My wish list for Jedi.
1) I know Ady was against changing the crawl for ANH and ESB (and why should he have they largely keep the tone of the film) but Jedi's first few minutes really do feel out of place with the other films. ANH starts with, "It is a period of civil war..." ESB has, "It is a dark time the Rebellion" and Jedi has "Luke Skywalker has returned to his home planet of Tatooine in an attempt to rescue his friend Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba The Hutt". The first two are potent tone setters for the film to follow, the third sounds like a cheap soap opera. I suggest that the crawl be reworked to put the threat to the rebels at the front and not just as a tail ender. If It started with "The Rebellion is doomed..." it would capture the urgent nature of this final episode from the beginning.
2) Some evidence of construction vehicles working on the Death Star (this thing is meant to be being built in haste but we see little evidence of it). I was tempted to suggest putting back the idea of having two Death Stars under construction from the early draft script but that would necessitate changing almost every line of dialogue refering to the new danger to the rebellion, shame really because it would make Jedi less like ANH. At the very least Endor needs a parent planet to be the moon of (I'd like to see a blue gas giant like Neptune to make it stand out from Yavin in ANH).
3) Extending the Star Destroyer flyby at the beginning or replacing it with The Executor (why is Vader taking a ride on a conventional Destroyer anyway, if it's to maintain the pretence of keeping Rebel intelligence in the dark about the new Death Star why bother parking The Executor next to the thing later in the film?).
4) Give the hanger sequences a bit more animation (the Stormtroopers are clearly mannikins and/or matte paintings for example and both hangers are clearly the same set even though the first one is meant to be much smaller than the one the Emperor lands in). I'm not too fussed with Vader using a standard shuttle but surely the Emperor should travel in a bit more style? Could he have a fancier version of the one he had in ROTS or at least something more fitting the ruler of the galaxy?
5) Remove the burping jokes.
6) Remove the Greedo lines from ANH.
7) Clip the bit where Lando pulls his mask down, it's obvious to us who he is already without underlining it.
8) The comedy droid torture scenes need to go. In the previous films torture scenes were presented as pure evil (and the practice is evil) but somehow George seems to think that droids don't matter even though he has made six films where two of the principle characters are robots which we are supposed to care about. Do we really need to see the scene at all? By the time we see the droids at work we know what they are doing without the needless exposition.
9) Cut the OTT aspects of the dance number but keep the added Fett footage if possible (Sy's lip close up and what's his face's tonsils really have to go). For the sake of preserving these posts in this thread here is another take on this scene http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Return-of-the-Jedi-Jabbas-Palace-Musical-Number-Recut/topic/10709/
10) Cut down Salacious Crumb's laughter (it's funny once but after a while it get's too much).
11) Boushh seems to get into the palace too easily and once he pulls the grenade only Boba Fett pulls a gun on him, the rest just panic (but none of them try to run away) If it is possible to somehow mix up the reactions of the court and have a couple more try to pull a gun too, keep a number quaking in fear, some trying to figure out the situation while a couple make a dash for the doors (it's all a few seconds so a few jump cuts could do it) it would make the situation seem more realistic and the mysterious new bounty hunter a bit more mysterious for the first time viewer.
12) Han's revival looks very poor, Harrison doesn't match up with the Carbonite version of Han very well and the Carbonite thawing effect looks a bit boring. His conversation with Chewie afterwards contains too much of George's dreaded unecessary exposition and cheapens Han's character a bit by breaking the tone. It would be better if the lines about Luke being a Jedi were removed and the focus was placed more on Solo finally thinking his luck has run out and his friends have all been dragged down too trying to save him. And while we are on the subject of horrible exposition could we have clunkers like, "Artoo, look! It's Captain Solo and he's still frozen in Carbonite!" removed? We can see that, we don't need to be told it too.
13) I'm not sure about Luke doing the force choke on the guards it feels a bit too much Sith like than Jedi like. I'd prefer him to pull the same distraction move Obi Wan did on the Stormtroopers in ANH while turning the tractor beam off (this isn't the same as having Greedo shoot first, Han is a hard nosed smuggler, Luke is meant to be a noble knight...his potential for turning to the dark side should only be revealed in the duel with Vader not during a minor confrontation with a couple of green pigs).
