Here’s a weird idea for a restructuring. I’d cut the escape from the base as usual, but then describe a much different battle in the crawl:
The galaxy’s hope is dying.
In a battle against the First
Order’s fleet, the Republic
armada has been shattered.
Unable to prevail against
the flagship of Supreme
Leader Snoke and his dark
apprentice, Commander
Poe Dameron falls back
amid heavy losses, with
Leia Organa herself
among the wounded.
As the remnants of the
Republic fleet flee into
hyperspace, Kylo Ren,
heir to the Imperial
throne, returns from
the battlefield at the
summons of his evil
master…
This implies that a whole lot more has been going on between movies. The Resistance has managed to scramble ships from all corners of the galaxy in a single attack to destroy First Order. The first scene would be a pan down to Snoke’s ship and the scene of Ren being chewed out for being conflicted. Cut to Finn waking up and meeting Poe, then the transition to Rey. She walks to the place on the cliff where Luke was in her vision (if that works in my TFA edit), but he isn’t there. She goes looking for him, and finds him in one of the huts. After the Rey scenes,
the fleet exits hyperspace, have the scene of Holdo taking command and her shutting down Poe’s questions (sans the statements about being followed), the deleted scene of Finn and the Rey hologram, then Finn in the escape pods. It is here that we learn that the First Order can track them through hyperspace. Then Rose, Finn, and Poe formulate a plan to deactivate the tracker and leave for Canto Bight. Right after they leave, the First Order arrives, and Hux bemoans that they can’t destroy them yet. At some point (maybe during Rey’s Forcetime with Kylo) have Kylo flashback to his unwillingness to kill Leia, which is the specific weakness he refers to in the first scene.
What this restructure does is remove the opening battle and all of Leia’s scenes before she is unconscious, cutting down on the runtime significantly, while also putting the issue of Leia between Poe and Holdo from the outset. Poe’s brazen attack from the crawl has led to this tragedy, and and since we don’t see him take out a dreadnought there is no question that he failed to save the fleet. Holdo has more reason to be antagonistic to Poe for this reason, since we know by the end that she cared for Leia a great deal.
By making it so that Finn knows from the outset about the hyperspace tracking, his unconsciousness at the beginning serves a story purpose.
By moving the First Order’s arrival to after Finn leaves for Canto Bight, it removes the issue of why the Resistance didn’t just use this ship to help ferry people off the Raddus during the pursuit.
By removing so much from the pursuit plot, it puts more focus on Finn and Rey’s stories, and less on the part of the plot that makes the least amount of sense.
And finally, this restructure would keep the convention of the OT where we start with an establishing shot of a Star Destroyer.