Fantastic post and I like your proposed crawl.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your crawl for ROTJ?And what’s your edit for ROTJ on that note?
Sure. It isn’t perfect but I wanted to get as close to the feeling as I could to the others while also following the format. I also took inspiration from an early draft of the crawl as well other suggestions people have made on here. And yeah, I can try to give a brief synopsis of the edit.
The Alliance is doomed. Hunted by the Imperial Starfleet and suffering terrible losses, the rebels have made a desperate plan to strike back against the tyrannical Empire.
Struggling to persevere, Luke Skywalker has continued his Jedi training in preparation to rescue Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt.
Darth Vader, under the commands of his cruel Emperor, hurries the construction of a new dreaded Death Star that will bring about their ultimate victory once and for all…
So the word count goes as:
27
26
29
Total: 82
It’s starts as normal, but then goes to the deleted scene of Vader calling to Luke, then you see Luke building his lightsaber in the cave (minus it activating), and I rotoscoped it to appear as if he were on Dagobah. From there he flies off to Tatooine. Then he goes back to Dagobah after rescuing Han like he does in the movie. That’s why it says what it says in the second paragraph.
I know a lot of people put the Dagobah sequence before Jabba’s palace, but I want to preserve the mystery of Luke as much as I can. I just think it plays out well in the original. That’s also why I save the green saber reveal until the Sarlaac sequence. I also see Han’s rescue as Luke’s last trial before facing Vader. He was patient this time unlike in Empire.
Originally I had Leia’s rescue mission be separate from Luke’s because I thought the original plot made no sense. In that version you don’t see Vader call to Luke until Leia is captured, then Luke hears both Vader and Leia calling to him. But after I did it I realized it really just cut too much out of the movie, and I realized that the plan may have been to get as many people on the inside as possible and then be sent to the Sarlaac. That way they would be let out of their cells and have an escape vehicle (the skiffs). There also may have been less guards escorting them than there were in the palace. With that in mind I inserted a line from Jabba after Han is freed about how escaping his palace is impossible and no one has ever done it to help hint toward their plan. Interestingly enough Jabba is saying something before Han talks but there are no subtitles for it. Nice place to put it. I still have the other version though as well.
Boba still falls in the Sarlaac but he doesn’t scream and he puts up more of a fight. I think his “death” is pretty iconic now and I think there is a bit of irony that what takes Boba out is something that has a one-in-a-million chance of actually happening. Boba is always one step ahead of everyone but how could he foresee “blind” luck? I’d still be open to change this but I haven’t really seen an edit of this that is totally convincing.
Afterwards Luke goes back to Dagobah. I altered the dialogue so instead of asking “Is Vader my father?” which he probably would’ve already asked Yoda if he’d gone back to train, he asks him, “Why didn’t you tell me?” And I inserted the “Obi-Wan would’ve told you long ago had I let him” and pitched it a little to sound more accurate.
I do the usual with the Ewoks, except I do change one little thing to help make them look less innocent that I have yet to see in another edit.
Probably the change I’m most proud of is restructuring the Battle of Endor. In my version I have both the space and land battle going down-hill up until Vader kills the Emperor, then after that things start turning around. I won’t go into detail but I think it helps the emotions of the each sequence flow more naturally into the next. Things get bad, then good, then worse, then great. In this version, I tried to make it where if Luke failed, then the rebellion would fail.
It ends like many edits, with Luke watching the funeral pyre and panning up to the stars. No force ghosts.
It isn’t perfect. I still think the beginning is pretty dull, and a part of me would like to imply that the second Death Star is actually the first Death Star rebuilt, but I think I’d have to edit the entire trilogy to do that. But I think some of these changes really helps me take this movie more seriously and be a worthy successor to ANH and ESB. Sorry to everyone else. I know this a TFA edit thread, not a ROTJ one.