I wonder if there’s a way to hint at [Padmé/Naboo being the target to generate support for Palpatine as Supreme Chancellor] more in the movie? (Which may or may not work if it’s an edit that tries to keep Sidious and Palpatine separate, depending on how it’s done.)
I think this’d be tricky, as it’s a complex sequence of intentions to convey. I think you’d need to explicitly spell it out in the crawl, which feels to me like it’d put too much emphasis on the less interesting political plot.
I think personally my preference would be to have Padmé be explicitly one of the few voices for positive action / champions of the people / thorns in the side of corruption, in an increasingly bureaucratic/stagnant/complacent/corrupt senate. This is a role she’s shown strongly in during all other prequel content, and establishes her character for this episode well. (I know she’s not a Senator but as Queen she’s still shown as being given a voice in the Senate). But more importantly it would also explain why she’s both a threat to the established Republic order AND its enemies, including those within it who are greedy (Trade Federation, proto-Separatists), and those who seek to continue its demise (Sidious). It’d be good continuity with AOTC too, showing that the assassination attempt could be coming from within or without. The bloakcade and invasion could be both the Trade Federation’s objection to her and an attempt to make her appear politically weak, and as Sidious escalates the Trade Federation’s behaviour throughout the movie, his use of Maul works as both a ‘capture’ mission AND a ‘kill if you get the chance, to take her off the board’ mission.
Without overthinking it, the opening crawl could carry this information using something like:
“The Galactic Republic is failing. As its senate becomes more complacent, PADMÉ AMIDALA, elected Queen of the Naboo system, stands as a vocal champion against corruption. Threatened by her successes, the greedy TRADE FEDERATION have blockaded her planet, in an attempt to weaken her political power.” (Yes it’s still political, but it’s one paragraph, not three.)
“The Galactic Republic is failing” seems like both a good opening for the saga chronologically, and a good hook for those following the Original Trilogy. It is, after all, the background plot of the prequels. “To weaken her political power” works from two angles- initially implicitly by drawing her away from the Senate to protect her people, and later as the audience learn that they’re invading to ‘force a settlement’, to show the Galaxy that she caved easily.
You could potentially add something about the Republic’s inability to enforce peace even amongst its own systems, which would also serve two purposes - to help explain why the Trade Federation think that they can get away with planetary invasion as a form of coercion, but also to pay off later in this trilogy when it’s revealed that the Republic has no standing army.