Ghost said:
Good points.
Also, do you think it would work to put the Luke on Dagobah scenes at the beginning of the movie. It would make the whole Luke a master Jedi thing more believable.
Then after that show him flying to Jabba's. That would be a pretty CG scene.
That's what a lot of us want, it makes Yoda's death scene less stupid too (he's held on to life long enough to finish teaching Luke rather dying in the middle of a conversation after giving him a very quick crash course).
It also starts the film on a double down note that only picks up when our heroes rescue Han.
Yoda dies, The Emperor has a new Death Star, Chewie is captured, Han is still captured, Leia is captured, the droids are captured , Luke is captured (suddenly ROTJ starts to feel like ESB).
We get one hurrah and then act II kicks in and it starts all over again.
I direct you, if you haven't been there yet to doubleofive's lovely list of all our hopes (it contains links to SSWR's Fan-O-Matics which are pretty much along the lines you mention and lots of nice brain and eye candy) :