You know it is so funny I read this link today for the first time and last night I was thinking about the PT. If you could get someone or a small group of people to go and re-edit and do a few minor re-shoots I think you would have a very great set of compelling stories that would flow right into the OT and it would be awesome. If you think about it the general ideas of the PT are sound. Also if the entire first 6 episodes are about Anakins fall and redemption it would work. Also please don't say it would cost to much for the re-shoots and editing because if it was done correctly it would be a diamond mine that **** out a gold mine.
Not to sidetrack this, but I actually don't think you can rehab the PT, really. At least, not the whole thing. The first film is completely unnecessary. The second two might be workable, but for my money, the real issue is the choice of why Anakin goes evil, and then how that is handled. If the reasoning is "Because he wanted to restore order to the galaxy," then the film could've done a LOT more to show how and why this drives him. There's barely anything done, aside from like 1 conversation. If the reasoning was "Because he was emotionally stunted," we still didn't really establish why he was emotionally stunted, other than "Uh...Jedi don't 'do' emotions." Which is still conveyed more by the somewhat stilted performances of the Jedi characters than through actual exposition.
Personally, I always preferred the version of the story where Anakin is a tragic hero who saw too much death and destruction, and chose the path of evil in a "Never again" notion, thought he could go "deep cover" and got sucked in too deep. I wasn't that interested in the "Jedi don't do emotions, but this kid is just a storm of emotions" as a concept, but even if that was the goal, I think it was poorly executed. We can debate why that was, of course. Lucas' "direction" (e.g., "Faster. More intense."), green screen robbing the actors of the ability to really put themselves in the moment and inside of their characters, or weak writing, but whatever the cause, it just didn't play out as well as it should've.
All that said, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of what I wanted to see in the PT was ultimately unrealistic for storytelling purposes. I wanted, basically, the political science side of things, basically showing a sci-fi version of Weimar Germany turning into the Third Reich, and the tragedy of World War 1 preceding (or coinciding) with that. But all of that ultimately pulls focus from the characters and their development, unless they're involved in those events. I think you could've had the characters be more involved in such events, but you'd basically need to start with AOTC, stick in a middle movie that deals with more of this stuff, and then wrap up with a revised version of ROTS.
Instead, I'd rather just watch the Clone Wars cartoon.
