I liked that the Jedi had strayed so far from their ideals. It would've been easy to keep them on the straight and narrow and portray them as victims but Lucas set up Yoda, Windu and most of the others as architects of their own destruction.

Love it or hate it, TPM changed how films are made. Usually movies would have "effects sequences". It was a new thing to have effects used in pretty much every shot as part of telling the story.

In advancing digital filmmaking so much, Lucas unintentionally set up an almost airtight counter argument for sticking with traditional film.

"There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere." Ham-fisted but it gets the point across. It supports my argument about morality in Star Wars. I've never understood why people say it's filled clear cut good guys, clear cut bad guys and all that. It's maybe superficially true in ANH but Empire and Jedi blow that out of the water and the prequels continue the gray morality. Ultimately, the long term victories in Star Wars mostly come from compassion, self-sacrifice and love rather than force of arms, political ideology or whatever else.