vote_for_palpatine said:

The most sophisticated defenders of the PT are those who praise it by association - and Bob Clark's review of TPM drops big names in cinema and references all sorts of important social issues. The meaning is plain: "If George Lucas can deal with such meaningful topics in his films, you must understand that these are important pieces of work." What a brazen attempt to attach gravitas to such a lightweight movie.

I agree. Anybody can stick Big Topics into a work of art. But it's supposed to be a work of art, therefore the movie has to do more than just bring up big topics. It has to make you FEEL something about them. And the prequels are no good at that, unless "Wtf is Yoda doing bouncing around howling?!!!" counts.

Also, as for discussion of big issues, there's no discussion in the prequels that's particularly intelligent. The prequels have a lot more pretensions to intelligence than the OT but ultimately they're dumber.