Watching the ROTS RedLetterMedia review again, a few more things came up that I would like to express. He mentions how GL had two ways to do this story of the PT. Have it be a character study that focuses almost entirely on one character, which is what they did, or have Anakin be a minor character part of a bigger story, which I think is the direction they should have gone. Either direction for the PT story could have worked, but even if they did do the story well as a character study of Anakin, I prefer the idea of Star Wars being a story more about Luke Skywalker than Anakin. Lucas changed it around to be a story more about Anakin. It's obvious that Darth Vader was originally not intended to be as big of a character to the story than what he ultimately became. It was obviously originally a story about Luke Skywalker, but then took a 180 somewhere in the writing between ESB and TPM.

According to RedLetterMedia, it appears he blames the audience for making him into such a big character and Lucas's reaction to that made him write Darth Vader more into the story with ESB and ROTJ. The thing is that it works with ESB and ROTJ. It works how Darth Vader is just a mysterious character in ANH, it focuses more on him in ESB, and we truely learn who he is in ROTJ. In the prequels it is kind of the same idea with Palpatine/Sideous although the twist isn't believable because we knew who was who from the start of TPM. Anakin should not have been "space Jesus." Get rid of all this prophecy and midichlorian hogwash. Have Anakin be a normal person strong in the force. It just happens to run in his family. We don't need a scientific explanation for this and we don't need background on who his father was. You can leave that to the EU nerds.

Right now the PT is kind of a hybrid of the two, it tries to focus on too many things at once and accomplishes nothing. I think the story should have focused more about the rise of the Empire and Palpatine and less on Anakin. I would like the idea of Palpatine starting out in episode 1 as a genuinely good man and throughout the 3 films becomes a corrupt man. He is fluent in the force because was trained in the Jedi arts as a child though young adulthood, but dropped out to go into politics and was able to keep it a secret from the Jedi.

Having most of the characters return from the OT was a horrible idea. A list of characters/things that should have never been shown in the PT:

C3PO
R2D2
Boba Fett
Jango Fett
Baby Greedo
The Death Star
Moff Tarkin
Chewbacca
The Millennium Falcon, although very brief

I'm really surprised we didn't see a 10-year-old Han Solo winning the Millenium Falcon from a 10-year-old Lando in a card game in episode 3.

Tatoonie should not have been in the movie until episode 3 and it should have just been for the moment we see baby Luke delivered there to Uncle Owen and Ant Pheru? Even then we didn't really need to see them go into exile on Tatoonie, that is obvious enough in ANH. Instead of wasting time showing this in episode 3 they could use this time to flesh out a new idea. Episode 3 didn't have to be finished with every piece of the puzzle in place. They could have left the story with many years left to go before Obi Wan and Yoda go into exile. I think it would have been better to leave Anakin becoming Darth Vader a mystery and Padme having twins a mystery too so they are still surprises for future audiences.

Really what the prequels are to me is rough drafts experiments on a direction to take the story. If this material was then given to another writer/director to flesh out more it could really turn into something good. They could flesh the characters out more, they could focus in on the plot more, add more interesting editing/ideas to it, and remove things that don't work.

All the CGI madness doesn't work. They need to remove all of GL's ideas of entertianing special effects, and go back to more practical ideas used in the OT. They need to add some practicality to their moments of action, lightsaber fights, and space battles. As clumsy as the ANH lightsaber battle was it was still more entertaining to watch than any of the prequel lightsaber battles. The camera focused in more in on the characters facial expressions and they were actually fighting with a sense of urgency and strategy. In the PT it's just blank faces swing at 100 mph doing flawless choreography. In the OT, as clumsy and unbelievable as the action was, you did get a sense of strategy going on whether it was shooting at Stormtroppers, a battle in space, or a lightsaber fight, the action was far fetched but not too far fetched that you were taken out of the picture. In the PT it is just whatever GL feels like putting up on the screen. Riding a phony looking CGI lizard? A huge nonsensical space battle, jumping into a crowd of armed robots, none of it makes any sense, it's all just there because George Lucas said so.

The editing that RedLetterMedia brought up intrigued me. He mentioned how the editing is "predictable and uninteresting", using dropped lightsabers as an example. But I was hoping he would go more in depth with that. I know establishing shots is another problem with the films, there are too many of them. As far as other editing goes, I really don't know how it is "predictable and uninteresting". Could some of you help explain this to me?