There's One Thing Star Wars Prequels Did Right, And Even Haters Agree
The prequel Star Wars trilogy remains pretty polarizing to this day. Despite enjoying considerable popularity and spawning an enormous number of spin-off products in various media, it also still has its vocal hatedom.
But there is at least one thing in the prequels that basically everyone considers great. Well, probably there is more than one thing – practically every fan you might ask praises John Williams' musical score, and it is pretty much accepted that Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid provided excellent performances.
Anyway one thing in the prequel trilogy even its haters usually consider to be done right: expanding the galaxy with exotic and distinctive planets (something that the sequel trilogy notoriously failed at).
Naboo, around which the plot of Episode I was centered, is probably the most "vanilla" of the newly introduced world, your usual lush green Earth-type paradise of scenic vistas and beautiful palaces, with relatively little in the way of exotic on the surface.
And yet it had numerous distinctive features, from its subterranean oceans, extending to the planet's very core, and filled with enormous fish-monsters, to the fact that the upper layers of those oceans were inhabited by a culture completely different from that of surface-dwelling humans.
Even insofar as those humans were concerned, their dwellings were a distinctive combination of old aesthetics and new tech.
And Episode I also first introduced the shining city-planet Coruscant, the capital of the galaxy and the testament to the mind-boggling scope and expanse of the galactic civilization.
Episode II, besides exploring Coruscant in greater detail and introducing us to some elements of its everyday life, gave us Kamino, the planet of oceans, eternal rains, and futuristic dome-cities, rising above the waves, as well as the dusty brown desert-factory-hive of Geonosis, yet again combining aesthetics of antiquity with most modern of technologies, but this time to a much more sinister effect.
And while Episode III did not dwell too much on any of the newly introduced planets, with only the molten Mustafar, the world so inhospitable that it could only house an automated mining complex – and a hideout for those hoping to avoid discovery – getting a good chunk of screentime, it partially compensated that with sheer variety of alien landscapes on briefly shown worlds.