucas took pretty much all the things we knew and show them in a way that we are not prepare to watch. I don't say that the result is great (far from it), I just say that it was an interesting idea and it should be respected as an artist vision. That's why I usualy don't say "it's sucks" or that "Lucas raped my childhood" kind of thing, because 1: the OT was my childhood (so the only thing I'm really pissed off is the DVD of the true original OT) and 2: if we can't live with the PT we just have to not buy the DVDs (or just to make fanedit maybe! ;) )