Vaderisnothayden said:
The radio drama is pretty well done, but I can't take it too seriously with other actors playing people like Leia and Han. The first episode was interesting. But the second one, the Leia ep, was lame. And I'm not terribly impressed with how Leia is performed. I wish the radio drama didn't feel the need to fill in every bit of the story. I guess we're lucky they didn't put in scenes for every time the characters went to do a crap. The stuff that's not in the movie or the deleted scenes feels a bit bogus to me. It includes some stuff that makes Han more ruthless and Tarkin less brave.

I also have serious issues with the ROTJ drama, because it includes various expanded universe stuff. Considering that the radio dramas are considered core stuff (I think they shouldn't be, but they are), expanded universe stuff from the 90s doesn't belong in there. They should have stuck to old stuff and tried to make a drama like it would have been had they made it in the earlier 80s rather than in the mid-90s.

To each their own I guess, but having it expanded into a much larger story, and then serialized into a bunch of episodes is what really makes me love this so much. I loved the extra stuff with Leia and Bail. Maybe it sounds a little corny at times, but I think that is part of the novelty, it makes it feel like an authentic old time radio show. For some reason listening to the thing just brings me back to the days of staying up past bed time and secretly reading comic books with a flashlight.

Having different actors for many of the characters was just fine for me, when I listen to it I like to try to forget about the movie as much as possible and imagine everything in my head. May sound strange, but when I listen to this, the characters in my imagination are based off of the Ralph McQuarrie paintings rather than the actors from the films.

I also don't care as much for the ROTJ drama. The first one is really my favorite, it stands on its own, and really has that classic sci-fi feel to it. ROTJ suffers from having been made over ten years after the other two. Losing Mark Hamil in the role of Luke kicks it down a notch as well. No doubt it would have been better had it been made shortly after The Empire Strikes Back, but I am glad they eventually got around to making it, just for the sake of completing the trilogy.

DarkFather, glad to see you have taken the time to track these down and listen to them. I am sure you'll find they were well worth the time and money.