I’m with topdawg193 all the way. I’ve always thought it would be interesting if Jabbas palace was on a tropical jungle kinda planet.
Since Jaba is a big slug anyway… what about changing Tatooine into a marshland? Since Dagobah is already a swamp, you don’t want to go THAT far, but it would probably be easier to turn the desert-scape into a marsh than anything else.
I started a thread over at FanEdit Forums, to discuss this new structure for ROTJ in more detail; a member of that forum, DigModiFicaTion, made a great point about Jabba’s hideout on Tatooine - along the same lines as you, Blackhawk:
I think Jabba’s base of operations should be on a planet that is more uniform with his physical make up. It doesn’t make sense that a slimy slug creature that, I assume, needs to stay wet and mucousy resides on a planet that is so inhospitably dry and devoid of moisture.
Before now, I hadn’t thought about how Jabba’s physiology doesn’t even fit with his surroundings on Tatooine! Slugs need moisture, so it absolutely makes sense that Jabba’s preferred habitat would be somewhere dank and soggy - hardly a desert world!
I’m imagining a marsh planet, too. And in fact, I stumbled on some Nal Hutta concept art which, as it so happens, really captures what I’d envision for Jabba’s bog. I wonder if the artists thought along similar lines, matching Jabba’s physical constitution to the environment which would best support that? And ray_afraid - the art definitely conveys a colourful, tropical aesthetic; so although fundamentally a marshland, the colours would lend a nice variety to the film.
You can check it out in my post here:
http://www.fanedit.org/forums/showthread.php?15380-Return-of-the-Jedi-New-Structure-Space-Battle-Opening/page2.
After fielding suggestions on that forum, I was able to put forward a new crawl draft:
The Alliance is doomed. Retreating to the outer rim, the Rebels prepare for a final strike against the tyrannical Empire.
Sensing victory, Lord Vader has overseen the construction of a new Death Star – this ultimate weapon, once completed, will secure the Emperor’s spiteful reign.
With hope fading, Luke Skywalker journeys to Nal Varr in an attempt to rescue Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt…
I swapped out “Nal Hutta” for “Nal Varr”, which I thought sounded suitably Star Warsy! Although I like the Nal Hutta concept art, and would imagine Jabba’s planet in ROTJ to look like that, I wouldn’t want Jabba’s locale to actually be the Hutt home world. Because again - if our heroes know, by the end of ESB, that Han is to be delivered to Jabba the Hutt, then the first place they’d check out would presumably be Jabba’s home planet of Nal Hutta. And if that’s where Han was indeed taken, then the passage of time between ESB and ROTJ wouldn’t make sense. Or at least, it would make our heroes look dense, if it took them so long to check out Jabba’s place of origin - the most logical place to look, in the first instance.