I loved it! A new Star Wars movie after all those years!
For the Pod-Race, notice how he re-routed power to compensate for an engine breakdown? Remember the Death Star chase? And also how he destroyed the Droid control ship...? IMO it goes towards the "Vader sabotaged the first Death Star and used the force to push that Proton Torpedo down to the core..." fan theory. Anakin/Vader was smart and figured out some of Star Wars's decadent Level 4 tech that pretends to be Level 3 tech in a galaxy full of Level .5 or less and a few 1.5 Level civilization characters. (Mideval to Star Trek)
Now yes the movies, the prequels got a lot of hate. AND that's DISNEY at work, "One Man's Opinion". Why? Lucas refused to sell out to them. They offered before the remasters, before and during the sequels, then he finally sold out after.
IMO the Prequels are 85% as good as OT. Now has anyone noted that a movie 85% as good as Star Wars - OT is something they'd sell their SOULS for in Hollow-Woke but the soul is the price of admission so they can't afford it...?
IMO the diminishement was:
1 - The gawd-awful bad and later creepy "Romance" between Anakin and Padme. It was meant to be a cliche "Dime Store Novel" which scifi/fantasy had until it got threatened with censorship and got neutered for 30 years like comics, but Lucas dropped the ball a bit.
2 - Jar Jar - too much screen time. Just after "Vader sabotaged the Death Star" fan theory the "Jar Jar is the real Dark Lord of the Sith" applies and IMO this is why he had that much screen time. But they backed off and played it safe so it just ended up being "Oh, come ON!" I like Jar Jar.
3 - The thing had a different "Vibe" than OT Star Wars. IMO Lucas was feeling old and surrounded by Sycophants so instead of one of Greedo's people in a white/rhinestone jumpsuit doing "Staying Alive" in a "Space Disco" they really worked out the oldtech of Star Wars - but it looked more advanced than OT era since it was so high budget. The thing was that people came back to SW to go back to the 1970s as much as a Galaxy long ago and far away. The snotty kids into music when they weren't trying to be "The next Curt Kobain" be it by gawd-awful Grunge and or H- in their arms were trying to rip off Yes, Pink Floyd and Rush...the 70s era and we had Austin Powers, etc. He should have made a better 1970s scifi though I think the scathing Disney media planted vilification on the remasters was starting to work.
4 - Padme and especially Anakin were played by Gawd-awful BAD actors. No, I never said anything H8teful, cyber-'stalked' etc. When an actor is BAD, the FAULT is who SIGNS the PAYCHECK. They did (or should have) go through thousands of applicants to pick the best and surely there were tons of screen tests so they'd KNOW what who they hired was capable of AND if there was a disaster (death, quitting, etc.) they could replace them and with their tech even for scenes filmed already... SO if there's a suck bad actor it's the director/producer's area.
So I legit loved the prequels - not as much as OT.
Compared to Disney's RUIN, they are as good. TWICE.