Years ago I proposed that the film started with Luke on Dagobah completing his training by creating his lightsaber telekinetically. Yoda dies, having trained Luke and not just in mid sentence. Luke returns to Tatooine only to discover that in her inpatience Leia has already attempted to rescue Han and failed. Luke then has to rescue the rescue. It means shifting some scenes around and construction of new shots. But the technology to do so is almost upon us.
Love that concept, Bingo! I definitely understand the appeal for many wanting to have Luke continue his training with Yoda before Han’s rescue - it makes total sense. Not sure if it’s the same with you or anyone else, but for me it would also help fix the (minor) plot holes of a) how did he appear to gain more wisdom/skill with the Force (on his own, btw) in just about a year, and especially b) how and where did he learn to construct his new snazzy lightsaber (I have a potential idea in my wishlist that helps “remedy” this, for anyone curious, by adding a little extra dialogue from 3PO to R2 as they’re walking to Jabba’s). But, if we do see Luke before Jabba’s Palace, though, I’d worry might this undermine the already-great first reveal of Luke as he’s marching into Jabba’s palace while looking ominous? That’s my biggest hold-up. Also the original reveal of his lightsaber and then him igniting the green blade after his stunt on the skiff is amazing, too.
Okay on that note, gotta share a quick story… I was very young and at a friend’s house who had a swimming pool with a low-ish diving board… so you better believe I had to reenact Luke’s heroic stunt on that! Minus the flip back up of course 😉 Did that a few times until I was finally told to stop because it was “dangerous”, lol. Please tell me someone else here also used to do that! I know I can’t be the only nerd who did that 😄
But anyway, if one could actually pull off a new good first reveal of both Luke and his lightsaber, just like how you described it, Bingo, and it looked convincing, I for one would definitely be open seeing it and how it works along with the original surrounding footage. So you’d also obviously need to trim a bit of the original Yoda/Luke scene; I’m assuming you would keep the Obi-Wan/Luke dialogue after Yoda, right?