Hello there!

I’m a long time lurker, in love with the fan edits world. I could have continued to silently enjoy the great edits but I had to come out and speak, because “something terrible has happened”: the Sequel Trilogy!
Jokes aside: I see that there are TFA edits already and that the TLJ edit ideas are been discussed. But, IMHO, those two films need so much restructuring, not just some trims. I see great problems at the foundation of the story and I’m not even sure something can be done to save the wrecking ship that this trilogy is.
Anyway, for the sake of discussion, this are the major points a hypothetical edit should take into account:

Any trilogy is its own thing
The Original Trilogy and the Prequels are really different, both visually and storywise (and yet, at the end of ROTS the two trilogies appears to be wonderfully tied). The sequels are just a copy-paste of the OT: their design are too similar the OT ones and, so much worse, the story it’s almost a rip off of the episodes IV to VI.
What should be done: totally rethink and rework the movies, even mixing them, to make the best out of the shot and try to tell a new story.
The rebels won the war
They won. Period. We can’t accept to see that nothing changed. That the OT characters and their efforts lead to NOTHING at all. We can’t be satisfied with just a line in the TFA’s crawl saying that “the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire” to make us watch the same Empire Vs Rebellion story we already saw. I, personally, find depressing seeing the New Republic been destroyed in ten seconds, compared with the great ad “historically accurate” Palpatine’s rise to power we see in the prequels.
What should be done: contextualize the First Order as the reorganised Imperial remnant, a second grade power in a galaxy changed since the OT.
A historical setting
The Galactic Empire is a sort of mashup between the Third Reich and the Roman Empire. Historically both of them (like almost every great political power) saw their old territories fractured after the fall: the end of a strong central power lead to a divided political setting. We should think at the after-ROTJ galaxy as the Europe of the VI century AD, with many little states in place of the Empire. The New Republic could be the biggest power, controlling the core system. The First Order could control a relatively big “piece of the cake” in the outer rim. And then we could have single indipendent planets, systems or sector (Mandalorian Space? Hutt Space? and so on…). The Jedi could have been evolved in a “super partes” organisation, not just tied the Republic but the entire galaxy.
What should be done: Make Hosnian into Coruscant. Make it been bombed (but not destroyed) by Snoke’s ship as the first act of war. Make Leia be a representative for the Republic in a mission to seek help to other nation against the FO treat. Make Luke the Master of a new generation by imply that there are other Jedi out there or by shooting new scene with new Jedi.
Legacy characters need to be respected
Han and Leia are back to their OT selves. Luke is a depressed asshole. No way.
What should be done: make Leia a Republic representative. Give Han some purpose, some background, whatever. Make Luke a believable evolution of his young self: he can be depressed for what happened with Kylo but he can’t be beat. And make is new generation of Jedi a reality. We already seen “the last Jedi in exile” (Ben and Yoda), let’s see something new.
Inconsistencies with the depicting of the Force
No one can use the Force without training. Nor even Anakin could.
What should be done: trim, cut, mix the movies so that Rey can’t use the Force until she’s been trained by Luke. And, oh, make Luke actually be on Crait. The whole Jedi projection thing is a never-seen-before-bulls**t.
Snoke
Really? The character who brought back chaos in the galaxy is just a no one?
What should be done: give him a background! Is he a former inquisitor? A secret apprentice? Palpatine’s pizza boy? Whatever. He could even be edited out and / or replaced with a new (old) character in order to explain why and how the “Empire” is back.

Now back to reality: I think is pointless to do any of this until Episode IX is out. And we even don’t know if the story of the ST’s character will be finished by there or there will be new movies (so other fan edit material) with them. But I see so many problems with these two movies that I had to speak out.
And I also know that some proposal are near to impossibile (shot new scenes? WTF!) But Adywan is doing it so, maybe, just maybe, are not so impossible.