The biggest thing I need input about is whether to undo V2’s innovation to establish that the First Order discovered the location of the Resistance base and targets them right after destroying the Hosnian system. The impetus for this was the idea that TLJ may rely on this plot structure from TFA. Though, TLJ turns out to establish on its own that the Resistance base was exposed by virtue of attacking SKB at all. I would argue that TFA(:R V2) establishing their knowledge of its location still assists TLJ, though.
The way things play out in V2 is as follows:
- Resistance performs a recon mission about SKB in light of Finn’s provided intel
- Resistance launches an assault on SKB after learning that they are preparing to use it to attack(… someone; we know its “The Republic,” but the Resistance is never shown to know that)
- The First Order destroys the Republic capital
- Snoke is informed by Hux that the location of the Resistance base has been discovered, and they target them
- Poe and company destroy SKB in time to save the Resistance base, though aren’t quite as upbeat about it since they still allowed their government’s capital to be destroyed
The question is whether it would be preferable to revert to the way things were in V1:
- Resistance performs a recon mission about SKB in light of Finn’s provided intel
- Resistance launches an assault on SKB after learning that they are preparing to use it to attack(… someone; we know its “The Republic,” but the Resistance is never shown to know that)
- The First Order destroys the Republic capital
- Poe and company destroy SKB for unstated reasons. While these reasons may be inferred, they certainly aren’t implied very strongly.
Personally, I prefer V2’s structure for this since it preserves the original film’s motivations and dynamics after the Hosnian system is destroyed, tightening up ambiguity and is slightly more in keeping with TLJ.
I appreciate your input, since I know many of you have considered V2 as a real “replacement” version. Though I will step a little bit further outside the original bounds of the project, I still intend to keep things pretty basic. Hopefully the new changes are uncontroversial enough so as to still be suitable for those of you wanting to adopt this as a ‘gentle restructure’ replacement.