You got me excited enough my post basically doubled its size with my own spitballing, love fun constructive takes like this! Anyone intimidated by long posts RogueLeader’s outline here is really worth it.
Really glad you took the time to write this all out, a very compelling script doctor and I’m 100% with you for about the first third. Lot of good suggestions that would seriously impact the pacing by introducing characters earlier and giving them chances to breathe and share their perspectives on where they came from and their place in the war, there’s a lot of fun parallels to play with when also considering the other half of the story. Not so sure about the Finn sleeper cell twist especially having to fight commands that does seem too corny and contrived to me. But Finn can still be held to some level of indirect blame. Maybe to try and get clever about it his body itself potentially has a tracker that turns on the moment he wakes up from his coma, maybe as a way to recollect or keep track of FO troops that went AWOL, FN-2187 was declared too severely injured or dead on a planet that exploded, but when he awakes his condition is back to stable in a new location which immediately pings the First Order’s radar which would be under the supervision of Phasma. I also like the dynamic of Finn caught between being called a traitor by both sides.
I remember wishing there was more of a spy thing happening on the Raddus as well, also gives a bit more dignity to Poe to raise mutiny over, but I’d still worry the ship wouldn’t be either big or interesting enough compared to a planet. Of course, if a “spy” is transmitting their location it can really be a number of planets and the Raddus itself is more like a cloaked hub the Resistance uses as a proxy to scatter and hide their members in different bases like an underground railroad as a crude method against the First Order which quickly seized new levels of control and surveillance, then we can eliminate the entire slow chase and instead replace it with a hide and seek mind game ambush when the Supremacy ultimately reveals itself. Also explains the beginning how the FO keeps finding them wherever they are almost immediately, hence still on the run. This could eventually lead to the “nobody’s coming” levels of desperation by the end as the Resistance has really gone place to place and through their own running for their lives endangered others, out of resources and out of favors. Leading up to this the paranoia of the Resistance could rise being much more careful of identifying everyone shuffling in and out of the Raddus seeing them make hard choices with saving refugees and such giving Rose real weight to her job, then when Finn wants to leave it is no joke, neither when Poe wants to disobey orders to not just go back and forth to whichever system he’s assigned, seeing it as pointless distraction reaching a boiling point where he publicly accuses Holdo to be the spy, maybe previously confidential intel, inciting a panic. If we run with the idea Finn is a tracker that’s back online once he’s out of his coma, that can also be around the time Holdo shows up, which makes the catalyst for Poe’s suspicion it’s her rather than just rejecting her as an authority figure.
Ha guess I’m pretty passionate about this section of the film too, especially when it seems more unanimous even to those who liked TLJ these were the weakest elements. I just hated being bored by the lack of conflict on the Raddus and I definitely felt like Canto Bight was meant to be the fun part of the adventure but it just didn’t work for me at all.