They’re not phoning it in. It’s not the most gripping, emotional style, sure, but that’s a choice too. Lucas is a stoic guy and the prequels were full of politics, senators, royalty, soldiers, and Jedi. The world was more put together, in contrast with the OT’s time period.
Lucas took cues from Ancient Rome, too, on several levels. Our perceptions of that time are shaped from philosophers, generals, historians, emperors. Not spazzy hyper-emotional teenagers on TikTok who throw temper tantrums.
The sequel trilogy is shallow and superficial, more exciting moment to moment but with nothing of substance to show for it.
The prequels have serious problems but they also do a lot to expand Star Wars beyond just retreading the original trilogy. Lucas took risks to build something new, and that worldbuilding is infinitely better than the SQ.
Sorry for the length but I appreciate this take and want to address it a bit
The premise of the PT is great i agee with that. But I dont feel Lucas does anything great with the setup. The clone wars cartoon uses its setting much, much better and actually explores the politics of multiple worlds and how they are affected. Even the bad batch shos does this better. The actual movies spend way too much time trying to force us to like anakin and, in the process, doing the opposite. Hes stronger than most of the cast out of the gate(which is fine but), his romance is forced and cringey, and his bond with kenobi is underbaked and only matters in the last hour of the last movie. And the stoic performances would be totally fine if the movies themselves didn't feel agnostic to what was happening... again until the last hour which id the beat stuff in the trilogy.
Each of the trilogies are build primarily around a single relationship. For the ot its luke and Vader. For the pt its anankin and kenobi. For the st its Rey and kylo. One thing the ST does is understand this hierarchy and what is the meat of the content being featured. The PT shoves the primary bond that centers the whole thing into the background until the very end. The ST does the opposite which makes the rest of it feel less depthful, but the primary thing is at least delivered upon.
Yes. The ST is much smaller in scale and scope but it's focus is also more acute. Even if the story beats dont totally line up it remains consistent on developing this relationship between the two leads and the actual star wars are the backdrop. I think the character development is far more depthful because of this and the changes they go through are tangible.
In the PT, everything just kinda happens around anakin, and the plot is driven by how he reacts. The rest of the cast dies nothing save for qui gon and kenobi in movie 1. In AOTC, they try to give kenobi something but ultimately it goes nowhere other than go lead him back to anakin for one last big fight scene. And you could say the same for Finn in TLJ except Finn at least undergoes a character change. Obi Wan enters and exists the movie the exact same character. We get exposition but the character himself has little reaction to this. Darth maul is there for no reason other than to die, which is fine if you actually make the big bad interesting. We are told dooku lost faith in the jedi and turned in between films, but we don't see any of that conflict , he is just cartoonishly evil upon introduction. The villains just don't have any depth in the trilogy, and the heroes are trapped in this endless cycle of procedure and debating about nonsense for most of the screen time, and it makes the jedi as a whole seem ineffective in the wrong ways, until a fight scene happens(and I understand the jedi being in effective is a plot point, but you have to have them at least trying something, otherwise there's no reason or anyone to believe anyone would back these folks in the first place).
So yeah my main thing is that the PT squanders the massive premise it promises, while the ST offers much less to chew on but it at least tries to he interesting with what is there. Dont get me wrong though, I appreciate all of them . I'm a huge star wars nerd and ill watch anything the franchise puts out even if i don't care for it.