I've not read Zom's book but the articles on his website do blow away all the spin that Lucas lays on about his 'vision' and how pre-planned it all is.

Hardly anyone writes a series with everything laid out and it's not a crime to admit to making things up as you go along (the amount of times I had to explain this to NuGalactica detractors...oh boy).

Clearly Anakin/Vader was never originally the main focus of the saga but if you listen to the spin machine everything we saw was delivered straight from the mountain on tablets of stone.

TPM is different from the other prequels because it was worked out on paper to some degree before it went into the treatment stage (where most of what's wrong with it happened). The other prequels were more art department/toy department lead.

As I've said many times in the Radical Redux thread I think it can be rescued but only with major restructuring.

The workprint of ANH was also a bit of a mess before Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch
and Marcia Lucas got their fingers into the cookie dough.

We don't have to worry about Lucas giving us the sack (the worst thing that can happen to us is a cease-and-desist if we try to make cash out of trying to sort the mess out).