And that's probably a good thing, not least of all because the actors have aged. I think that one of the big problems with the Prequel Trilogy is that, as a set of prequels, it is indebted to the Original Trilogy as a matter of course, but by being so close chronologically, it's really restrictive in terms of what it can do. The Phantom Menace really should have opened with an eighteen year-old Anakin Skywalker using the Force (without realising what it was) for his own ends (rather like what he did in Attack of the Clones, but less melodramatic), and Obi-Wan recognising the sheer magnitude of his power demanding that he be trained, creating conflict with the Jedi Council. Get that over and done with in the first hour, and you have two and a half hours to fully explore his descent into the Dark Side. Instead, it tried too hard to make Anakin likeable, and then yanked the carpet out from under him.
In the end, the Prequel Trilogy tried to be too many things at once - a bildungsroman, a political conspiracy, a tragedy, a science fiction epic, and in the final forty-five minutes, a prequel-in-spirit to Apocalypse Now (though whether it was a conscious decision on the part of Lucas remains to be seen) with Anakin taking on the role of Kurtz. Lofty ambitions to be sure, and certainly not impossible, but needing a deft hand to pull it off.
