Okay, here’s my quick and dirty proof of concept edit.
I went with my initial sequence of events but decided to try cutting the Chewie/Boushh scene as discussed by others.
I did this very quickly before going to work. It finished rendering, I copied it to my phone, then left for work. (I mooched the work WiFi to upload it.) As such, there are areas I might have worked on more given more time.
So bear in mind:
- The crawl is unchanged. Just imagine it’s different, because it has to be to sell this.
- Threepio is still there when Han wakes up, but I cut his line and closeup. He’d need to be painted/cropped out or recolored to make it work.
- The deleted scene is in worse shape than I remembered, but visually I think it could be polished to be acceptable (though never as good as the surrounding footage). The audio is a different story.
- Obi-Wan’s ghost is gone.
- I did a quick cut of the rebel briefing - this is one area I’d like to have worked on more. It’s iffy at best now.
- This is only the first 45 minutes of the movie, as everything after the Tydirium exits hyperspace is unchanged.
- I moved the Vader/Emperor scene after the rebel briefing to earlier, but I’m not convinced it works, particularly because there’s now no buffer between the briefing, Han giving Lando the Falcon, and the “fly casual” sequence.
And again, this is intended as proof of concept only. I also have not had time to watch it in one go yet, so it might play worse than I think it does (and I say that as someone who’s still not 100% convinced this is doable anyway).
So, here you go. Password is Restructure (the capital R is necessary).