The complete landing scene (including Leia hugging unknown Rey while Chewie is in the background walking…) should have been removed; following shot to be “sad Chewie and the others mourning”
I wonder if it would be possible to have Chewie hug Leia in the end by using their earlier hug at Maz’s place and moving it to the end of the film after SKB has been destroyed.
I wondered about that myself and I think it should be possible. IIRC Leia is wearing the same outfit, so “all” that needs to be done is to rotoscope the hug and add the base as a background.
I attempted this, but it is a bit difficult due to the amount of smoke in that scene. I’m sure there are some master rotoscopers here that could pull it off though.
Regarding the insertion of having Chewie hug Leia at the end of the film… I don’t think the smoke from the Maz Temple scene would be a problem. When Rey and Co. return to the Resistance base, there is smoke in that scene much as there is in the Maz scene. So I think it would be doable.
The easiest way really is to simply cut the aftermath scene and to directly go to the “being sad in Resistance HQ” scene. Rotoscoping such a long shot might be quite a long process for a not very convincing result… Plus, not being cruel, the less we see Leia in plain light the better it is…
edit: by the way Hal is the audio file somewhere to be found now ?