If the prequels were made today (with all of that CGI everywhere), I firmly believe we'd still see a big difference in quality between that an Fury Road.
I mean, everything about the prequels was shot in blue/green screen. Everything. The sets weren't even real. No matter how great or advanced the CGI would look today compared to 15 years ago, I still think the prequels would look bad.
Not realy, they built plenty of sets, there's even a thread in the Force forums with all that, even the Mustafar scene in Episode III required a heavy fusion between major pratical effects and cgi.
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/practical-effects-in-the-prequels-sets-pictures-models-etc.50017310/
Episode I actualy had more miniatures and sets than any of the original films, what made it suck wasn't simply that, it had to do with poot script, Lucas no longer being all that strong a Director, and their designs being cartonish. Part of what sold that film at the time was it featuring some of the finest work of cgi in it's time, back then people were actualy saying that cgi was the future and that it worked better because you could do anything with it.
Saying the Prequels were only done in CGI and green screen is the kind of statement that's making Prequel apologists take those that didn't like the Prequels less seriously, there were multiple reasons those films were disappointing, and it wasn't simply because of the quantity of CGI, it goes far deeper than that.
Here's a comparison of the number of special effects shots between various movies:
http://www.upcomingvfxmovies.com/svfx-shots-race/
The prequels had around as many effects shots as Avengers, but didn't have as many as such films as Captain AMerica: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers 2 or King Kong. As you can see, the problem isn't as simple as just saying "it was all cgi, so it would have sucked nowadays too". The Marvel films don't actualy seem to worried with overreliance on CGI, had the Prequels been releaed today, they probably would have looked similar to them.
Episode III's cgi has actualy aged realy well, most of what doesn't work had to do with Lucas's Direction.
The reason the Prequels sucked had to do with George Lucas having been interested in technology for film over the years, but not having trained his "Film Director muscle". Everyone who knew him says he used to be a lazy person, he himself admited that, then once he wanted to become a film Director, he started working very hard, and his stress only seemed to stop after the end of the original trilogy, culminating with the skywalker ranch's construction being complete and his divorce with Marcia (according to what has been said, it had to do with him have become a workaholic during the making of the original trilogy).
After that, it seems like he took a long pause, writing and producing stuff like Indiana Jones and Howards the Duck now and then, but mostly keeping quiet. He didn't Direct anything during this time, add his reputation as the "creator of Star Wars" to that, and he probably felt like James Cameron feels right now. The difference is that Lucas seems to be the kind of person where Directing doesn't come naturaly, so him not Directing any film for more than 20 years didn't help at all.
Regarding the visuals of the Prequels, Episode I actualy looked pretty good a lot of times, space looked stunning in it. If you take a look at what went wrong, it wasn't simply the cgi, look at the aliens that weren't so, like the ones of the trading federation, they looked kinda bad, for more examples you can also look at the new Yoda puppet.
Episode II looked terrible all around though, it truly was a case of overreliance on CGI, when it wasn't advanced enough. But then again, it also had various miniatures, the problem was that the miniatures they used weren't very good:
Then again, there were also some good looking models, but they weren't well integrated in the final film:
One thing that definitely didn't help was how flat most of the cinematography in the Prequels was. On the other hand, the Lord of the Rings films came out around the same time and had an amazing camera work that contributed to a "mythic feel".
It's a shame the Hobbit just ruined quite a lot of the magic that LOTR established on making Middle Earth believable.
I actualy feel that the Hobbit films were prequels that didn't take anything away from the Lord of the Rings movies. Unlike the Star Wars prequels, i think they handled most of the characters well. One can watch the Hobbit films first and not lose anything from Lord of the Rings.
With Star Wars, the prequels give a bad introduction to the story, make previous characters unlikeable, ruin the Vader twist, and all around turn a simple and straightforward story into a confusing one.
With the Hobbit you still get a proper introduction to middle earth, and while certain bits were overcomplicated, it doesn't realy detract from anything in Lord of the Rings.
I am fine with the sandstorm scene. The only scene I took issue with was the aftermath of Nux's demise when you see the very elaborate, very CGI shots of Doof's guitar and Immortan's whatever it was. That shot was very Peter Jacksonish and didn't sit right with me.
It wasn't cgi, they actualy shot the guitar and that head steering wheel in a green screen, then added it to the perspective. Some people in this thread did complaing about that "terrible cgi", then a couple weeks later, some making of information revealed it actualy wasn't cgi at all. It's kinda funny.
http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/mad-max-fury-roads-day-for-nights-and-practical-vfx/
