If JediPaxis’ leaked plot descriptions are anything to go off of, I think when Kylo/FO and the Resistance find out Palpatine is alive did change somewhat.
I don’t think Kylo didn’t exactly know what he would find in the Unknown Regions originally. Apparently the info Poe and Finn get from the spy is that Kylo is searching for something in the Unknown Regions, not that Palpatine is alive and has a fleet of warships laying in wait. Leia has a contact that might have a lead regarding the Unknown Regions, and she sends them to Pasana.
It is possible this was not accurate, but I can totally see them deciding to make it clear from the beginning that Palpatine is back in order to make the goals of the characters clearer, and to raise the stakes for the Resistance early on.
I don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theories, but I can totally see the function of the Oracle becoming redundant or contradictory if Act I was restructured a bit. I think Pablo even mentioned on his twitter that Act I received the most changes during reshoots.
Okay, that does make sense. I assumed that the “reshoots” in JediPaxis’ plot summary were just the leakers receiving more accurate info, but it would make sense if Palpatine wasn’t revealed until the end of the first act. Which just makes me want the deleted scenes more, so a fan edit can partially revert the movie to an earlier version, like Hal did in his edit of ROTS.
You’re right, when I went back and read them I had to be careful about what was information that was changed due to story changes/reshoots, and what was simply things that were clarified to him rather than actual story changes. He typically would elaborate a little if things were rewrite related, which he does somewhat for this plot point.
His leaks occasionally are light on details, but you can’t always assume the omission of those details and later elaboration means those were reshoot changes.
I’ll be thankful once we actually have the film in the deleted scenes are in our hands, so we know what we actually have to work with. But knowing how it was originally mapped out might give us a better idea for how the film was originally paced, and the steps editors can take if they wanted to also slow the pace down or recreate a similar structure from earlier cuts of the film.
Even beyond an editing perspective, I find the whole development process really interesting. The leaked shooting script(?) for TFA was also rather interesting since it hinted at an alternate opening, more flashbacks, the Resistance Warhammer/Sledgehammer ship, etc.
I was honestly expecting them to reimplement Leia’s lines regarding the Warhammer for a ship that might’ve played a role in the final battle, but it possible it was never shot anyway.
Maybe we will get more insight regarding changes in the commentary, since Abrams touched on reshoot changes somewhat in the TFA commentary.