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Return Of The Jedi - a general Random Thoughts thread — Page 10

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StarkillerAG said:

Shopping Maul said:
See above. I still maintain Luke only cared about redeeming Vader.

And I still maintain that Luke cared about Vader as a means of destroying Palpatine. But since it’s clear that neither of us will budge on our positions, maybe we should just stop.

I agree. I believe his original intention was to use Vader (Anakin) so that they would defeat the Emperor together. However, things turned out a bit differently but worked out just the same.

真実

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ray_afraid said:

I love Salacious Crumb. Haters be damned.
I really dig the creature design. I think he’s great.

He’s pretty funny in the Star Wars to Jedi documentary too. I’m surprised there aren’t more outtakes with puppeteer Tim Rose cutting loose.

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Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

ray_afraid said:

I love Salacious Crumb. Haters be damned.
I really dig the creature design. I think he’s great.

I love him too. I love the laugh.

SilverWook said:

ray_afraid said:

I love Salacious Crumb. Haters be damned.
I really dig the creature design. I think he’s great.

He’s pretty funny in the Star Wars to Jedi documentary too. I’m surprised there aren’t more outtakes with puppeteer Tim Rose cutting loose.

This has always been a distinct childhood memory of mine, and for the longest time I couldn’t remember where I saw it. I felt like I’d found the Holy Grail when I watched From Star Wars to Jedi a couple years ago. A comment on that youtube video mentions it being in an ad at the beginning of the VHS tapes, so I think I might be remembering it from that.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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ShamanWhill said:

There are a lot of different ways I would change Return of the Jedi. I think it’s still an enjoyable film, but it’s definitely the weakest of the OT.

First off, I think the writers completely forgot about Darth Vader’s motivation in Episode V. If you can recall, Darth Vader seemed to be misleading the Emperor into thinking that he would either turn Luke or kill him. But instead, we find in the famous scene where he tells Luke he’s his father, that Vader was actually plotting to get Luke to kill the Emperor for him. Come Episode VI, this plot line is completely abandoned, and I think that’s a real shame. I think it would make the movie 10 times more interesting if Vader was constantly bothering Luke, trying to get him to turn to the dark side so he can kill the Emperor. And at the same time, everyone on the light side can be telling Luke the same thing; kill the Emperor! We can then have Luke plan to turn his father back to the light side, and Vader will ultimately become the one who destroys the Emperor. After all, this was Vader’s problem. He had been living as a pawn of the Emperor for decades. It would be ultimately cowardly of him to get his son to get him out of this mess. And it is his Son that ultimately redeems him. So firstly, the movie should be more about Anakin’s relationship with Palpatine, and how it has soured.

Secondly, I think it would be best to change Endor back into Kashyyyk. In Episode III, the Battle of Kashyyyk is presented to the audience as one of the turning battles of the Clone Wars. We see the Wookies free and fighting in the beginning, then annihilated and forced into slavery at the end. It would be poetic if come Episode VI, the Wookies are the ones to turn the tide of the War again by defeating the Empire.

Thirdly, I think the whole Jabba’s Palace adventure needs to be toned down. Ultimately, Luke’s plan makes NO sense. In the movie, Luke sends R2 and 3PO to Jabba as gifts. Why? Now we have more hostages to save. Then Luke sends Leia disguised as a bounty hunter, and sells Chewbacca to Jabba. Why? Now we have more hostages to save. You see the pattern here? If not, then Leia gets captured rescuing Han, and now we have another person for Luke to save. And thru all of this, Lando happens to have infiltrated the Palace and does… nothing. Wow. What a BS plan.

Fourthly, I think we need to have a more political plot line in the movie. Why is the Emperor building another Death Star? In Episode IV, Tarkin reveals that the Original Death Star was to be used to keep the Regional Governors in line with the Empire. So since the rebels destroyed the first one, are the Regional Governors not following the Emperors will? Just throwing a couple of lines that explains the state of the Galaxy would help tremendously.

Although I think there still needs to be more to change, those are some of the more basic things I can think of.

THIS.

I’ve always given the Jabba’s Palace stuff a pass just because of how fun and exciting of an action set-piece it is. I love the sleazy atmosphere there. The space slug mob Don running rackets, smuggling guns and drugs, enslaving people, putting hits on people, etc. It’s such a cool den of vice which really sells how lawless the galaxy is outside of the Empire. Dagobah was a nice touch too.

