RoccondilRinon said:

Why this fuss again about tying TPM into AOTC and ROTS? It works well enough with as many connections as it presently has (although I'll concede the connections themselves, like much of the movie, could do with some tweaking). None of us are complaining about Adywan not doing more to tie ANH into ESB and ROTJ, despite ANH being a lot more standalone than TPM.

Yes, ANH works perfectly as a standalone film. But there are only 3 years between ANH and ESB, while there are 10 years between TPM and AOTC.

TPM stands on its own a little too much. The story of the movie is a bit of a waste. It does set up the Galaxy and the new characters, but everything kind of gets reset in AOTC: Anakin is literally another person, Padme is no longer a Queen etc. We miss too much development of those characters. Also, we don't really get to what should have been the PT's story until halfway, or even the end, of AOTC, and that time could have been used better.

I posted this before, but my idea to connect TPM with AOTC and ROTS better was to make the Trade Federation an early version of the Separatists. They are blockading Naboo to force this planet with vast natural resources to join their movement (we could explain this by overdubbing the Neimoidians). They want Queen Amidala to sign their treaty.

Then, AOTC's openingcrawl could explain that in the 10 years since TPM, the Separatist movement has grown since TPM, and that both sides are preparing for war. To counter the threat, the Republic has issued the creation of a clone army. The vote Amidala returns to Coruscant for, is the vote about whether or not to deploy the army.