First, ignore the EU. Disney has tossed aside the EU as non-canonical and the new movies will not follow any of the EU storylines. You should too. I’m not familiar with the EU (I’ve never read a SW novel or played a video game) but it seems like a wise decision not to be bound to a hodgepodge of sometimes bizarre and contradictory storylines created by different people who weren’t collaborating with each other.

I think this is short-sighted. It would be better to say “Don’t feel bound to staying consistent with the EU,” but you can still use it as source material to draw inspiration from. I’ve always liked the idea of an alternate Episode II that’s loosely based on stories from the Clone Wars Multimedia Project.

Besides that, I like the level of detail with this post. I’ve always found PT rewrites to be tricky to pull off, and this would definitely work well as a guide for it.

On a side note, it’s always bugged me that Tarkin had no real role in the prequels. He should have been an important character.