Cinnamon Bun-zuh is awesome, and yeah, I post there on occasion.

I agree that Darth Maul is popular because he's mostly a blank slate, and people project stuff onto him. I also think that people project stuff onto him because the other prequel villains are pretty lame.

Or rather, "don't catch the imagination," which is a nicer way of saying lame.

Palpatine is all right, but Dooku and Grievous are just... eh. The Youtube video's idea of having Darth Maul reappear in the prequels, as a motivator for Obi-Wan was an interesting one.

As for Obi-Wan as a mentor in the prequels... well, it's obvious that's what he's meant to be. In Episode 1, though, he's definitely not a mentor- that's Qui-Gon. So Episode 1 has this weird problem where it doesn't really have a main character.

It's not exactly Qui-Gon- the action follows him a lot, but he falls more into the mentor/Gandalf role.

It's definitely not Anakin- he appears halfway into the movie, and is, well, a 9 year old boy. Nothing against him or his actor, but he's just not the protagonist- and the movie would have been very different if he was. (Maybe not in a bad way, but it would have been different).

So is Obi-Wan the protagonist of Episode 1? Not really. He's dragged along behind Qui-Gon, but doesn't take much action on his own.