Is the plot really that convoluted and irrelevant though? TPM has very few Palpatine scenes, and mostly sticks to the action-plot and eventually Anakin’s story (which ties in with Qui-Gon’s story). There’s not too much going on character-wise, but it is supposed to simply set the stage and establish the characters.
The only PT film where I find that the politics/plot gets out of hand is AOTC. Though even it stays very focused on both Anakin and Obi-Wan, mostly using the politics as part of the “mystery-plot” that Obi-Wan has to solve, while Anakin is off having his awkwardly written emotional conflicts. AOTC is a very clumsy story in many ways, but I’d say the fault mostly lies in awkward characterization and simple technical execution). The important thing is Anakin’s development, which despite its weird execution, it does communicate quite clearly.
ROTS has a lot of politics and Palpatine scenes, but all of it relates to Anakin’s story and character development, and clearly follows up on what was established in AOTC. I don’t see how the Palpatine scenes can be considered irrelevant to Anakin’s story, when his whole plot relates to Anakin in one way or another. There’s hardly any Palpatine scenes in ROTS that doesn’t directly or indirectly affect Anakin and move his character forward.
It’s far from perfect, but I’d hardly say Lucas forgot he was making a trilogy about Anakin as the main character and just focused on the world-building.
(Plus, in many ways, but to a slightly lesser degree, it’s also Obi-Wan’s story. Which in-of-itself is very important to Anakin’s story.)
I agree. The execution falls flat on numerous occassions, but all the story threads, and character arcs are closely intertwined, often on a very clever way. The intercutting of Obi-Wan’s fight with Anakin, and Yoda’s fight with Palpatine is symbolic in the sense, that it represents a fight for both Anakin’s soul, and the soul of the Republic.