…your ideas would make the film a boring soap opera instead of a fun adventure sci-fi/fantasy.
I knew there was something I liked about them!
–Georgie-Poo
LOL you guys.
And now to retort, having actually thought about it some more, and not just fly(writ)ing by the seat of my pants:
None of the ideas I postulated above, poor or not, would require much screen time.
Granted my random (3am) thoughts on what could’ve been done with Han were rubbish. No denying that. I’ll just dismiss them out hand as well.
For Leia though, making a couple of tweaks to my initial thoughts; you could very easily have near the film’s start had a scene with her arguing with the Alliance command about the necessity/feasibility of rescuing Han, (or just her storming out afterwards even) and perhaps have her demoted for insisting on going to rescue him. Rescue ensues, et cetera et cetera, it now makes more sense for her to be on the Endor shuttle crew.
Add another scene if you like of her taking charge during the battle from one of the Imperial communications relay or something after the loss of some of the rebel leaders due to the Death Star II, or their communications are knocked out, if you want a further pay off for the earlier scene.
These two additions would not take more than a couple of minutes of screen time and BAM you have an arc for Leia without even altering the plot (because sorry, I did not like the recycled use of a Death Star much, cool as the space battle was).
Now all this speculation is pointless, other than to point out that it would have been very much possible to give the other major characters of the OT arcs in ROTJ, even within the existing plot structure of the film. Thus I don’t think it lived up to its potential despite having my personal favourite sequence in the entire saga (between Luke, Vader, and the Emperor).
Ergo, for me, ROTJ is the third best Star Wars film.