Wow, that's a weird article. A movie blindly inserting random comments about politics in order to seem profound is not the same as saying anything intelligent about politics or making astute references to politics. If anything, the rise of the empire in the prequels resembles how Hitler took control of Germany.

I would not be surprised if the author of the article was paid off by Lucas to try to get people to buy tickets to the 3D release of Phantom Menace.

That said, the inferiority of the prequels is pretty hard to dispute. They have weak plots, which are a sideshow to the main focus of the movie: distracting special effects. It speaks volumes that the only good scene in the entirety of PM is the light sabre battle between Maul, Obi Wan, and Liam Neeson. On top of that, the movies contain a romance story so poorly written, it makes any random romantic comedy movie look like Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. And to cap it all off, Ewan McGregor is the only actor in the entire trilogy that does a good job. The child & teenage actors, which typically give problematic performances in all visual media, do an incredibly horrid job. At least Natalia Portman has recently gained some acting skills to go along with her good looks, but she seemed like robotic Mitt Romney in these movies.

Even Return of the Jedi, with its Ewok issues and copying of the plot from the original film is leagues ahead of the best prequel movie, RotS. That latter movie is simply ok, by the lower standards that were created for us by the first two prequel films.

Star Trek owns the sci-fi genre.

Well said. I knew that would end up becoming the focus of my post after I wrote it, unfortunately, heh.