this is the best of the prequels
most jar jar = win. Jake > Hayden
shareI believe it's the most flawed of the prequels overall but still great 'Star Wars'. A few simple but important tweaks would have significantly enhanced the movie & the entire trilogy IMO.
1. Cast Hayden Christensen from the start as a 14-16 year old Anakin. This would have been major in helping to establish the on-screen chemistry between the three leads from the beginning & better endeared him to the audience.
2. Reduce Qui Gon Jinn's role(He stays on the ship)/remove him entirely, replaced with Obi Wan as an idealistic, eager, young Jedi who discovered Anakin formed a bond with him, and felt compelled to train him as a Jedi.
3. Tone down/Tweak Jar Jar. Simply changing Jar Jar's speech to an unintelligible alien language would have gone a long way in making him more palatable to older audiences.
I really like your first and third ideas. Losing Lloyd for Hayden in Episode 1 could not only have improved the first movie, but it might have improved his performance in the 2nd and 3rd as well by giving him the ability to create his performance from scratch without regard for Lloyd's. Jar Jar making cute sounds in some alien language would have been annoying, but less so than what we ended up with.
I disagree with your 2nd idea though because the master/apprentice dichotomy is a key component of the Star Wars mythos and Obi Wan's origin and ascension from a Padawan to a Jedi Master is just as essential to the trilogy as Anakin's rise and fall. Qui Gon, or some other master, is an essential component of that journey for Obi Wan.