It does sound like rescoring is a pain, but the choices you’ve
made so far feel like a massive improvement over the original to my ears.
Another editing suggestion regarding the first Grand Inquisitor shot: I really like what you did here. Kind of a spooky reveal of the Grand Inquisitor. (It is impressive how you truncated that interaction, and it really improved it.)
I do think it might help to try to cut away from dolly in shot of the bartender behind the bar before he starts moving left of frame. Maybe before he sits the bottle down. Since he is static in the following shot, the movement stood out to me.
I also wonder if you could place the shot of Kenobi (the one we see after the bartender says they hunt Jedi) right after the reveal shot of the Grand Inquisitor. Cutting to Kenobi, who is a distance away from them, in my mind helps sell the idea that the bartender walked to the front of the bar while we were away, even if only for a brief moment. I also think there is a nice logic of revealing the Grand Inquisitor, then showing Kenobi’s immediate “oh shit” reaction.
This isn’t important, but there is one shot in the scene of the Grand Inquisitors shadow passing over a bar patron sitting down. I feel like this shot would be great to build up to the GI reveal, maybe being placed before the first shot of the bartender reacting to the GI walking in. The shot is used in the scene already though, but you could replace it with a shot of the three patrons at the bar top that was cut from your version (we see that shot around when the GI walks up to the lightsaber marks on the wall). Just an idea though! [And if you do use it, the shot might work better if it was reversed, but I can’t tell.]
The song you used at the end of the scene fit quite well!
I also like the idea you had of using a shot of the ringworld from Book of Boba Fett (feel like I should be saying Mandalorian). I do think that specific shot, of a ship leaving the ringworld, might be a little confusing since we just saw Obi-Wan about to board a ship on Tatooine, then see him leave a different place on a different ship. This might not work, but I wonder if you could use different establishing shots of the ringworld to imply that Kenobi is hiding/meditating in a storage container on the outer surface of the ring, the substrata, rather than on a ship floating through space somewhere. The colors of the ship Kenobi is in matches the color scheme of the substrata, so I feel like you could sell the idea. You could add pipe sounds or something too help sell the idea with ambience. And then after Kenobi has the vision, you could use that shot of the shuttle leaving the ringworld to make it seem like Kenobi is leaving to go rescue Leia.
Again, I do agree that you could accept Star Wars logic and Leia was kidnapped not long after Obi-Wan left Tatooine for totally different reasons, but I think this idea does help clarify his motivations a bit. And having a nice, quiet establishing shot or two could help with the flow of the narrative too.
You are totally right though regarding your thoughts of Bail. If Bail had Obi-Wan on speed dial all of this time, you’d think he would’ve just sent a message to Obi-Wan directly in A New Hope.
Also, great job with the binocular shot! Think it works better now.
I hope I’m not giving an overwhelming amount of feedback. I think what you’ve done so far is great, and you should trust your gut!