Most of those points are simply too ambitious for what resources we have at our disposal. I will say though, for #3, that TLJ is guilty of giving you a certain impression and then doing a 180 on it, as well. Luke is gonna take his lightsaber! Nope, he just threw it away as a joke. Leia just died, oh no! Nope, she can use the Force in space. They found the master code breaker! Nope, they just got tazed. Snoke is such an incredibly powerful big bad! Nope, he got duped and he’s dead. Luke just saved the Resistance in a way where everyone lives! Nope, he’s dead. There’s just as much whiplash; granted, it doesn’t rotate back and forth like it does for Kylo. But there’s nothing we can do about that.
The only one that can be fixed really is Kylo’s independence as a villain, and I think we’ve got that somewhat nailed down at the moment. Palpatine encourages him to take the Sith throne and kill Rey. In original TROS, he, for some reason, wants the Sith throne WITH Rey. This is a complete 180 of his character motivations that we left off with from TLJ.
By having him simply give the same proposal that he gives Rey in TLJ (destroy the Sith and Palps, make something new) it goes a long way for his character. He is actively refusing both of Palpatine’s commands to him. It’s clear that, even if Rey refuses to accompany him to Exegol, he’s still intent on destroying the Sith and commandering their fleet for the First Order. He probably only raises his lightsaber to strike her down on the Death Star wreckage because he’s given her so many opportunities to quit being a Jedi and join him. It’s clear to him that she’s a Jedi at heart and he doesn’t like the Jedi just as much as Palpatine.
EDIT: Also, I’m not sure if you realized this, but your first two points contradict each other. Palpatine cannot be one step ahead of Kylo while Kylo is also outsmarting him as an outstanding villain in his own right. We have to pick one or the other. I prefer that Kylo outsmarted him.
Thank you for your reply. However, I must respectfully disagree. Suggesting that Kylo could credibly match wits with Palpatine strengthens his character rather than weakens it. He was under Snoke’s thumb in TFA and TLJ. It’s a disappointing progression of his character to also see him under Palpatine’s thumb, too (especially after he defeated Smoke). I’d simply remove Palpatine’s lines that suggest he was never an autonomous actor and was essentially being mind-controlled the whole time.
I’m surprised you think my ideas are too ambitious given that, with fanediting, it’s almost always easier to subtract from, rather than add to, any given film. Regarding Palpatine, I simply want to streamline his motivations and provide him with a more intelligible agenda, i.e., he’s luring Kylo and Rey by exploiting Kylo’s fragile ego and Rey’s need for belonging, but what Palpatine really intends all along is to sap the power of their Dyad. That’s a subtractive, not additive, process, because I would argue that all the pieces are already there. As it is Palpatine is presented as being woefully uninformed and not really knowing what he wants, and that is VERY out of character for him.
You seem to have a very clear vision, however, of what you’d like to see. I wish you the best of luck. I will either spam my ideas on another thread or maybe one day I’ll even take up fanediting again. Cheers.