I was thinking about ways to punch-up the opening of TPM and it struck me – why not just start with the invasion of Naboo underway, skipping over all the faffing about on the control ship and Amidala talking about invasions and legalities? The edit could go straight from the (re-written) opening crawl to the shot of the Federation ships descending on the planet, and then it would be a straight run from the ships landing and disgorging troop carriers to the Federation army advancing on Theed.

This would also mean that the first bit of dialogue in the movie would be when Nute Gunray is walking down the stairs with the captured royal court and the talk about ‘processing’ them, etc. It would be a lot quicker and more action-oriented, and with a suitably re-written opening crawl it would hopefully be enough to set up who the characters are even though there introductions would be much more ‘on the fly’ as it were... for instance, if the crawl already sets up a ‘young Queen’ then the shot of Padme looking solemnly out her window at the Fed army invading her city, it would hopefully set up who she is for the audience fairly well (and without having clunky exposition lines like ‘it is Queen Amidala herself!’). Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan would first be seen sneaking through Theed and jumping out at the droids. It would also work well with a Gungan free edit, as all their opening stuff would be cut, and Jar Jar could just be established as some ‘stray’ Qui-Gon picked up on an earlier adventure.