Madara's awesome, well thought out plan lol:
1. He had to get killed by Hirashima in order to even start it, requiring that he be resurrected later.
2. But the act of getting killed by Hirashima, he ended up stuck in an underground cavern tethered to cells made from the guy he hated most of all.
3. His only ability to interact with the world was from clones made from cells of the guy he hated most of all.
4. He would have been completely and utterly unable to accomplish even STEP ONE of his plan without the utterly random, completely chance-based event of Obito getting crushed into a tunnel right where Madara was trapped.
5. He had to rely completely on luck that Obito would buy into his ideology.
6. He also had to rely completely on the actions of OTHER people in order to convince Obito to follow him (IE Kakashi had to kill Rin, the Rain ninja had to attack them, yadda yadda).
7. He stuck his eyes into Nagato (WHEN?!?!?) as a means of resurrecting himself, but had NO plan to get Nagato to come around to wanting to rez him. For all we know, Nagato was going to use Gedo Mazo to blow up cities and couldn't have cared less about Madara.
8. He had to get all the Bijju, but had no plan on how to do it.
9. His minion did a bunch of crap that was directly against the Moon Eye Plan (attacking Konoha, not teleporting around & stealing the Bijju, et al...).
10. The 'plan' ASSUMED they wouldn't be able to catch all the Bijju, and set up a whole WAR to serve as nothing but bait to lure out the last Bijju...
11. BUUUUUT... The whole "war" distraction hinged entirely on the completely random event of Kabuto joining up, capturing Yamato, powering up the Zetsus, and supplying a bunch of Edo Tensei zombies. Otherwise the Zetsu armies would have been utterly annihilated by the Alliance.
12. Also required was the totally random event of Kabuto supplying Ginkaku and Kinkaku 9-Tail chakra.
13. Also required the totally random event of getting ahold of a Hachibi tentacle.
And frankly, I'm not even getting started. Madara's "plan" was (and IS) a complete, total, 100% fluster-cuck of absolute random bullcrap totally lining at the just the right time, as well as wholly UNINVOLVED persons doing exactly what Madara would have wanted in the most intricate way possible of their own volition with no prompting or influence of any kind.
It's stupid writing on a level that quite frankly I don't think I've ever even SEEN before...
...and I've read the first chapter of "Eragon". (rimshot)
Kishimoto changed a lot over the course of the manga.
The new generation surpassing the previous seems like a joke for me, but it's up to how you interpret that line.
Part 1 no longer holds any meaning, since it doesn't fit with the current events or rather with Part 2 anymore.
The fight between Hiruzen vs. Orochimaru is nothing more than an below average Jounin battle
Hashirama leveled up to a god during Part 2
Hiruzen, who was said to be the strongest of the 5 Kages, is nowhere near the level of Oonoki, Gaara, A and probably Mei