One change that might make this film a bit different from ANH is making the main goal of building the Starkiller to take out the Republic capital and their fleet and the whole purpose of entering the base and trying to destroy it is to prevent that.
A countdown graphic could be added to rank up the tension and the base would be destroyed but too late to save the targets so the footage of the core worlds being destroyed comes after the weapon has been destroyed. This would make the ending even more bitter sweet because not only have we lost Han but also the Republic government and defences all in the final act.
The capital being destroyed wouldn’t be an exact mirror of Alderaan but instead would play out like Yavin 4 being destroyed and a few survivors looking on in horror from escaping ships.
The First Order may have lost their big gun but it has done it’s main job. They won.
THIS. Honestly I enjoyed the movie save for the handling of the Starkiller base. When I read today that deleted scenes were going to be included with the official BD release, I immediately headed over here to see how many threads for fan edits had started haha. The base should be priming to blow up the Hosnian (sp?) system NOT the resistance base. Everything can go down the same way but have the Starkiller base destroy the Republic system then Starkiller can go on and implode from the resistance attack. Having rebel personal, I mean resistance personal sitting on another planet waiting for an attack to prevent their destruction is too much for me.