Yes, the overall narrative of the prequels was good and very promising. It's so unfortunate that they turned out to simply be shockingly bad as movies - "clumsly" really doesn't describe how stodgy and badly put-together they were.

I honestly hope Disney will eventually remake them from scratch, with the excuse that FX have progressed dramatically since then. They could even reuse McEwan, considering he's supposed to be an older character already.