I actually liked Padme in Phantom Menace. And other than excusing Anakin killing the Tusken’s she was alright in the second, she is basically just barefoot and pregnant in the third, because they cut out all the scenes where she was a leader. The founding of the rebellion scenes should have stayed in the movie. I also think the scenes with her family humanized Anakin and Padme and should have stayed as well in Attack of the Clones.

Lucas wants the movies to be super fast paced and to never lag. I like the Tatooine scenes with Beru and Owen in II and Anakin’s family. Way too short. Its like he extends the really bad cgi scenes in the prequel and the over the top action and avoids human scenes because he is bad at writing them.