How would you have done ROTJ? — Page 2

Your general idea would make a fine fan script or novel for "REVENGE OF THE JEDI"

What Motivates Luke to get Revenge on Vader when he delivers the killing blow with his lightsaber.

To me it would be boring if he just overpowered vader in anger and lopped off his head and arms like Anakin does to dooku.

I wonder if Lucas transposed Lukes original killing of vader to anakin murdering dooku?

I mean at least before he determined Jedi don't seek revenge.  Maybe Luke is like a Ronin a masterless samurai and one who has had incomplete and wanting training.  He acts with his emotions just like Anakin in the prequels except without a wooden hayden esque annoying voice.

I mean star wars could have had a very dark ending with Luke Standing over both the emperors and Vaders corpses and take their place as Emporer Skywalker the Tyrant.

He hunts down the rebellion and tortures and kills al his friends including han and leia.  Finding out Leia was his sister only after he has her tortured to death as a criminal accomplice to traitors.

Wow.  I think that was great.  Personally, I think that plan could have just as easily worked had Vader been Luke's father, but I think it's overall much better than what we ended up getting.  Although maybe instead of just talking about torturing Leia, since she's already a prisoner, it would be better motivation if Vader actually did torture her.  Then Luke could take his revenge, beginning to relish in inflicting in Vader the same kind of pain Vader was inflicting to Leia.  The only quirk I can see with this plan, though, is that, assuming you haven't changed up much of the first act of the movie, we now have two points in the same movie where Leia is chained up.  I wonder if a fetish of yours is slipping through in this post, hmm?  ^_~

Oh, and, sky, I don't necessarily agree that Luke could only have the potential to be evil because his father was evil.  That's like saying if my father was a murderer, I have a better chance of being a murderer.  I know that's basically what Lucas was trying to do with the sequels, making the parallel that there were certain expectations of parallel between father and son, but that's a purely dramatic arc.  It might have weakened it slightly without the expectations of destiny and following the same road, but it certainly doesn't preclude the notion of Luke going to the dark side.

No comment on my treatment of Han Solo? I thought my idea strengthened Han more than any other character.

I was never really a han solo fan as much as a luke fan.  I identified with Luke and not with solo.

Only recently in the last few years did i notice how bad han is in return of the jedi.  He basically stands around doing nothing but the supportive role the entire film.  When Empire elevated him to a higher status of a character.  But the trilogy was always meant to be Luke's story and the ending therefore makes sense that its luke centric.  After all the title says Return of the Jedi.  Not Return of the Rogue, or Return of the Smuggler,lol.

You either have to blame the screenwriter or Harrison Ford for not caring enough and hurting the film but walking through his role bored and just wanting to be done with the thing so much he asked for his character to be killed off.

I mean they could have just as easily had him die in carbonite and not use him in return of the jedi if ford wanted to play the i want to not do this film i'm a serious actor bullshit.

Originally he was not even on contract for empire strikes back and that is why he is not in the original sequel splinter of the minds eye.  Hamill and Fisher were signned to do the first 2 films.  i think hamill signed on early for all three.  Ford was the only holdout on film 2 and 3 respectively episodes V and VI.  When earlier on before he did star wars he would have been just as happy to be employed and working putting food on the table for his family.  DID he ever get it through his head Hamill was the star of the whole show and he was just a supporting role?

He finally was the star when he did Indiana Jones.  But even that was supposed to be the dude from Magnum PI originally. Until he could'nt get out of his contract.

Star Wars was the adventures of Luke Skywalker.  Not Han's story, not Leia's story, and most certainly not VADER's story.  The story of his growth from wide eyed farmboy to jedi knight.

Luke being a bit the persona of young Lucas himself and his dreams and aspirations.  His alter ego.  That is the way the story should be. 

Unless nowadays darth vader is Lucas persona,lol.

vote_for_palpatine said:

No comment on my treatment of Han Solo? I thought my idea strengthened Han more than any other character.

Sorry.  It was actually so good that it didn't really need comment.  It wasn't a huge part of the storyline, which it shouldn't be since this is about Luke, but it just goes to show that just a little bit of effort would have worked wonders to have made Han an actual character in this movie rather than just a placeholder.

