also - whacking Boba Fett was some Three Stooges shit that expanded universe kept retconning over and over again. could've just let him fly off being "nah, i'm good" once the shit hits the fan because he ain't getting paid for that.
Episode 1 is a mess because it starts in medias res from the wrong point of view and stays that way. It gets way better once you find out about Palpatine's scheming behind the scenes and all the tricks he pulled to manufacture a crisis and separatist uprising. turns out there is a lot of meat on the bone and the worst thing about the prequels is that it is basically anywhere else but the movies most of the time - like Attack of the Clones actually has fleshed out Anakin and Padme storylines but it is all in the deleted scenes and the novel - novelizations overall do the manhattan project worth of heavy lifting whipping it into shape.