Mavimao said:
Does anyone remember the clonewars cartoon? Not the new cgi one but the hand drawn one that came out before revenge of the sith? THAT is how the PT should have been. It actually showed a likeable anakin, a believable relationship between him and padme, and a story that was engaging and exciting.
Bingo! I remember when I was a kid, fantasizing about what "the old days" were like in the story, this was what I wanted to see - what Kenobi and Skywalker were like as legendary heroes of the Republic. And we got precious little of that in the PT. Plus, Genndy's Clone Wars covers some killer story material. In particular, the scene where Obi-Wan gives a speech to the council about how they should skip Anakin's trials and straight-up promote him to Jedi Knight...isn't that the heart of the whole prequel story? It also nicely sets up Anakin's anger over his rank in ROTS - the Council is more than willing to bend the rules to take advantage of his physical talents, but they keep trying to minimize his voice.
The PT really lacked a good dramatic backbone - ROTS had a bit of it by giving the story a Faust-like framework, which is why the film still retains some power for me despite the flawed screenplay. The arduous scripting and editing process for SW distilled the story down to its essence, and covered a lot of universal themes with ancient roots. But when modern-day GL hammers out the script for AOTC right before filming (much like a college student hammering out a term paper on a coffee-bender the night before it's due) there's no way a good dramatic through-line can emerge. The dialogue seems to get the most flak (which is deserved), but if the scripts had better dramatic tension and sharper themes, the dialogue wouldn't matter as much.