I’ve probably said so before, but I think that TFA would be a much better movie without SKB, focusing instead on the search for Luke to drive the story.
When I first saw the movie I felt the same as Hal, where I really liked it up until SKB came into play. And while this edit fixes some of SKBs problems it also introduces new ones as the base basically appears out of nowhere in the third act.
Having it mentioned in the crawl and then seeing it every once in a while in the earlier parts of the movie would probably make it feel more coherent for the hypothetical first time viewer.

One thing that came to my mind while I typed the above is the following: How does the Resistance learn of the existence of SKB in this cut? The Hosnian system being destroyed was a pretty obvious “Hey look, we have a superweapon.” in the theatralic cut but in the new version they seem to just know of SKB but for some reason didn’t attack earlier.