I think a big issue with pushing the gungan battle scenes forward is that this plot line can’t be resolved until the control ship is destroyed, so even if you push most of the battle forward it’ll still feel like a hanging thread all the way through to the end anyway. If anything I feel it puts a bigger strain on the audience to keep the captive gungans in mind while they’re watching the other three plots unfold.
The gungan battle also has a clear function in giving a sense of urgency to the other plots, they need to either capture the Viceroy or destroy the control ship before the gungans are wiped out, you lose that if the battle is already over by the time you get to those scenes. Yeah the gungans have been captured, but they’re no longer in any immediate threat, so there’s no real urgency. It’d be like if the Death Star was no longer looming over the Rebel base during the climax in ANH.
Yeah, I feel like if you were to pull the Gungan scenes earlier, you’d risk the film feeling like ‘save the Gungans’ was the backbone, which I think most would find pretty unpalatable. And especially if we don’t have equivalent footage of the humans of Naboo also being oppressed, I think that’d feel weird for Padmé. You’d also have the issue that the Gungans appeared captured throughout the entire movie, without moving, even though it’s over a few days.
I think he was referring to moving the battle scenes to the beginning of the climax, not the beginning of the movie. Which is honestly an issue I hadn’t considered before: if we don’t show the Gungans at all between the scene of the pilots taking off and the control ship being destroyed, is that even more confusing than the 4 overlapping plotlines in the original? It might result in the audience almost forgetting about the Gungan plotline by the time it’s resolved, which wouldn’t work for our goal of increasing the dramatic tension.
I think an alternate way to simplify the climax, without that issue, would be to just delete one of the plotlines: either the Gungan subplot or Padme’s subplot. If the Gungan subplot was cut, then Padme and the others would just sneak into the palace without any diversion; and if Padme’s subplot was cut, then the ultimate goal would be to take out the control ship, without the added goal of capturing the Viceroy. I’d personally advocate for cutting the Gungan subplot: it’s by far the most visually bland part of the battle, and if you cut Jar Jar’s antics there’s not really much left.