Honestly it’s a really jarring tonal shift how we go from that to cute fluffy teddy bears in the woods. The middle act of the movie REALLY drags. Basically Luke, Leia and Han are bumbling around on Endor not doing anything until Luke gets bored and decides he’s done with the cynical product placement and wants to return to the plot. It’s a shame Leia and Han don’t do the same.

All the Vader/Emperor/Luke stuff is fantastic and is the high point of the series. Nothing will ever come close. It’s not the perfect book end for the series but it’s a fantastic closure to Luke’s story.

I’d argue that’s what the whole trilogy was, Luke’s story. He goes from being a whiny insecure young 20 something year old dude living with his parents, to a cocky over confident brat after blowing up the Death Star, to growing up, saving his friends and mending his dysfunctional family.

Luke astro-projects himself to Salt Lake Planet, gets shot at by gorilla walkers, has a non-lightsaber duel with Darth Millennial, then dies of a broken heart, inspiring broom boys throughout the galaxy to get creative with their sweeping. - DuracellEnergizer

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The OT was Luke’s story. The prequel was Anakin’s story and the sequel is Ray’s story.

I grew up with the Luke Skywalker trilogy so that is my favorite of the 3 trilogies. And the one i most often rewatch. The Maclunky edition left me cold, but seeing 4K83 warmed my heart. Even the odd moments of the film that don’t work like Harrison being bored and Mark Hamill not believing in the material, don’t ruin the film for me. Real world production issues should not intrude on the story, on the myth.

There are things i can complain about like the unconvincing scene with Harrison and Billy Dee with a Matte of the Millennium Falcon in the background and a tiny set that looks nothing like an expansive rebel hanger.
I wish the set was bigger and the Falcon was the full size location model they shot in the deleted scene of the sandstorm sequence. The film may be 3 times more expensive than Star Wars but it looks cheap, not sure if it was because they did not shoot on Panavision for the third film or the film stock they used, it has almost but not quite the feel of a tv movie. Down to the chosen director Richard Marquand.

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Deborah Harry was in the movie? 😛

Seriously though, I’ve never noticed the blonde in Jabba’s palace before…

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Where were you in '77?

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Damn the DGA for not letting Spielberg direct ROTJ, damn them all to hell!

But no, seriously I still adore ROTJ for what it is, when I was a kid it was my favorite of the OT and I re-watched it atleast twice a month. As I’ve gotten older it’s flaws have stuck out more and more, the second act in particular. I’ve said this on another thread here but ROTJ really has some of the highest highs and lowest lows of the OT. I think Spielberg would’ve done an overall better job with the set pieces, actors, and even camerawork, but it’s still a fine movie, and a nice conclusion to the OT.

Use the Force, Joh Yowza.

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J0E said:

The middle act of the movie REALLY drags. Basically Luke, Leia and Han are bumbling around on Endor not doing anything until Luke gets bored and decides he’s done with the cynical product placement and wants to return to the plot. It’s a shame Leia and Han don’t do the same.

The take I’m here for.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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ray_afraid said:

I really wish the action at Jabba’s would have taken place on a lush, tropical rainforest type planet. That would have added new visual flair to the film & it seems like a place where slug-like creatures would thrive.
Also, the Sarlaac being the gaping maw of a huge, beautiful flower would be better than a hole in the sand.

100% this. The only thing a planet like that would need is a good name.

Analog Releases of Films That Contain Deleted, Extended, & Alternate Footage That’ve Never Been Released on DVD/BluRay

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Pity “Yavin” was already taken.

(And side note - isn’t it interesting that Lucas had that name already in 1974, yet Tolkien’s decades-in-the-making Silmarillion published in 1977, somehow also used the name “Yavanna” for the goddess of plants and greenery?)

“That Darth Vader, man. Sure does love eating Jedi.”

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 (Edited)

I saw this thread on twitter referring to the Return Of The Jedi’s ‘Black Friday(November 22nd, 1982):

https://twitter.com/agraphafx/status/1334930894017085441 (a 10-part thread)

Mod Edit: a screenshot of the above twitter thread can be found here - https://i.imgur.com/cijUqU5.png
 

Two articles linked in the above twitter thread (referring to Rinzler’s ‘Making Of’ ROTJ book):

George Lucas Scrapped ROTJ Effects Shots - at Star Wars Underworld (in 2012)

Ewok Orgies and Nine other things a new book reveals about ROTJ - Number 8; Insane Lunatic Maniacs (ILM) - at MTV (in 2013)

^ from the article: ‘“‘Jedi’ almost killed everybody, every department,” admits Lucas.’

