But despite the hate that the prequels get, two of my favorite Star Wars moments happened because of the prequels:

1. Yoda vs. Dooku in Episode II
3. Palpatine shows his true face in Episode III

Even though the prequels got A LOT wrong, these two moments (at least for me) made up for it.

You liked the Dooku fight better than the Palpatine fight?

One of my favorite lines of the prequels was "If so powerful you are... Why leave?"

It did two things for me:

1. Properly showed just how pissed off Yoda can get
2. Palpatine was a girly-man

The Yoda/Palpatine fight was better, but some of the novelty had worn off (plus, they kept cutting away from it).  When Yoda faced Dooku, it was the first time I saw Yoda in action.  He was supposed to be this "great warrior" but before that scene, all he'd ever done was ride Luke Skywalker's back, hang out with the Ghost of Obi Wan, and die.  In Episode II, when Yoda came hobbling into the room (after Obi and Anakin had already had their asses handed to them), opened his robe, and broke out his itsy bitsy lightsaber, I almost stood up in the theater!  It was a magical moment.

Yoda whipping out hte lightsaber was probably the best moment in the original trilogy

Anakin killing Dooku was among the worst

There was some foreshadowing (Anakin meeting Palpatine in The Phantom Menace, Anakin MURDERING THE $&%$ING SAND PEOPLE in Attack of the Clones), but I still agree that it was a bit too sudden. There was a serious missed opportunity for some Anakin/Palpatine development in Episode 2.

The problem was that he squandered the whole first movie just to progress this far with Anakin's character "there's a kid named Anakin who can use the force"

If he hadn't taken 2 and a half hours to clear what most films do in the first 15 minutes, he could have handled Anakin's fall in a more subtle and nuanced way.

Yeah, the could have done the entire Phantom Menace in at most the first 45 minutes and then have a decent 2 - 2 1/2 hour movie, but of course then they couldn't do the pod race scene because we know that was so important.

I forgot how utterly useless the first movie was until I watched those reviews again.

And if I ever felt like getting off how shitty The Phantom Menace was, I could go on about Attack of the Clones and how they completely screwed up what The Clone Wars could have been.

Come on, the clone wars!  Out of every fanboy fantasy they chose that.

Yeah, the one thing we really knew about the history of the starwars universe and expected the movies to be about, and the actual clone wars take place almost entirely "BETWEEN" the last two movies...

And if it was called the clone wars because the storm troopers were the clones... wouldn't it still be the clone wars during the original trilogy? I mean... the clones never went away, and they did fight another galactic war in the REAL trilogy too.

Yeah, every aspect of the clones was pretty stupid.

• The fact they were Jengo Fett, ugh, lame excuse to put Bobba Fett in the movie
• How they were mysteriously bought and then their planet covered up.  Wouldn't someone notice if an entire planet was blinked away?
• On that same note, if one could make an army that large and that trained in that short of time, wouldn't they be fairly popular?
• Luke, an untrained Jedi, and Obi Wan, an admittidly not great swordsman, can mow through storm troopers and battle droids but when Order 66 got called all Jedi died?  Please.
• The Order 66 thing was a lame copout to fill what would have been a giant plot hole
• So their allegience just changes willy-nilly?  Did no wise Jedi have the common sense to ask the people that made them for a clone owners manual?  The people that made them didn't suspect any wrong doing why would they hide anything?
• Everyone remembers "The Clone Wars" but nobody remembers they're clones
• Why was it called the Clone Wars?  I guess they're the ones that did the majority of the fighting, I guess, but, it didn't make sense other than it sounded awesome 30 years ago if someone took the time to write it.

Ugh, Lucas really did write the whole thing in a weekend and I'm sure everyone was truly too scared to say no to his terrible ideas.  Just the whole thought of the first three episodes just makes me angry because it could have been so easy to make it good and he just failed so miserably.

The *only* thing he succeeded in was making Yoda seem like a bad ass, I'm pretty sure that's it.