and the way it was portrayed, it never made sense. Just bad Lucas-esque crap that was mass-produced into the prequels.

As much as I love to suspend disbelief and discuss the rules of a fictional world, that whole "prophecy" junk was a bad idea that was poorly executed.

Movies/shows that have done excellent with prophecies:

DS9: Season 3, "Destiny": a prophecy of doom is triggered by certain events, only to lead to a good outcome which was not an obvious interpretation but still fit the meaning of the terms.

The Matrix, Reloaded/Revolutions: the Prophecy is a hopeful one but was crap, just another means of control, but Neo manages to fulfill it anyways by thinking outside the box.

Buffy, the Vampire Slayer: Season 1 finale: they come across a prophecy, Buffy tries to stop and there is a reversal in which she learns she's actually causing it to come true, then she manages to find a loophole and lives.

The common theme in all these is that we actually know what the prophecy says and it can be interpreted in different ways. we get no such foreknowledge in the SW prequels. We don't know who gave it, why they gave it, or what it said. There doesn't even appear to be any sort of imbalance in the Force. All the Jedi and Sith are leaping around and force-pushing people and running super fast like there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Force power they're using... so why does it need balance?

I've been holding onto that for a long time. Felt good to let it go.