Another thing to consider RE: the whole “it should have been Ackbar instead of Holdo” argument: sure, the good admiral is a fan favorite, but how receptive would general audiences have been to that subplot if it was a shouting rubber fish man instead of Laura Dern? Ackbar is fun, but I seriously doubt you could get a compelling enough performance out of him to anchor that sort of storyline. It would almost certainly have read as goofy to anyone going into the theater without this weird reverence for Ackbar that we super fans seem to all have.
I think it could have worked. I didn’t find Laura Dern’s performance very good but I blame the writing. It’s all in how you set it up. A real payoff would have been if Poe had been the pilot. As for the fear of scenes coming off as goofy, I had that problem with a great many scenes.