Yeah, when I read your idea on the caretaker thread I didn’t think it would be able to work, but the way it looks in your test, it definitely feels like it could take place literally five minutes after Rey plays with the lightsaber (and it makes more sense than it suddenly being sunset). This also makes think trying to make the color grade of the beginning of TLJ look less yellow and bright, and make it more like the end of TFA, would work better than trying to make the end of TFA look more like the beginning of TLJ, if that makes sense. It’s like trying to inject more sunlight into a scene works less than if you tried to make it less sunny. Just a thought.

I would personally leave the training stuff as is, for the reasons Nev mentioned earlier, but I am really curious to see if that caretaker restructure would work. Like you said in the caretaker thread, it might not work for pacing reasons, but regardless of that I think it would be a great approach for your edit, since no one has really tried that idea yet (since people either plop it right where it was meant to be, or they remove the caretaker stuff altogether like Hal does). It could be one of things that differentiates your edit from the the others, since it is starting to feel like it will eventually be the most edited Star Wars movie outside of The Phantom Menace.

So when you do that, will everything from the Caretaker scene to Rey leaving the island all be together, or will you cut away again at some point? I really struggle with understanding pacing and when it feels right to cut. I would be curious if anyone had their own perspective on that.