It’s interesting that you criticize Qui-Gon’s death and bearing on the story, when Lucas ultimately managed to better flesh out Qui-Gon’s character, motivations, and relationships with Obi-Wan, and Anakin over the course of a single movie than Snoke was developed over the course of two movies in the ST. I would say Snoke is to Ben Solo what Qui-Gon is to Obi-Wan and to a lesser degree Anakin, only Snoke has far less scenes, and Snoke and Ben Solo’s relationship is far less developed obscuring Ben Solo’s character motivations.
Let’s try not to get too far off topic with the ST talk, especially when the comparison is so labored and irrelevant to the discussion.
The problem is Qui-Gon is basically the closest thing to a main character in TPM, and then he’s gone. There are two things that went wrong - he should have been far more in the background in a mentor role, and his influence on Obi-wan and Anakin should have been more clearly conveyed in the other films (which is to say more than not at all, which is the case).
Anyway, I’m going to give this as half a point in favor of ROTS.