Do the movies "line up"?

[David]

I can sort of see what your friend means in that the orignal trilogy were all about the rebellion, whereas the prequels seem more concerned with politics: contrast the opening crawl of Ep IV with that of Ep I, for example. It's also a bit jarring that the various civilisations and droids in the prequels - set in an earlier era, remember - by and large actually seem more advanced than those of the original (in particular, R2-D2 flight capability)!

Of the prequels, Ep III - the most relentlessly grim of all 6 - actually does a pretty fair job of tying the two trilogies together, however.