Han dying would have been very hard to pull off in a good way. Based upon what Kurtz describes there, his death sounds random and the character deserved better than that. I know very little about what execution they wanted for that plot point though, so I guess we may never know what would have been better.

I think I agree with Kurtz that Raiders of the Lost Ark was very light on the pregnant story elements. It was a much more straightforward film and not much actually happened on the screen that truly spoke of deeper things. Sure, you had characters with "pasts," but those pasts were never explored in detail. In other words, Raiders had many possibilities for subtext, but practically no real subtext was ever explored or specifically mentioned. Still, the dialogue and acting in Raiders were great, causing all of us to love the characters, and the action was very fun to watch. It deserved to make the money it did, but I can easilly see a shallow guy like Lucas arguing that it proves that people want mindless, feel-good action and nothing else.