Anakin is knighted in the middle of AOTC when the Jedi give him the assignment to look over Padme.

This gives Anakin a more mature, independent role through more of the trilogy, so you don’t have to wait until episode 3 for him to not be such an underling anymore. It might also make Obi-Wan’s concerns that Anakin isn’t ready more sympathetic. I think a major problem with AOTC is that you don’t really emotionally connect to either Anakin or Obi-Wan, our two protagonists, and by doing this is makes the audience feel like Obi-Wan has more of a point.

The only issue is it’d require removing the padawan braid from a lot of shots which would be extremely tedious and painful.