As I said before there are possibilities.

Having Obi-wan have more than one apprentice or implying as such, never calling Anakin "Skywalker", removing the romance so it becomes a shock that Padme and Anakin actually got it on, make it look as if Bail is having a fling with her instead.

If in Episodes 2 and 3 focus is placed more on the story and less on the characters of Padme and Anakin (largely because they don't have much and what they have is awful) they become semi background characters instead of the main characters.

Padme has to be the focus of the first film because she is the only character that's in most of the film that can be tweaked into being interesting.

Obi-Wan has the potential to be interesting in Episode 2.

Palpatine is the star of Episode 3.

If the story is sharpened and built around each of those characters it's amazing how much awful character scenes you can trim.

Naturally you have to replace what you remove with something worth watching or it will become a very short television episode instead of a movie.