This, in my mind, would be the ideal restructure of ROTJ

Crawl
Emperor arrives
Droids go to and enter palace, talk with Bib
Droids go to the dungeon and speak with EV-9D9
Lapti Nek, Oola falls into rancor pit
Leia unfreezes Han, captured
Luke arrives, fights rancor
Sail barge assault
Emperor speaks with Vader in his throne room (a scene I probably would have cut if not for the Emperor’s arrival being shifted earlier)
Luke on Dagobah
Then basically the rest plays out as normal

There are a few things I struggle with. A very popular idea is to put the Luke on Dagobah scenes at the start of the film. I like this a lot, because it opens the film with a bit more of that darker TESB vibe which should subtlety alter the tone for the whole film (whereas it’s otherwise just lost in the middle of mostly goofiness). The issues with this, however, is first of all that makes the film even slower to start, and adds a complication with Luke meeting up with the alliance later.

The “easy” solution, in my mind, is reinstating the ‘Vader contacts Luke’ deleted scene, which should carry a similar sort of feel (to make ROTJ seem a bit more apiece with where TESB left off). However, I don’t really think it’s feasible to get that scene into a decent enough quality to use. Same goes for the other great deleted moment, the sandstorm, which would be even harder to incorporate.

My other big problem with my cuts is that I worry I’ll short change Leia, what between the Boushh removal and my other long favored cut, the removal of her scene with Wicket. Seems a shame to cut down on what is already so slight a role for her, but it’s not like the two scenes add much, character-wise. I guess if I’m really struggling with it, the Boushh scene is the one to keep, since we get a pretty badass moment from her with the thermal detonator. But again I worry about the pacing of that first third of the film. Maybe trims in addition to scene removals would help.