re: Star Wars - Episode 1 : 25th year anniversary

Not sure if this was addressed in another thread, but ViceTV was re-airing its "Icons Unearthed: Star Wars" series yesterday. A couple of takeaways:
1) Likely the greatest reason why the prequels didn't work - Lucas did not have anyone around to tell him "no." When producing the original trilogy, he had pros like Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan, Gary Gertz, Howard Kazanjian and Marcia Lucas (his first wife) to reel him in at different points in time. During the prequel trilogy, it was mostly Lucas and some guys who helped him with "Young Indiana Jones."
2) Lucas truly thought that Jar Jar would be the breakout character. Ahmad Best really got a raw deal. A lot of the cast & crew thought he was incredibly talented. Liam Neeson told his agent "I'm working with the next Eddie Murphy."
3) The Lucasfilm marketing people knew Phantom Menace was kinda shitty and felt bad about how they cut that first trailer, which set expectations even higher.
4) At the time of its release, there were rumors that Spielberg "rescued" Revenge of the Sith. Apparently his only real involvement was consulting on the big Kenobi/Anakin duel, which he did not just to help Lucas, but to also learn more about some new pre-visualization stuff that Lucasfilm developed.