The Snoke scenes are what I feel to be the most up in the air right now. He’s one of the weakest parts of the movie in my opinion and I’m just not sure how to make it better so it’s a matter of throwing ideas at the wall until one sticks.
Actually, the idea is to have a scene with just Hux and Snoke where Hux first floats the idea of destroying the Republic, but it might be too small a scene to work. It might be better to have Kylo there as well with the only dialogue with Snoke being about the awakening.
Yeah, maybe it would just be better to have the two scenes be as they are. By keeping the earlier Snoke scene, we also get a glimpse of Starkiller in the movie a little sooner, and logically it still works. They lost the trail of the droid, so they fell back to Starkiller and wait for their spies to pick up the scent. But like you said, it might be something just to keep playing around with.
Also, I have been wondering if it would be weird to not get a hint about what Finn and Han do about Phasma, but the more I watch it the more I think it works without mentioning it. I mean, we can just assume they shoved her into a janitor closet or something. Because even by keeping the trash compactor joke, people still wondered how she got out in time and survived Starkiller’s destruction. I also think by having her sound the alarm, it helps create more momentum to the next scene and not feel awkward.