CO said:

Sorry for getting off topic.

I don't think what you've said is too off-topic, really.

I have to disagree with you about the Jabba part dragging, tho. You could question the logic of the whole Jabba strategy (like Gaffer did in another thread) but regardless of that I think the scenes are very suspenseful and well-paced. I love how R2 and 3PO show up first, and you wonder what the heck is going on, then Leia shows up, Han is defrosted and later Luke makes his dramatic entrance in his black cape. I know it's a surprise that's sort of over after you've seen the film once, but I love showing the trilogy to people who haven't seen it before and seeing their reactions. I mentioned before that I not long ago showed the OOT to a couple of kids, and the boy couldn't sit still thru the 1st 20 minutes of Star Wars, and even asked me "when does this movie start to get exciting?" So, you could make the argument that Star Wars "drags" in spots too.......well, you could make the argument, anyway. ;-)

I was glad for all of the quieter, slower parts in Jedi- knowing that it was the last SW film and I was never going to see these characters again, I didn't want things to move too quickly. I remember reading an interview with Carrie Fisher once, where she said that she wished here scene with Mark Hamill on the Ewok balcony could have been a bit longer, but everything in the Star Wars universe was so rush-rush to get to the next action scene. I have to agree with that, and that's why I'm happy that there are some reflective scenes in the film, and that it's not just 2+ hours of fighting and explosions.

As I said in another thread recently, I saw Temple Of Doom when I was about 13 and I loved it then- but now I see all of the flaws that others saw when it was released that I couldn't understand at the time. I can't say the same about ROTJ however- I saw it when I was 12 and I loved it and still do.

Oh, and I must have missed those 'good parts' in the PT (LOL). :-D

Gaffer, first of all, thanks for your kind words. My last post was not aimed at you specifically - it just happened to follow yours.

I didn't mean to come off as drama-queeny as I did, but I assumed that any positive feedback I got would have involved Han, since he was so lame in the real ROTJ.

BTW Skyjedi, did you think I wrote that Luke killed Vader? Reading your posts again, I could swear that you thought I had Luke killing him, which I didn't. It is true that Luke was about to put Vader away for good, but Leia talks him out of it. (Granted, Luke and Leia leave Vader there to die in the DSII explosion, but as we saw in ROTS, that's OK. :D)

You know Gaffer, I suppose I did have Leia captive and helpless twice in my ROTJ. I guess Freud was right, there are no accidents...

"If Anakin killed Vader and took over his persona you could have both ideas reconciled."

See, I was half expecting something a bit like this in some way (not exactly that, but some sort of twist at any rate), to take place in the prequels. What we knew about Obi-Wan and Vader's past and the Clone Wars was very vague. George could have really taken the thing any which way he wanted. He made such a big deal about shocking twists in the first two Star Wars sequels, it was kind of surprising the best he came up with was "Padme was the queen this entire time!!! Whooooa!!! What a twist!!! 8O"

The prequels are a product of a very limited imagination. There is really nothing creative or fresh (what defined the first two films) about them.

V_F_P,

1 quick question: In your new ending to RotJ with Luke and Vader fighting near a captive Leia... how exactly is she dressed?

C3PX,

Please elaborate more on the shocks and twists you thought you might see.  I was thinking along similar lines recently that there were no twists.

Maybe Luke had an older brother?

Maybe Vader wasn't actually the father?  Obi-wan?

I don't know.  But you're right, the Panda Bear Shuffle was not much of a twist.  I was expecting some intrigue in RotS about the whole Sifo Diyas thing.  I went to the theatre hopeful that the turn would be done well, that the space battles would be thrilling, and that I might actually like the movie.  It took me a couple days to get over my disappointment for those other things, but then I realized the "mystery" elements of AotC weren't revisited at all.  Oops?

xhonzi said:

C3PX,

Please elaborate more on the shocks and twists you thought you might see.  I was thinking along similar lines recently that there were no twists.

Maybe Luke had an older brother?

Maybe Vader wasn't actually the father?  Obi-wan?

