I agree with the sentiment that TFA and TLJ are just too busy with the character focus being all over the place. I was thinking about this and comparing ANH and TFA and where the character focus is, it is clearly on Luke in ANH. Other than the initial droid bit in ANH the focus is on Luke for the good guys. Luke goes and discovers Old Ben, we do not get a back story scene prior to meeting Solo or Ben or Leia for that matter. Well we kinda get one for Solo with the Greedo scene, but that takes place after Luke and Ben talk to him in the bar. Their backstories show up through the dialog with Luke. Geez, ANH is such a good movie.

Also, to Luke’s scenes there is also the foil of Darth Vader. The foil in TFA is Kylo.

I think an excellent edit would be to cut out the back stories of Finn and Poe, at least initially. Maybe open the movie with Rey and her life on Jakku and then she runs into BB8 and then eventually Fin. This would add some mystery as to the characters and what is going on. We do not need to know that Fin is a stormtrooper and instead we discover that. This would not be a bad thing. Try and keep the focus completely on Rey and make Poe and Finn solid supporting roles.