Trees are more familiar to a lot of people, that’s true. Myself included. They’re still huge trees though, some of the largest on earth. I’ve been there in person and it doesn’t diminish the movie for me. If you’re doing all the planets as single biomes eventually you would end up covering a temperate forest world, not to mention they already had Tatooine in the same movie, so there’s a contrast there. You could do a jungle maybe, but that would also feel similar to Dagobah in the same movie.
There wouldn’t be fan films in the first place without films to be fans of!
True. The main issue is ROTJ has this 25-30 minute “Endor dead zone” where pretty much nothing happens (for some definition of “nothing”). They get trapped by Ewoks. C3PO is mistaken for a God. They’re carried to the Ewok village. Luke does a magic trick. Leia is there with new clothes somehow. They tell campfire stories, etc. This is about when you change the channel.
Now, I can see how you might counter this by saying something like “yeah but the same shit happens in ANH with endless scenes of R2/C3PO wandering around, getting caught by Jawas, sitting on the sandcrawler, etc.”
And yeah, it’s hard to argue that the ANH stuff is somehow objectively “less boring” than the “Endor dead zone” in ROTJ. But here’s my attempt anyway: the ANH slow scenes take place in the first movie before there’s that much of an ongoing narrative or built-up stakes. We’re basically in “exploration mode” at this point. But with Endor, we’re in the middle of a major climactic Rebel military op. When a film like this stalls in the middle of Act II for 3PO jokes and campfire stories, it’s more likely to test audience patience. Whereas with ANH, the slow scenes happen at the very BEGINNING when we’re just sort of along for the ride and learning about the world of Star Wars. It’s a very different context, which for me, makes a big difference. Also the ANH scenes have way more of an “alien vibe” than anything on Endor.
Maybe that helps communicate this point more clearly. Now excuse me while I take 100mg of Adderall so I can pay attention to ROTJ.