Re the title question of this thread, suck is rooted in the overall foundation mentality of the prequels, how Lucas reenvisioned the story once he came back to it (or even a few years earlier -a comment from MCallum makes me think the suck goes back to at least 1990) and also the mentality with which Lucas approached making the prequels, as expressed by so much of what's in the films themselves. The prequels are screwed from the ground up. It's not just a few faults here or there, or even a lot of faults. It's an overall mentality that's not Star wars and is toxic to Star Wars. Worse in AOTC and ROTS than in TPM, but pretty bad in TPM too.