I've been thinking a lot about Ady's comment of not having Threepio in the prequels until he shows up as Padme's assistant in RotS. It kind of makes sense. I mean, in TPM, Threepio is revealed, intruduced, makes a few comments, and is left behind. In other words, pointless fan service. In AotC, Threepio is kidnapped from his home and taken to an alien planet where he gets into trouble, beheaded, and makes bad puns. Fan service. He still doesn't do anything in RotS, but that may be the beauty of it. He doesn't do anything but help Padme. Then as her assistant he is forced into working on Tantive IV with R2-D2, and that's where they become friends for the next 20 years.

I think that all of the fan service should go. Yoda's lightsaber battle with Dooku, Chewbacca, "you're going to be the death of me", "I have a bad feeling about this", everything. Admittedly, I thought all of these things were cool when I first saw the PT but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Lucas was trying to make his new movies better by drawing direct comparisons with the old ones. Now I think that if the prequels can't stand without their silly references to the OT, then they don't deserve to stand at all.