IMO the prequel and sequels are about equal in badness. The odd thing was they’re bad in almost exactly opposite ways.
The prequels had a story to tell, but they broke down in the minutia. There was a solid core plot, but once we got to how things played out scene by scene the movies broke down. George knew how he wanted the story go, but he seemed to have no idea how to get from plot point a to plot point b.
The sequels were nearly directionless in story, but ever scene in their rudderless plot had good dialog, pacing and tone. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle that has a picture of static printed on it. Episode 7 was just a re-hash of 3, 8 had two weak plots glued together pushed forward by contrived urgency and episode 9 was just a mix of one-upsmanship threat level as well as trying to ret-con the previous two movies into a coherent story arc.