Without a scene of that sort, sorry to say, Chewie getting the medal will never be in my edit. Probably the single scene that annoyed me the most, outside of Rey Palpatine stuff.
No doubt. They really did cut into the bone way too many times on this movie. So many necessary shots and sequences jettisoned for the sake of going faster, at the expense of any sense being made. Why would you keep these medal shots in if you’re not going to set up OR follow through on any of them properly? Why keep the blender-spun version of Mustafar if that version of the sequence is now completely unneccessary to understanding or even enjoying the scenes that follow? Why would you remove the shots that make the geography of the desert sequences make ANY sort of sense, and then render your Chewie fake death utterly comical because not only is everything happening so fast, now it’s happening in such a non-sequitur manner it might as well be a Looney Tunes cartoon. WHY DOES CHARLIE FROM LOST KEEP TALKING?
So many ideas, and they tried to put all of them in all at the same time and just broke a bunch of them off and shoved the jagged shards into the narrative wherever they could when they didn’t fit right.