The original trilogy fundementally work because they're built around Westerns, Kurosawa, and WW2 serials. This is cinema that Lucas loved and internalized. All of these movies are written that way, shot with that language, and then filled with a bunch of amazing production design to make it feel alive and new.
The prequel trilogy fails because Lucas correctly identified that the story he wanted to tell needed to pull from Regency dramas, Wuxia films, and tragic noir and yet I truly believe noir is the only one of those he actually cared about. The guy can't write dialogue, there's no way he's read multiple Austen's cover to cover. He only likes Kurosawa and not "lesser" chanbara film, there's no way he was actually in love with Chinese fantasy and adventure film. He wanted to tell a personal story of love and loss in the tragedy of the fall of society, and while he knew exactly what could pull the levers on that he had not consumed it enough to do it himself and had no one to rest control away from him for what needed other hands to do it.
And the sequel trilogy? Well, ultimately the films they pull from are Star Wars. And only one of them has the courage to interrogate what that means.
