I meant grade, not grass. Sorry!

And that’s a shame it isn’t really compatible with explosions and other things, it was growing on me!

I think the restructure works. The interrogation scene doesn’t feel out of place where it is. It would be nice to have some kind of buffer to understand a bit of time has passed, like make it a wipe rather than a hard cut. But I think it works as is too.

The only thing I wonder about it the pacing, maybe. I think the tension is still high up until we’re with Finn and he puts his helmet back on, and that hard cut to Rey’s intro is a nice change of pace. The interrogation scene might slow down to pace to early, since Poe slowly wakes up. I mean this could be a non issue. Pacing has always been a harder aspect of editing for me to understand. Just a thought, though.

Before cutting to the escape scene, you could use the establishing shot that’s right before the interrogation scene rather than the one the fine Dr. K suggested, since you don’t use that shot in your current resequence, if you felt like you needed it.

I don’t think less time between being sent to reconditioning and the escape is a big deal. It’s not anymore time the way you have than it is in the theatrical, and it wasn’t really an issue then. I don’t think that should be something for you to worry about.

I personally don’t like opening with Rey’s intro, because I think the attack on the village is a great cold open. It really helps get the audience into how this movie is gonna move and feel. Rey’s intro might be too slow of a cold open, in my opinion. I personally would stick with your initial idea.

But, if it something that interests you, there’s no harm in a mock up to see how it feels, either.