From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!

[LucasM]

I wish they would have come up with a way of disfiguring Anakin that involved more hot sand.  If they could have had him on that beach of lava flow complaining about how the hot sand was burning him that would have tied the trilogy together for me.  Obviously he hated Sandpeople more for their love of sand than for the fact that they raped, beat, and killed his mother.  Sand brought about his downfall, and should have been more clearly expressed as the destroyer of his soul.  Sand was his Moby Dick.

Or his Sandy Dick...  wait, maybe that's not what I want to say....

[The Manatee]

And this is the basic reason the whole prequel series sucks. It's like Lucas can't even conceive of the idea the dark force has any good to it from any perspective, or any reason anyone would want to join up with it aside from them being completely evil in every way.

The way the series should have played out would be to have the clone wars be initiated by someone besides the Sith, with the decadent republic getting handed its head over and over again, and Palpatine would secretly start to train Anakin and a few others in special dark side powers that could turn the tide such as mind control and other things that would be completely forbidden to regular jedi. Yoda should have remained a hermit, possibly an outcast who fought the sith long ago but whose wisdom was now scorned. Basically give Anakin a reason to do the things he does, make it more like real life and make a case as it were for the dark side. After all hate and aggression and pride CAN be powerful forces and that is where the temptation is. Then with the clone wars over the power would return to the decadent and corrupt politicians but instead the empire would arise and all the jedi who did not join up would die. The child thing was especially ridiculous - like they can't turn all these kids if they take over their training, and like they (no matter how evil) don't have to worry at least a little about what other people think, especially when just coming into power.

Also, so much better it would have been for Obi-Wan to meet Anakin when he was already older, a mercenary fighter pilot perhaps. Adam Baldwin (Jaim fom firefly and John Casey from Chuck) would have been absolutely perfect as the guy who turns into Vader. He is able to be a good guy but it always seems slightly off character for him and he's one of the few actors who could ever have lived up to how badass Vader is.

I just realized what a sad amount of thought I've given this