No prob. Glad it wasn't at least too late.

I wouldn't want to change the plot -- really it can't be changed. My problems with ROTJ boil down to the basic fact that it's a decent story, poorly told. It's the story of Luke getting clear about who he is and forcing his father to wake up a little.

But it starts with Luke as inexplicably overconfident-- declaring himself a "Jedi" when the last thing he did was bail on Yoda and have his ass handed to him by Vader.

Then it veers into every major character as if it might just turn into their movie. At any given moment it feels like it's Han's movie, then it's Leia's movie, then it's Luke's movie again.

As opposed to ESB which really had 2 stories, ROTJ is just one story-- but it's told as if it were many.

So cutting down on the extra "I've got a problem" beats (like Han's yearning for the Falcon and Leia's being alone in the woods) helps put the focus where it belongs: on Luke.

The idea of shifting the trip to Degobah into the opening was to let that story begin where it's supposed to begin-- at the start of the movie. But if it's too radical, I understand. ROTJ has been the way it is for a long time. I wonder though: Have you tried just throwing it into the opening just to see what it does to the flow of things?