Was reading your cut list, and agree with everything, that being said Ilike to add a couple of suggestions that irk me about the movie.
1 Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Captain Phasmas got to go! She is just out of place and unneccessary.
2 The escape in the Tie fighter/ Poe naming Finn… it’s too long of an escape, especially the blue homing missile part would be a lot better if they just got shot down soon and survived, Finn is just his name.
3 When Rey and Finn are running for the Falcon cut the Thats a piece of junk, ideally that’s the ship they are running for, Rey seems very familliar with it anyway like she had flown it before, cut the rough take off.
4 Finns Falcon quad lazer getting hit, if he was dak he’d be dead, cut that and just have the tie crash exiting the stardestroyer when Rey makes the hairpin turn
5 cut the BB-8 antics during the falcon escape scene.
6 yes the rathirs, rey does a wiring trick the doors close they run and meet at the falcon, you would need to make a shot of the falcon taking off without a rathir on it though. Huge payoff to the movie.
7 the prolonged Kylo/Ben reveal idea would pay off big in my eyes if it was just sprung on you much like the way i belive digimod is doing with his edit
8 I really like the idea of splitting the interigation mind trick. it makes it seem that the encounter with Kylos mind “awakened something in her” maybe a subtle music cue similar to the lightsaber deul would help. (but repeating the same thing would be redundant, be redundant.
9 Keep up the awsome work, cannot wait to see how this all turns out, Big thanks to you and everyone involved.