A case could be made is that perhaps downsizing the main crew would had helped certain characters have more character moments. Nix Bodhi and Baze. Chirrut indeed was one of the better ones in that movie and I would had liked him to expand on his views about the Force/supposed Church of the Force. Baze, I assume, was meant to be representative of a refugee due to Imperial invasion of his home planet (based off the trailer). Instead he’s more of a tag along friend of Chirrut. Bodhi serves more like a plot device than a character.
Ideally, Rogue One could had shined with this angle:
Jyn is unmoved about the tales of Jedi/the Force, perhaps a skeptic initially.
Cassian does believe in those tales, and fights for the hope of making those old tales a reality.
Chirrut embodies that the Force is indeed real for Jyn and inspires her to realize it’s no longer just about helping her father but the vital importance of the Rebellion’s resilience. Also gives Cassian peace, even in sacrifice, that the Jedi may overthrow the Empire.It gives clash to Jyn and Cassian in the beginning because their end goal is the same, but motivations may be off, which may cause misunderstandings/disagreements and then eventual acceptance/understanding towards the end.
K-2SO would remain unchanged.
I think they wanted to go for a “team” feel, but this would’ve definitely allowed for the audience to get to know the characters that were kept better than we did. I also could picture some fun interactions between K2-SO and Chirrut. You could’ve cut Bodhi and just have it where Saw’s Partisans intercepted some kind of important message/data before the Alliance could, so they need Jyn to help them find the Partisans and negotiate with Saw in order to learn the contents of that message, something they believe may be important to stopping the Empire.
Instead of getting captured on Jeddha, Chirrut could be the one that takes them to Saw, maybe after Jyn does something that proves her good intentions to Chirrut. Hell, you could even have Saw survive and replace Baze as the “heavy” of the mission, if you didn’t want Forrest Whittaker to just be a cameo.