I’ve stayed away from prequel edits for two reasons:
I don’t feel strongly enough about them as stories to sift through the many different options to find the ones that work best for me. I decided to experiment four or five months ago and watched HAL’s TPM, but I haven’t cared enough yet to watch the other two, partly because I know once I’ve seen all of those there’s four or five other versions I need to see to make an informed decision and I just find that daunting.
Most of the entertainment value I get from the prequels comes from their very badness. The only times they’re ever any fun to watch is when you’re with a room full of people making fun of them, and any edit that aims to salvage them as sincerely good films that isn’t a complete failure necessarily sacrifices much of that so-bad-it’s-good value.
I don’t think the prequels really are “so bad it’s good” quality though. I think they’re just mediocre, boring films. And that’s the greatest sin you can commit as a Star Wars film: Put you to sleep. They simply don’t have much camp value beyond a few moments here and there. Most of the rest of the time it’s just wooden acting and bullshit dialogue about things like “midichlorians.” That’s not funny, not even unintentionally funny, it’s just boring and stupid. Like what the fuck, I’m trying to watch Star Wars, not a shitty episode of a latter-day Star Trek series. Somewhere between 1977 and 1999, Lucas changed drastically from a guy who wanted to create fun space adventure movies he was perfectly suited for to a guy who wanted to tell some kind of Shakespearean sci-fi opus who didn’t have anywhere near the skill needed to pull it off. The fact that he added clumsy childish shit like Jar Jar on top of it once he realized how fucking boring the movies were just made it an even bigger mess because of the wildly inconsistent tone. If you want to have a fun movie for kids, make one. If you want to have some kind of serious political drama, make one. Neither is my preference for Star Wars, but it is at least possible to make decent films of those genres if you stick to the right tone. Lucas didn’t do that though. He tried to appeal to everyone and in the process ended up appealing to almost no one.