I've been so curious to see why Senator Lady was so disturbed that I haven't considered that, in a remake, the entire "Bothan" thing could be dropped. It could simply be a rebel mission. Luke and Leia and the droids could take part. Shot of droids in ship's corridor and Luke in a fighter would be possible ;/

The suggestions for switching scene order sound terrific. Luke goes to Dagobah before Han rescue would work with a desperate bluff. Could drop some expo like Luke "Leia, LC says that Han is being kept in suspension. We don't have to rush." Then the suggested Leia misadventure while Luke takes his fighter to see Yoda.

All of the proper PT names and terms could be changed. None of the ones I have proposed were meant to be used- just placeholders. Changing the OT names and terms would be a little more difficult, but maybe it would work.

I went with stark history-based concepts because I don't see enough films to have a cinephile's perspective. The history could be dialed back or fuzzed up in many ways. There's an opportunity for some 'War and Peace' and 'Dr Zhivago' sort of stuff.

I didn't work as hard to determine R2's origins because my first impression was that he was new. I thought he might be assigned to a Jedi fighter at first. That might interfere with introducing the two droids together.

The people of Naboo and Alderaan might have dark bronze hair and brown or dark amber eyes. They could represent the peoples of the mediteranean, Latin America, The Middle East and the Hindi. The mercenary tribe and Mace could represent African origins, Obi could remain "Britishy", Ani could be "Gothic", and, of course, the different aliens and droids could represent differing peoples in general. North Korea is the last full-fledged Stalinist state in the world. Yeah, maybe the clones fighting the authority of the Republic could be East Asian. Or, they could be Eurasian.

Later :)