14) Jabba and his court need some of the same articulation that Ady gave to the Cantina patrons, while they are more animated than some of the solid masks used in ANH they often look very fake. It's Star Wars so some of the aliens should look on the comedic side of bizarre but it would throw off some of the, "It's just a bunch of Muppets" feeling if more of Jabba's court could be made to look genuinely frightening or at least threatening. The Devil bloke in the Cantina looks really scary but almost all of Jabba's lot look as threatening as a Doctor Who convention in Blackpool. Some glowing eyes, some dangerous looking snarls and the odd mean looking expression could just add the necessary edge to the place (putting in the planned Lightman might be an interesting addition to the court as well). And as much as I like the idea of the weeping Rancor keepers it does break the mood. Luke has just come through a fight for his life armed only with the bones of the Rancor's previous victims and you know that it's going to get worse for our heroes before it gets better but the tension gets broken by the non-robotic Laurel and Hardy of the Star Wars universe.
15) If something can be done with the Tatooine exteriors please do. The compositing still looks very fake and the colours are too vibrant to be taken seriously. The models of the barge and the skiffs look very model like and don't fit with the rather well made life size versions. Thank God they got rid of the felt tip drawn guy from the original version but couldn't the barge have a few more hands on deck (possibly in scale)? The Sarlacc still needs to be more alive (difficult I know it was a stupid idea in the first place) but it might be nice to see it rise out of the sand a little and maybe grab people off the skiff when it tilts (like the squid in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea") I'm sure I'm going to get it in the neck for this but I'd prefer it if Luke cut Fett's head off than having Han's lucky poke at Fett's backpack sending him to his undignified onscreen end. I don't care if he is in the EU, having Luke remove Boba's head would confirm Luke as a fully trained Jedi and book end the Fett family story. This film is meant to be about a son trying not to suffer the same fate as his father it would foreshadow this theme if Boba who followed in his father's footsteps, met the same fate. George builds up the Fetts in half of the saga as these great secondary characters only to have Boba Fett die in most stupid comedic way possible. The barge explosion is another really fake effects shot that really needs something done to it (perhaps making the explosion so big it bleaches out the over saturated colours might be the way) and I really hate the unecessary shot of the droids being lifted out of the sand, more of George's slapshtick which we could do without. It might help validate R2's flying ability in the prequels if he used this skill in getting himself and Threepio off the barge (it is one of the few instances in the original trilogy where this would come in handy).
16) If there was some way of doing it could we have Luke getting a premonition that all is not well with Yoda? George was determined to wipe the slate with this film and tie up all the loose ends but the moment that Luke decides to go back to Dagobah, the little froggy guy croaks. Not just during the his stay but in the middle of a conversation. It might add to the tension if during the Sail Barge escape Luke got a vision of a clearly unwell Yoda which would add urgency to his going back and continue the out of the frying pan pace of the film. And could we make Ben look a little more ghostly? It's bad enough that he sits his spiritual bum down on a branch to deliver his lines but he could fade in and fade out, for all we know at the end of that scene Obi-wan could have been yapping away for hours like a couple of gossipy neighbours. Having Ben fade away and leaving Luke on his own would add to his uncertain feelings about his eventual confrontation with his father (sadly there is nothing we can do about Leia being Luke's sister which despite what Lucas may say was clearly a last minute thing and makes that big snog in Empire all the more worrying).
17) The set for the rebel conference looks awful. The original designs had these interesting maps and guys on cherry picker style chairs floating about but the final piece looks like some shiny piece of nonsense made out of plywood. And why the hell is 21B there? Some people say he's there to co-ordinate the medical needs of the fleet (I know the Rebels are the good guys but they put a robot in charge?) The truth is more likely they had this expensive prop from the previous film and stuck him in there for no reason other than they needed to fill the space (he should go). The sound seems to be very off in this scene too. In the other films Threepio is there for a reason, couldn't a piece of dialogue be inserted somewhere to explain that the droids are necessary to check or deliver the shuttle's emergency code? Otherwise why are they tagging along anyway? ("Here we go again" indeed). The rebel hanger paintings are really awful, they look nothing less than paintings and really take us out of the moment. The shots of the rebels ships going into hyperspace need to be redone. They don't disappear to the same vanishing point which is odd seeing as they are all going to the same place.
18) I don't know if the scene of Vader choking Jejerrod is out there or what state it's in if it is but Jedi needs to have some Vader being more than a push over scenes. I'm sure that if it is gone for good sending out a call to the fan movie makers out there we could have a passable Vader choking a Royal Guard scene made to fill the missing space in the script. It would be nice if the corridors of The Executor could be taken from Empire and stuck into the Jedi shots to replace the closed door we see in that film. The bridge set feels less spectcular in Jedi because of it.
