See, I’m the complete opposite. I was grinning ear to ear during the Leia scene.
But it’s interesting to see people’s different perspectives on it. I think there is a way to make it worth for those who weren’t crazy about it. At least having it explains how Leia survives and literally everyone else on the bridge doesn’t, which is the cost of removing that moment.
Regardless, cool seeing your own preferences poppasketti! While I don’t agree with all of them, I’ll try to think of ways to make some of your changes work. For Finn and Rose’s escape, maybe someone could insert a CG model of BB-8 into one of that just establishes that he’s back with them.
Also, I don’t think removing the Finn/Phasma fight would take away from his character arc if you reinserted the deleted scene if Finn and Rose in the ship, where he declares there going back to where they belong. I think Finn came to this conclusion when he saw how doing nothing like DJ is only helping the bad guys win. By not choosing a side, you choose a side. Does Hal’s edit keep that scene of Finn and Rose flying to Crait? Can’t remember.
I also think jarbear does bring up a good point about Finn’s Sacrifice and Rose’s involvement. You do end up with Rose strangely missing from the last few minutes of the film.
I’ve mentioned these to darthrush on his thread, but there could be two other options to address this.
One, you could have Rose be in one of the skimmers that gets shot by the AT-ATs during the approach, and have Finn scream “Rose!” over the comms when it happens. You could either have a heavily trimmed version of him reaching Rose in her crashed skimmer, or keep it out and assume he got her between when we see him get out of his own skimmer and him dragging her back into the base.
Another option would be trying to lean into the theatrical version more and try to make her actions work. You could possibly move the moment when Rose looks at her necklace to later, where it makes it seem she is connecting her sister’s death with Finn’s potential death, which would drive her to want to stop him. It’d also be nice if it didn’t look like she turned out, but was still going towards the First Order to help explain how she reached Finn so fast. And possibly have the canon fire pretty quickly after they get knocked out of the way. Maybe these little changes, with some possible line cuts, could help make the moment work.
Just some ideas, but I do think something should be considered to keep Rose being the one injured by the end of the film.
Anyway, good luck to you poppasketti!