Not sure if this has been mentioned yet or not, but I have a suggestion regarding the Sarlacc scene:
It has always stuck out to me that neither Jabba’s sail barge nor the skiff hover in any way – it’s really obvious that they’re both stationary and fixed to the ground; they don’t feel mobile. I suspect this was Lucas’ reasoning behind adding the new digital shot of the barge in motion at the opening of this sequence, but now that new moment underscores how motionless the thing is throughout the rest of it, in my opinion.
Take for example the bit where Luke is on the deck of Jabba’s barge, with his lightsaber – the sand dunes and sky in the bakground are 100% static, which makes the shot feel more artifical, in my opinion. Likewise, in the shot where the skiff lurches and Han falls off, the skiff appears to be rigged to fall over, and it sort of klunks into place, almost bouncing from the momentum, which is exactly what is happening. A good practical effect for 1983, but by modern standards it looks rather dodgy.
I’m sure it would be no small task to successfully animate these vehicles to appear more like they’re floating, but it seems to me that it would add a much stronger sense of reality to that sequence. I don’t think we need to see the vehicles “doing donuts” or anything as dramatic as that, but just some subtle motion to make them more ‘real.’
ROTJ has always felt the most “stagey” of the OT to me, and the one that was the most unconcerned with shots looking less than impressive. Some of the sets and locations really feel like sets and locations, and I’ve always felt it was detrimental to the suspension of disbelief necessary for a fantasy film. I’d be thrilled to see this kind of thing minimized or eliminated for ROTJ:R.
