And now, taking off my OP hat and putting on my regular thread contributor hat, some personal subjective thoughts, to generate discussion and to give some examples of the kind of things we might discuss here.

Watching through the original, and reading back over the scene by scene analysis, a few things jumped out to me that might be worth discussion. (There’s a large chance these have been observed and edited before, but not everyone’s seen every edit or idea, so we might as well plow on.) In no particular order:

Observation: Qui-Gon isn’t actually mentioned by name until a long time into the episode. Dazman (at least) deliberately put the Jedi’s names in his crawl for this reason.
Personally, I came to this analysis from the perspective of this being the first in a chronological saga, rather than a prequel. That actually did a lot for me in terms of enjoyment, making the world-shrinkage feel minimal and removing a few other frustrations.
- I don’t find the C-3PO/R2-D2 introductions as jarring when treating this episode as the first chronologically. If it’s not behaving as a prequel, this doesn’t feel like it’s shrinking the universe. And Padmé being impressed with Anakin having built C-3PO gives their relationship at least a little more growth.
- Likewise I found kid Anakin less abrasive (other than the odd whoop) when considering this chronologically and without trying to think backwards from Vader. Later movies and the Clone Wars do a good job of smoothing out the transition between this boy into that villain.
- I didn’t even really mind Jabba. He’s daimyo here, I think it’s OK that he’d sponsor this huge operation that draws in opportunities for profit beyond the reach of the Republic.
On this rewatch I also found myself less frustrated than I expected to be about some of the other unpopular elements:
- Other than the Gungans’ more goofy behaviours and the repetitive nature of the larger fish, the underwater content isn’t actually that bad and feels to me more of a part of the Star Wars universe than I remembered it. There’s decent character work for both Jar Jar and Qui-Gon here.
- The pod racers look great, and aesthetically feel more fitting in Star Wars after the Sequels and especially the Mandalorian. The race was far more tense for me after all of the slow build up and character work on Tattooine - even including the announcer - so I actually felt like the slower set-up to the race had value even though it’s usually trimmed.
There are a lot of scenes on the Trade Federation capital ship’s bridge, and a lot of scenes of the armies travelling. There are probably a lot of options for restructuring here.
Mrebo on these forums recently had a good idea about using Anakin’s conflict with Sebulba as the party’s (and the audience’s) introduction to him, and then changing Anakin’s subtitles to have him explain why he’s brought them to Watto’s shop. This made our first introduction to Anakin one where he’s driving the plot and standing up for himself. And while it requires the shot of Jar Jar spitting a frog onto Sebulba, that element might be softened by the new context that “It’s the will of the force that we met”, though perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch.
It’s a bit too obvious that Sidious has pull in the Senate, referencing his power there twice. Implicit feels better than explicit to me, for this one.
One thing that was covered a few times in the movie but never quite hit home for me is that Maul’s target throughout is the Queen (presumably capture, not kill, so she can be brought back to the Neimoidians). Maul’s pursuit of Padmé is an element that could better be played up so it’s more prominent in the audience’s mind. You could do this via the crawl, perhaps, at least emphasising the Dark Lord having his eye on her (she does grow into a real thorn in his side in the Senate, after all). But there may also be an opportunity to dub or subtitle Maul’s probe droid to help emphasise that he’s after the Queen. Something like “The Queen’s companions have been detected.” would help reinforce who his target is and why he chases her party.
We don’t see and feel the oppression of Naboo at all, we only hear about it second hand every time.
There’s good character building in some of the commonly cut scenes. Padmé being impressed with Anakin building C-3PO helps establish their relationship even though it comes at the cost of keeping the Anakin/C-3PO angle.
The blockade is gone when the party returns to Naboo, with more than ten ships down to now just one. Obi-Wan identifies it as a ‘droid control ship’, even though he didn’t make that observation when boarding it the first time.
While still on the streets of Theed, Anakin’s told to find a safe place to hide when they get inside the palace. This pays off later when they get to the hangar, but the idea is disconnected from the execution. Perhaps it would be better served if the instruction to hide came whilst in the hangar, prompting Anakin to board a ship. That might make his decision feel a bit less of an artificial way to get him into the ship.
I really don’t like the Gungan/droid battle. The Naboo plains are featureless, which has always made them feel extremely artificial to me; the battle contains no emotional stakes since it’s faceless droids versus nameless CG Gungans; having energy shields/catapaults/grenades adds to the artificial look; and the battle is full of extremely goofy moments, mainly surrounding Jar Jar, which serves to make the force look incompetent. Perhaps a good alternative would be to imply that they intended to draw out the army onto the plains then flee into the swamps - giving them the home field Viet Cong advantage. You could skip the force shields and conflict entirely, having the Gungans stand in the open, wait for the droids to deploy, then flee towards the swamps (maybe using some appropriate new dialogue) - with that plan simply failing as they get overrun. It’d still make the plan a little half-baked, but perhaps no worse than the current chaos, goofiness, and failure. Perhaps the Gungans assume they’ll be captured, not killed, as has been done with the humans living on Naboo, panicking once the droids open fire (having only just been told by Sidious to “wipe them out”).
As many have observed, in the finale we’re following FOUR plotlines (the Gungan battle, Anakin in space, Padmé in the palace, and the Jedi/Maul duel. We jump between them A LOT, and some of them lessen the jeopardy of the others. For example, Padmé turning the tables on Nute Gunray takes away from Anakin’s need to destroy the control ship. I might prefer to have the Gungans engage and get captured before we even begin the other plotlines (they’re sneaking into Theed offscreen), increasing the remaining plan’s jeopardy for longer. You could then have the hangar rescue, with Anakin, Padmé, and the Jedi splitting off, following Padmé’s group up until their capture too, for a new layer of jeopardy and the pause in her storyline. Then you could intercut Anakin in the skies with the Jedi duel, having Qui-Gon fall as Anakin’s ship fails within the droid command ship’s hangar, before Obi-Wan kills Maul as Anakin recovers and saves the day at roughly the same time (for a double victory-punch), finally showing the recovery of the other two plotlines before the cut back to Qui-Gon’s death scene. (I’m sure someone’s already done this but if so I’d love to know in which edit it appears!)

…right, that’s a ludicrous amount of text to put in front of you all. I hope you guys think this was all worthwhile and that we kick this off with a bang!