I would be curious to here some people’s issues with ROTJ. I know this has been discussed pretty thoroughly countless times. I have a feeling as more prequel kids have grown up and are now more active on this site, perhaps there might be more people who like these aspects of ROTJ. But I still think it would be worth playing around with a ROTJ edit that tries to address these major complaints, as if the original trilogy was the only Star Wars that we ever got.
I could spend A LOT of time talking about my issues with this film. 😉
Aside from the points that get brought up a lot, one thing I would look at is playing around with the pacing of scenes on Endor. You can play up the fact that Leia is missing for a bit (after the chase). Cut down certain shots to remove goofy expressions. Change the music to insert some tension. This was something I made a long time ago but I still like the ideas behind some of the changes I made (even if most of them are poorly executed…or I would continue to developed further):
- Han stepping on a twig, thus alerting the trooper to his presence, was incredibly lazy storytelling. I like my change to the scene, but it was mostly for fun. I feel like something else should trigger the troopers instead.
- Adding as much believability to our main heroes’ actions is a must.
- Playing around with the Leia and Wicket scenes helps address why she just pops up in the Ewok village out of nowhere.
- Generally, I liked what I did to the Han/Luke “Where’s Leia?” scene. It adds more tension and just…it heightens everything a bit more to where one might sit up and pay more attention.
- Just cutting down the humor…or at least allowing it to happen at more strategic times will help quite a bit.
- Ignor the Vader/Palps scene at the end…I didn’t do anything to it. 😛