Err the Phatom Menace was showed us the origins of Anakin and the rise of Sidious. It also planted the seeds of the Clone Wars.
So what? no, we do NOT need to know how Anakin was as a cutsey little child, we didn't know anything about Luke either as he was a toddler, or how he managed puberty (probably with hitting on girls from Toshi Station, energy-converters, sure ^^). If you want to show us on the silver-screen how Vader fell from grace don't show us how he was pod-racing, use the damn screen-time to make us CARe about him, show us excitng adventures he is part of, how laughs, fights, loves without being a mopey little ******, so when he starts losing it we CARE! Nobody really cares for children on the screen, that's scientifically proven ^^
And we surely need not an entire movie for that and Sidious overly convoluted and fruitless plot-schemes I mean I still have no real clue what Palpy wanted to achieve with this whole treaty-plan, and how this treaty wasn't null and void when Amidala is forced to sign it. If you want a war, just let the Jedi return right after the scroll-text return to the council, or send them their charred remains Or even better, just use the tme of this whole trade-federation-scam-story and show us how the clones came into existence???...I mean instead of you know, start this mysterious clone-wars only at the very end of Episode 2 and...have it all but ended in the beginning of Episode 3...with Grievous appearing like a rabbit out of a wizzard's hat...*shakes head*
Nope, nobody can convince me otherwise, Phantom Menace was the biggest mistake in Star Wars, was unecessary from a story point of view, and would have needed to be totally different for the following movies to be better. I could even accept Jar Jar Binks, if only the movie around that fool would have had a plot and characters that actually made me care for them...(I can bear the Ewoks, but only because the rest of the movie is good...)