Good points eric, however as far as "big openings"...........Episode II showed 3 ships flying slowly and flipping around into the coruscant atmosphere, not very exciting at all. And in ESB (originally) they open with a star destroyer popping out a couple of probes, once again not as exciting as the blockade runner being blasted or the battle of coruscant. We're also going to try and add vaders arrival on DS II to the beginning of ESB. Therefore it would be redundant to have both movies start off on the exact same situation. Panning to dagobah is to set the mood of the movie and connect the audience with the fact that luke has been training for the "in between" time and is probaby now a formidable jedi. It will be easier to see him run off and face Jabba and his goons to get han solo back and gives a better introduction to Luke in general , as opposed to being a hologram from R2 (which is cool too). But it's still open for discussion...