I’m also trying to rework Han’s rescue for my edit. I’ve decided to skip the droids’ arrival to start with Leia’s arrival. We’re never shown how Lando got in the Palace, so why would the droids be any different. You don’t need to know that Luke gave them to Jabba as a gift or whatever. It’s easy for the viewer to fill in the blanks.

I’m having Luke start on Dagobah as a way to explain why he’s not involved in the first rescue attempt. He only intervenes after plan A fails. However, it just occured to me that this would create the plot hole of why Luke gave R2 his lightsaber. For that matter, R2 should be with him on Dagobah. Maybe this isn’t such a simple change after all. I suppose the solution would be to have R2 arrive with Luke. Given that I’m scrapping the droid’s arrival, it might be feasible to remove him from the earlier scenes.