I don't know.  But you're right, the Panda Bear Shuffle was not much of a twist.  I was expecting some intrigue in RotS about the whole Sifo Diyas thing.  I went to the theatre hopeful that the turn would be done well, that the space battles would be thrilling, and that I might actually like the movie.  It took me a couple days to get over my disappointment for those other things, but then I realized the "mystery" elements of AotC weren't revisited at all.  Oops?

I can't say any twists I had expected to see. I was just surprised there were not any. I expected to meet a lot more characters I'd care about along the way. And hear a lot more interesting stories along the way as well. Instead, we basically got told the same story we already knew (as told by Obi-Wan and Yoda in the OT), and a ton of padding and hot air filling in the gaps in order to bloat it out into a three movie trilogy. Ultimately, there is only a few paragraphs of story in the entire PT.

I figured there would be more story there, and that George would work a few crazy twists in along the way. When I first saw ROTS, I actually excitedly thought he had pulled something like this off. I was so dumbfounded at Anakin's turn, I couldn't believe it. When he walked into the room of small children who come out of hiding and look up to him for help guidance as he ignites his lightsaber, I just couldn't accept that what I was being lead to believe was about to happen was really what was going to happen. I figured clever old George (oh how much misguided faith I had in you) had just tricked us. Anakin had not yet turned to the darkside at all, but was playing the hero. He saw what happened to Mace, and knew the Sith had to be stop, so he pretended he was on his side, and was really had some plan up his sleeve. When I saw the young Jedi come running out and kill a Clone Trooper, I was sure I was right. Anakin was leading the children in some crazy plan to fend off the attackers and keep the kids alive. Surely even Darth Vader wouldn't be so cruel as to hack up a bunch of 7 year olds.

I figured somewhere along the way the whole setup of Anakin's jealously of Padme and Obi-Wan's friendship would pay off, and he would slip off to the darkside after playing the hero and helping fend off the invasion on the Jedi temple.

Instead it turns out I was completely wrong, Anakin really did turn to the darkside with a snap of Palpatine's figure even while second guessing himself he commits himself to do whatever Palp's might possibly ask him to do. Anakin did hack up the children, and the whole Obi-Wan/Padme thing never really played off, and the movie really, really sucked.

I was thinking... the other twist a lot of my friends were expecting was something to do with Palapatine's dual identity.  It was sort of built to be more of a reveal than, "Yep.  He really is the same guy.  Hood goes up.  Hood goes down.  Have you ever heard of Clark Kent?"

It actually did surprise me for a while in the prequels.  I know I've said this here before, but for a while I thought that Palpatine and Sidious were two different people, and that Sidious was some kind of predecessor to Palpatine.  Otherwise, it just seemed too obvious, and my brain was trying to infuse it with some creativity.  ^_~

Yeah, I kind of felt that way too. Here George was trying to make Sidious super mysterious, yet it was painfully obvious. Why was it painfully obvious? Because we had already met the Emporer in the sixth episode. I actually think, despite it being painfully obvious to us, that George was actually going in the right direction on this one. Imagine if he had never heard the name "Emporer Palpatine" before, or seen ESB or ROTJ. Would the connection between the two characters still have been so obvious? Not really. Perhaps internet whinning about this particular situation is what encouraged George to drop the necessary idea of making as if they would be viewed 1-6.

I remember being in the Wal-Mart toy section not long after TPM, and reading the Emporer's biographical card for his action figure. I think it said outright that Sidious/Palpatine were one in the same (or at the very least, switching between the two on its holo-card thingy). The details are fuzzy.

It was probably meant to be painfully obvious to the viewer from the very start of the PT, but obviously not to the surrounding protagonists.

Vader VS Obi-1 and Obi-2. Now there's a thought. The Cat in the Hat meets Star Wars.

Bingowings said:

<...>

You can see why the EU obsessed about clone technology in the early days because like superweapons they are an unavoidable consequence of being introduced as a technology of that universe.

Unfortunately unavoidable consequence often leads to very boring stories.

I haven't ever thought about it in those terms.  I'm going to let it soak in a little, but there the EU does have a little bit of a superweapon problem.  Outside of Thrawn and Dark Empire, I can't think of any EU stories that use/abuse cloning...  But then again I haven't kept up with EU since about '98 or so.

Still... could the prequels have used a superweapon?  Or was the clone army the superweapon of its day?