I imagined that the PT would have a used universe feel to them similar to the OT.

I expected Anakin to be an adult and also someone who was a moral person with unwavering ideals. Him and Obi-Wan should have been the best of friends. It should have been an extraordinary feat for him to have been turned to the dark side. It should have been a real tragedy that happened to him. Instead we just see him as a little kid with no real input. A real waste of screen time. Then we jump to him as an adolescent and it's clear that it didn't take very much to coerce him to the dark side as he already had that tendency. I don't really feel that bad for him, he kind of deserved all the bad things that happened to him. He's kind of a whiny little shit-head if you ask me. His transformation to Vader even consists of him continuously being a whiny little shit-head. There was no great fall of a hero to the dark side. Just a selfish and jealous little shit-head fulfilling his destiny of becoming a sith lord.

I expected there to be an interesting story but subconsciously i knew that was never going to happen. The only thing i really needed to take away from the prequels was the back story laid down by obi-wan in the OT which took him less that 2 minutes to explain. There was really no suspense in any of the PT for me. I've known since i was about 10 (I'm 32 now) that obi-wan would defeat Darth Vader on a volcano/lava planet from reading little snippets and books.

Actually, I'd expect them to never get made. They are totally anti-climactic and only decimate the experience of the OT. I don't recall once actually caring about any character or plot arc in any of the prequels. I may have tried to convince myself of it for a couple years until i saw episode II. We all wanted the PT to be great didn't we? Years ago Lucas himself said that he'd made a grand story and that the first half wasn't really interesting so he started off where things were interesting and just used the first half as a back story to flesh out the OT movies.

Moving forward in the series would really have been the only way to engage the audience by bringing back the world of star wars yet offering a story that hadn't already been hashed over.

Just my opinion.