Ask and ye shall receive....
I like the new crawl, but I’m not sure how I feel about the movie opening on a shot of empty space. The lack of a ship is very evident, but is really unavoidable when the next scene takes place on Dagobah. I like the idea of Luke completing his training before going to recue Han, but visually, it feels very much like a fan edit.
I’m a big fan of the lightsaber construction scene. But I’m not sure it really works given the structure of this edit. After this scene, the next time we see Luke he is entering Jabba’s palace and using a force-choke on the guards. I believe the purpose of these scenes is to show a darker tone to Luke, to give the audience the impression that he skirting the edges of the dark side. However, with the chronological re-arrangement of this edit, we have already seen his chat with Yoda and Obi-Wan and therefore are shown that he is still firmly on the side of light at the beginning of the movie.
The sandstorm scene is very interesting. I had no idea that some of the audio in the final cut was lifted from this scene. I think the briefing room scene is edited well, with the sandstorm scene in mind (the heroes have already had their kiss and cuddle on Tattooine, so no need to have another in front of the other rebels). I really hope this deleted scene can be cleaned up somehow.
I love the new shot of the Tydirium entering Endor. It really adds to the feeling of the rebels sneaking into the lion’s den (so to speak).
I’m in two minds over Vader’s force-choke of Jerjerrod. It is a nice little reminder of Vader’s intolerance of his underlings (after his killing spree in ESB, we could certainly use a few more scenes like this in RotJ!) But, on the other hand, I am a little unsure of Jerjerrod’s motivations. Does he get some kind of pleasure out of butting heads with Vader? Together with Jerjerrod’s reluctance to fire on Endor, you can almost see a sub-plot involving his ‘good guy’ personality – but this maybe doesn’t came across as well as it should do. As such, it may be better simply to leave these scenes on the cutting room floor for the sake of pacing.
The new shots of the Endor battle between the rebel Commandos and Stormies give a very chaotic feel, akin to the final shots of the Droid vs Clones battle on Geonosis in AotC. They are well done, but I’m not too sure if they really fit into the visual style of RotJ. I’m probably being a little biased here, as I have never liked action shots done entirely in close-ups.
There are probably loads of other changes I haven’t mentioned, but these are the ones that really stuck in my mind. Again, well done for producing such an interesting edit!