19) I know it's manditory to have the phrase "I have a bad feeling about this" in every Star Wars film but could we just have one please?
20) Some of the speeder bike shots could do with a redo. And the spinning speeder bike looks awful.
21) Ewoks... perhaps it was inevitable I would get around to these guys but I actually quite like the idea of a large mechanised army being brought down by a bunch of teddy bears with bows and arrows. But do they have to look like little guys dressed as teddy bears? I loved the scene in "Galaxy Quest" where we see what looks like a bunch of cute aliens turn out to be vicious canibalistic sharp toothed monsters. Give the Ewoks some eyelids and some fierce looking facial expressions, hide the obvious moments where the suits look like suits and after a while even the most avid Ewok hater will grow to like them. I do have a problem with Luke levitating Threepio being enough to scare the little buggers into letting our heroes go. For years now the Ewoks would have seen a strange moon growing in their sky, plastic men flying on metal bikes and firing lightning out their hands (laser guns not Sith magic), so would they be so scared of some golden boob floating around on a chair? Couldn't Luke pull off a more effective light show and spare us Threepio acting like Dr Smith in "Lost In Space"? Could we lose Han and Threepio's comedy turn about the supplies in fact I'm rather uncomfortable with Threepio's story telling scene but if we must have it couldn't Artoo add a bit of holographic illustration to wow the natives?
22) The Emperor's slugs, why ILM haven't fixed this yet boggles the mind. It must be the easiest quick fix job on clipboard.
23) Leia remembers Padme...but how? One easy fix could be that when she refers to "images" she produces a locket with a picture of her mother and gives it Luke, something regal that Bail Organa may have given her when she was a little girl. If it fell out while Palpatine was zapping Luke, seeing it and Luke in pain may add a bit more umph to his Return to the light side (just an idea). A variation on the same idea is that Leia gets a strong mental image of Padme when she holds a mysterious pendant that used to belong to her (in ROTS we see Padme with the pendant in her coffin but perhaps she wasn't buried with it. Now that would have a serious impact on Vader if he saw it while Luke is getting handed his arse by the the Emperor). The less labour intensive option would be having the line edited to "No, just images really, feelings.". It would retcon Leia's knowledge of her mother to something even more vague without revealing when she died.
24) When Lando concludes that the shield is still up could we have a few rebels ships not pull up in time and smash into the shield? The Executor crashing into the Death Star is rubbish. A ship the size of a large city, crashing into a station the size of a moon, with all the drama of a paper dart smacking onto a kitchen floor. Once the shield is down the logical way to avoid getting zapped by the super laser would be to have the capital ships move closer to and attack the exposed sections of the Death Star as in this image : http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/txkarenr/txkarenr2/txkarenr3/SWPicRebelBombardment.jpg
25) I love the AT-AT on Endor but couldn't we see it enter into the battle? The sight of this metal monster stomping around through the forest being taken down by some trap would add a lot of wow into the ground battle. The dying Ewok should be very dead and there should be more of them (war has it's cost in lives and one moaning Ewok is not enough to show that). The comedy turns of the Ewoks should be cut (Lucas can't stop himself as the Gungans proved in TPM) And please remove the Ewok "Yahoo"s and the Tarzan stylings of Chewie.
26) In an earlier version of the script Jerjerrod realising that everything is going pear shaped turns the Death Star onto Endor and is about to blow it up and most of both fleets in a mad scorched sentry moon move. Could that be put back in? It may make Jedi even more like ANH but it would crank up the tension even more.
27) Kill Lando, blow up the Falcon. Once again I'm going to get it in the neck but : A) The Falcon is Solo's bachelor pad it underlines the Solo in his name, if he's going to be marrying into the Skywalker family he won't be Solo anymore and it gives some power to the line about his "funny feeling" so the sceptical pirate does have proof of a mystical energy field controlling everything, he predicted that the Falcon would go out in a blaze of glory. Solo's arc is completed and screw the EU. B) Lando in my eyes had no need to redeem himself after Empire he had the fates of all the people of Cloud City in his hands and he had to weigh that up against his friendship with Han but that wouldnt stop someone like him from feeling that he still has something to prove and as I said before for the victory to be justified it must come at a cost.
28) Get rid of Mannikin Skywalker and put Seb Shaw back where he belongs. Luke wants to see his father (the man he redeemed) not some child butchering, wife choking, creepy looking weirdo.
29) Silence the Gungan and change the music again. There must be a piece of music that sums up the bitter sweet elation of the end of tragic civil war out there somewhere (especially one without pan pipes).