a) overall quality, very good. what's done is nicely done
love the starfield replacement in the gunwells to match their position in the falcon and the ships relative movement. neat touch. and the overall starfield replacement gives the duel a lot more dynamic feeling of movement and speed even though they are static sets.
b) crits
i) when ben is cut down, I see you've subtly changed it so that we see his lightsaber and his hands (nice touch) falls away, away from camera, ie to ben's right. but off course, if I'm being really picky that then creates a continuity error because when ben's cloak collapses to the floor, the lightsaber falls on top of it.
why not have his hands and saber fall to our right, ie back towards him for that brief second, not creating that discontinuity.
ii) when the falcon pivots and accelerates away there is a slight jerk between your change and the original shot on the position of the falcon.
iii) when you see Han saying he's going to warm up the guns etc. I know you've changed the starfield, but I'd advise changing the pan so that it's not going so fast.
the original shot has a slight top left to bottom right movement going on. no problem. yours is a top right to bottom left. again no issue with that, it creates a bridge of continuity to the panning shot of the falcon afterwards. HOWEVER, and this is the point. if you have the falcon moving so fast in a climbing turn, we should have seen them do a 180 back to the death star by now. I'd just personally tone down the amount of pan in the starfield at that point.
iv) this is how picky I am.
the first dive on the falcon by the tie's time index 1.29.26.17
if you look REALLY closely, you will see that the topside quad mount on the falcon is putting backwards, ie towards this tie.
but you've got it firing forwards.
this is one of the most iconic shots in the original film and while I appluad the changes to it that you've made for their quality, I think you've made it too busy. personally, I'd ditch the other two attacking tie's and the only change I would make would be to have the guns on the falcon firing at this tie.
v) I think I'll be in the minority on this one.
the targetting computer readouts. hate hate hate the TIE targetting icons. love the rest, hate them. for me, this is a targetting display, and I think this is my military background coming out here, but having the readout display actual TIE's is a bit of a misnomer, a targetting package is there to give you target cues, not display the actual shape of the target. while the rest of it is perfectly fine. I'd personally ditch the TIE icon and put a chevron back in.
vi) I see what you've done to accomodate the new shot of the falcon being hit, you've moved the r2 and 3po corridor walk around. neat, clever manipulation of existing material
vii) one or two of the shots where you have TIE's flying past the front windows of the cockpit, I'd eliminate the laser bolts on at least one of those shots. reason? the problem here is one of repetition and angle. their point of origin is the exact same place, ie the upper dorsal turret position. they originate from the same place, and track in the same direction, makes the shot feel samey even if it isn't. I'd just mix it up a bit and one of the middle shots, drop falcon fire from it. stops it becoming repetitive.
on a personal level, I don't agree with every change, but the quality of what is there is stunning and I'm sure there are changes of mine you don't necessarily agree with either.
regards music etc, I'm just not sold on the new music for this section, but then, I'm not intending to edit the first three films as well.
I totally understand the need for that music for your version as that is the last climatic showdown between kenobi and anakin and the audience when watching the films in order will know that. hence the music is necessary.