Just need to figure out a way to desaturate the planet while keeping the color of the explosions.
Maybe someone could tweak those explosion shots enough to find a good in-between to maintain the explosions color but still be desaturated enough to not make a huge difference from the rest of the shots?
If not, you might have to rotoscope around the explosions to maintain their color. I think it would be worth trying, but I don’t think you’d have to go with the blue star angle, Jakku could just have a different atmosphere or something, like Mars.
I think this, and the potentially more challenging idea of adding MORE wreckage to Jakku are the best methods of differentiating Jakku that are somewhat feasible.
This would effectively establish Starkiller Base and its range and accuracy using a Rogue One style ‘single reactor’ attack. It would be dramatic enough to substantially raise the stakes, but still modest enough when used on this remote pirate base to justify the Republic’s continued inaction.
This is a cool new idea! Coming full circle. It could fit into the idea of Maz’s Castle being like a safe zone, neutral ground, except instead of just the castle it is the planet. Maybe you could use the subtitled aliens with Finn to provide some additional context for the defense platform as well!
But yeah, it would definitely require some new vfx for sure. I’m not sure how you would do that. And the platform would have to appear significant enough that it would require something as drastic as using a giant laser and exposing Starkiller rather than just attacking it with a Star Destroyer. Like, one Star Destroyer wouldn’t be strong enough to take it out. But they would have to use it in order to get the map.
I do think the important thing would be to make this idea as simple as possible, because if it is too complicated it might be confusing for the audience. So however it works, I would go with whatever is the easiest to understand visually.
EDIT: Establishing Takodana even more as a Switzerland-like neutral planet with some sort of defense would also help explain why Han felt comfortable with waltzing into the castle, since he would think they were safe there.