The kid who played little Ani in Ep. I wasn't great, but he was a little kid. I can forgive him. As for the flack Hayden Christiansen caught, if you consider the reasons for Anakin's turn to the dark side, he actually played the role well. The story called for the character to be an over-emotional prima donna full of discontent for the Jedi Order. That's exactly how he was portrayed. It turns out very little happened in Episode I that was pertinent to the overall story arc, so you can skip it and still know what's going on, which is fortunate as that was the weakest of the prequel episodes. But Episodes II and III were actually pretty decent.

The last trilogy just sucked. From Episode VII being a reenactment of Episode IV on steroids to Episode VIII just fouling everything up that had been set up before it -- and don't get me started on the ridiculous Holdo Maneuver, That's not how a jump to Hyperspace is supposed to work. Makes one wonder why you just don't have squadrons of Rebel Kamikazes take out Imperial ships (and Death Stars) by simply jumping to Hyperspace on a collision course. Episode IX did the very best it could to salvage the story and I applaud JJ Abrams for his effort, but the whole series just could have been so much better. Disney literally had volumes upon volumes of previously canonized source material that they decided to set on fire and ignore in order to produce the garbage they churned out. It was completely inexcusable.