I am reading lots of interesting and unique ideas. Let me here offer a suggestion for our consideration before we venture too far into a story that would be too difficult for even the best editors here to pull off with what we have available: what are the problems with ROTJ? I'll make a list of what I've heard:
1) DSII--recycled idea
2) Ewoks--too cute, and their victory too unrealistic
3) Story--moves too slowly, lack of tension
4) Vader--too weak
5) Boba Fett--too cool to go that way
6) Jabba's Palace--too many cheesey puppets
7) Costumes--lower quality, too many reused
I'm sure there are more, but these are what come to mind immediately. These are my thoughts regarding these flaws:
1) DSII--cliched, but there are differences, such as an attempted pre-emptive strike. Sure there's already been a Death Star, but part of the difficulty with writing a sequel is the need to outdo previous stories without losing the story and internal reality created.
2) Ewoks--my rough cut addresses the unrealistic victory to some extent, and I believe that a little sound editing and short cuts could remove much of the cuteness and could even give them more of an aggressive edge.
3) Good editing can hopefully move the pace of the story along better, and I hope to show another rough cut of the Battle of Endor soon that could also allow for a much more tense climax when fully realized with high quality effects.
4) Vader--I personally am not sure I want him to appear stronger. I'm interested in a more aggressive Vader as Mithrandir mentioned, but I believe I would prefer to keep his acquiescence to the Emperor in place. It fulfills the emotional aspect of the story and is needed for the payoff in the end, IMO.
5) Boba Fett--I have been pondering all day how to keep him alive and have him later go down. At first I thought about getting him on Endor and dying in a fast-draw with Han (I think this would be the ideal subplot--a personal faceoff), but I don't see a realistic way of pulling this off. I then thought about keeping him in Slave I and having Lando and the Falcon take him down. This is probably more feasible from a technical standpoint, but it would still be a difficult thing to pull off, and ultimately would be a story let down anyway since Lando's beef with Fett would not nearly be so strong. So as 005 mentioned, it's probably best to simply remove him.
6) I would have no problem if we never saw Max Rebo's band (sorry mrebo, if you read this thread). Even when I was a child and scared to death of Jabba, I thought the band looked very fake, like stuffed animals I'd keep in my bed.
7) Costumes--It'd be difficult to do much about the costumes, but I have to be honest that I would never have even noticed had it not been for the immensely keen eyes of OT.com members. If most stayed the same, I'd have no problem.
My point to all this is that there are various lengths we could go to change this story, and many of them could be potentially interesting. However, I suggest that we keep the story somewhat true to the original for several reasons: it would be easiest, as this is a new idea, and we want many of our efforts to be available to others with their edits, and if we change too much, there would be little left; we don't have the actors, models, costumes, funds, or crew at our disposal to pull off a complete rewrite; the original story is honestly not that bad in my opinion; much can be done to strengthen and streamline the existing story.
I hope my suggestions never come off as rude or domineering, as I certainly am not trying to be the leader of this discussion. However, I feel that we should focus on what exists and simply improve upon it rather that remake it.
EDIT: As a PS, would anyone be opposed to me actually taking on the responsibility of script writing? I'm always open to ideas and would share my scripte regularly. Really I just plan on downloading a copy of the shooting script and making alterations. As you guys read it, you could continue to make suggestions. This is probably one of the very first steps we need to take to get this project off the ground, and from there we could probably get a better idea of how to incorporate our various thoughts and different visions.