 

It seems amazing to me that this isn’t talked about more. All that work, time, money and effort to be thrown out and to never see the light of day.

Even the skilled technicians, modelmakers and artists that were involved these scenes don’t seem to talk about them? Maybe it is too painful still, or perhaps just been forgotten after the hangovers?

Is there more information? Or a thread on here about these scenes?

 


 

Visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston talks about “Black Friday"’:-

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX_erQtz-KY - 80 second video from the Muppet youtube channel.
 

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^ For all the absolute shit on You Tube about Star Wars (and still some great content too) there really should be a number of videos on this! 😃

Maybe someone on here has the relevant pages in Rinzler’s Making Of book and is willing to scan and post them?

Or let you know what those relevant pages are to try and get hold of?

The FE Renegades thread; from the people who post ‘go kill yourself’, ‘fuck you’, ‘let’s throw abuse’, and more at OT staff & members. Four years on and still throwing accusations, slurs and abuse at the OT & anyone outside their Salacious Crumb filled clique. + FE Discord “to vent” more at the OT. Wook’s take.

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What’s even more amazing is that the ILM crew were working on other stuff also for ROTJ, that might or might not have been on the chopping block for Black Friday - eg, there was apparently an attack on a giant Imperial “communications ship” that had some form of modified Star Destroyer model, glimpsed in a couple of reused shots in the finished film.

And unlike Jerjerrod aiming the Death Star at Endor and flooding the tunnels with countermeasures, this wasn’t even in the script! So they were doing it for reasons not connected with simply making the shots the film needed for theaters.

“That Darth Vader, man. Sure does love eating Jedi.”

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Never knew about Black Friday before, that’s incredibly interesting and saddening.

Use the Force, Joh Yowza.

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ShamanWhill said:

Fourthly, I think we need to have a more political plot line in the movie. Why is the Emperor building another Death Star? In Episode IV, Tarkin reveals that the Original Death Star was to be used to keep the Regional Governors in line with the Empire. So since the rebels destroyed the first one, are the Regional Governors not following the Emperors will? Just throwing a couple of lines that explains the state of the Galaxy would help tremendously.

It was actually there to keep the locals in line with the Regional Governors, but your sentiment is right.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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Hoop28 said:

Never knew about Black Friday before, that’s incredibly interesting and saddening.

It’s puts all the BTS troubles on the new films in a different light.

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Is this Jabba’s hookah in a 1984 Doctor Who story?

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Hal 9000 said:

I think Obi-Wan believed Anakin was (literally, biologically) dead when he dropped off Luke, and that Owen would have also. And that it wasn’t until later that he learned Vader survived. It explains why they thought taking Luke there was a sane idea and more comfortably fits in with what we hear from Owen and Beru in ANH.

The most reasonable thing to assume would be that Owen and Obi were lying to Luke: Tatooine was not the birthplace of Anakin (or his wife). Obi and Owen fled there with the infant Luke (the furthest place from “the bright centre of the universe”) to be in hiding.

Of course the PT screws all that up.

“It is only through interaction, through decision and choice, through confrontation, physical or mental, that the Force can grow within you.”
-Kreia, Jedi Master and Sith Lord

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theprequelsrule said:

Hal 9000 said:

I think Obi-Wan believed Anakin was (literally, biologically) dead when he dropped off Luke, and that Owen would have also. And that it wasn’t until later that he learned Vader survived. It explains why they thought taking Luke there was a sane idea and more comfortably fits in with what we hear from Owen and Beru in ANH.

The most reasonable thing to assume would be that Owen and Obi were lying to Luke: Tatooine was not the birthplace of Anakin (or his wife). Obi and Owen fled there with the infant Luke (the furthest place from “the bright centre of the universe”) to be in hiding.

Of course the PT screws all that up.

I have in my head a sequence from an unmade prequel trilogy where Owen and Beru say their goodbyes to their friends on the temperate grassland planet where they grew their crops, seeking any place free of the new Empire which had already centralized commerce in the colony regions of the galaxy.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Ooo, I’d like to hear more about this over on the script writing threads.

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RogueLeader said:

Ooo, I’d like to hear more about this over on the script writing threads.

Well, I am working on an OOT backstory timeline in those very threads!

“It is only through interaction, through decision and choice, through confrontation, physical or mental, that the Force can grow within you.”
-Kreia, Jedi Master and Sith Lord