I'm moving my response to this chain of discussion here for obvious reasons.
doubleofive said:mrbenja0618 said:EyeShotFirst said:I hope ady showcases the space battle and the death star battle for our main attention. All I need to see is the rebels on Endor turning off the shield generator. Then back to the important dark duel. Coz the Endor Forrest battle is a mood killer.
It really does kill the mood.... But the space battle in ROTJ is still IMHO the greatest of all the films. I'm still amazed at how well the ships maneuvered with them being models on wires. Great work.
Seriously I agree. I mean, each ship is a separately shot element composited who knows how much time later. It's impressive. And to only have a couple mislayered/disappearing elements is extremely impressive.
All three layers of the battle need to be expanded in my view.
How does a small group of Rebels defeat an entire legion of the Empire's best troops to bring down the reactor to allow the Rebel fleet to survive being attacked by a large Imperial fleet and a full armed and operational Death Star?
The ground battle is only a mood breaker because it currently makes little sense and has no real visual and emotional impact.
All thos improvised traps show pre-planning how can they plan unless they know that the troops are coming or unless the Ewoks have already been fighting the Imperials?
You can't diminish that aspect of the story without diminishing the whole finale of the saga.
The duel needs the least work on it (beyond the obvious technical clean up, sabre corrections and the like) but both the land and space battle are vital to the resolution of the story.
I like a space battle as much as the next guy but as Lucas once said and never followed through with "story does matter" and there is more to the story than just a big space battle and a sabre duel.
The Ewok side of things carries the key to downfall of the Empire (the Emperor and the Empire see things in such broad sweeps they forget about the power of the little people be they Rebels, Droids or Ewoks).
The scale of some of the original shots was amazing at the time but it is astonishing how fluffed up more simple shots are even after the so called element by element restoration we were told happened back in 1997.