It helped that #5 (Empire) had an excellent director in Irvin Kershner. The fact that he didn’t return to do #6 to reign in Lucas’s cutesy excesses was quite lamentable. Kershner did two films in the ‘60s that were enjoyable, “The Flim-Flam Man” with George C. Scott and an early Robert Shaw vehicle filmed in Montreal, “The Luck Of Ginger Coffey.”
He did fine with the original Star Wars but obviosuly by the times the prequels rolled around he was too full of himself to do a proper job. His writing was very crappy for the prequels but maybe a decent director could have done better with it.
Hell Seth MacFarlane could have done a better job. At least they would have been funny then.
Or maybe Quentin Tarantino.