Info & Ideas: ESB and ROTJ Wishlist — Page 298

TheoOdo said:

A lot of attention has been given in this thread to the second Death Star of Return of the Jedi. I have to say, I agree with Gary Kurtz when he says it was basically a remake of the first film.

I think this is wrong on two levels. Firstly, it's unoriginal. Secondly, it makes the conclusion of the saga less dynamic.

How to correct this?

Allow me to suggest a radical alteration.

Rather than the Death Star II, the entire final battle could instead take place on or in the space above the Imperial home planet. For now, let's call it "Had Abaddon" as in the original Star Wars outlines.

The Rebel plan, therefore, would be to knock out the planetary shield generator which is in place to allow the Imperial officials to decide who enters and who exits the planet. Essentially, Had Abaddon is a near prison planet with all movement in and out tightly controlled.

The Rebels need to gain access to the planet so as to launch an assault on the Imperial Palace. They can do this by flying down into the lower city, through a service channel and destroying the palace's main reactor. Once the reactor is destroyed, it will explode massively and take the palace - and the vast majority of the Imperial government - with it. It would, in essence, be an intergalactic gunpowder plot.

Why would this work thematically?

Most of the series takes place on the frontiers of the galaxy. By bringing it into the belly of the beast, the tension would rise dramatically - unlike in the current version where (I feel) the Death Star's reappearance feels stale. Yet another conflict on the frontier.

How to do this?

There are, of course, certain problems. Namely, to design the setting for the city would be a very difficult technical task on the scale of the Blade Runner cityscapes. Secondly, there's the fact that most of the plot appears to revolve around the much maligned Ewoks.

One way of solving this would be to get your hands on the footage of Han Solo, Leia and the Rebels battling in the Imperial bunker. This, rather than the ground battle with the Imperial troops, could be the delay which causes the entire space battle to take place. Leia's seperation from the group would be removed and the speeder-bike section could take place along one of the speeder-lanes which we see in this Ralph McQuarrie illustration below.

The troops, after their encounter with the Stormtroopers, make their camp in one of the vast undercity pipe and electricty networks. On one of the unmanned passages, Leia confronts Luke about his unresponsive behaviour and he tells her that he's going to turn himself in to Vader. Vader's encounter with Luke on the forest walkway could be easily tranformed into a scene on a city walkway by changing the background into model shots of an oppressive, imperial cityscape as in the image below.

At which point, Luke is taken to the massive hive-like Imperial Palace and brought to the Emperor's quarters in topmost tower. The battle continues as normal. The Millenium Falcon, rather than flying over the surface of the Death Star, would now fly over a section of the city and down into the service channel toward the Palace's reactor.

The Palace is destroyed, the rebels celebrate and all seems well.

What's tragic, though, is it seems like this pretty obvious conclusion was in fact planned. All of the McQuarrie illustrations for these sequences already exist, such as...

Vader's arrival at the Imperial Planet

The exterior of the Imperial Palace

Vader's arrival at the Imperial Palace

Various scenes of the Imperial city

And Luke's arrival at the Imperial Palace

Great suggestion! I would love to be able to do something like this but it is not possible.

It cannot be done convincingly without filming new scenes with the main characters with new dialogue. It would seem wierd because Luke/Leia/Lando/Han wouldn't talk about the plan, make references to specific places like Had Abaddon, etc.... Perhaps when CGI progresses to a point that you could CGI a 31 year old Mark Hamill convincingly.

You are correct in regards to the paintings. This was essentially planned. George had this idea in draft 4 of ROTJ. (Which you can download and read...and there is some wierd Harry Potterish stuff that happens in it). Unfortunately it would have cost way more than he was willing to pay. Also I think he had no idea how to do it technically.

Go here for the draft http://starwarz.com/starkiller/wp-content/uploads/revenge_revised_rough_draft.zip

ROTJ falls up short because it is a rehash of ANH. It is not even a good rehash. The sets are boring. The dialogue is boring. It is to cute. Essentially the ending is not epic enough for an epic story. Which is why the story should have been on Had Abaddon (or Coruscant). Lucas just wanted the whole Star Wars thing over with and wrapped it up way to quick.

So to end off my rant... as with the prequels we are stuck with ROTJ as it is. We just have to try and tell that story a bit better.

Matticon

Combine elements of this original script with Harmy's comic-book style and you might be able to create an enjoyable little alternative to Jedi.

Now if anyone would be crazy enough to try this, I'm sure this would be the least of their worries, but this is just a quick little mock-up of how someone could easily recolor some of the Endor clothes to make them look a little more "Had Abbadon"-ish:

Filthy Pierre said:

TML said:

That would be good, claustrophobic. Only thing is people would be shooting from both barges and the likely hood of anyone escaping the initial barrage of laser bolts would be slim.

For the shooting issue, when Luke deflects a laser bolt and hits Boba, instead the reflected blast could redirect to one of the gunners on the second barge? (There's only one gunner on the barge in the movie, so there could be one gunner on Jabba's Barge and two on the second barge.) The skiffs could also be taking a lot of damage, constantly rocking when hit. Maybe the second skiff that Luke jumps off of could be sinking when he jumps?

it would be good if the new "threat" could also be in the prequels, either something pre-existing or some new "sleeping beast". the only thing i can think of is some droid army control hub, or an earlier planet destroyer device.

About the RotJ change to Coruscant idea, why would Endor have to be changed?

You could keep Endor the same with the same mission but instead of blowing up the shield generator protecting the DS2 it's some big gun. Hell, it even looks like a gun!

Maybe that gun is some thing that worries the rebel fleet enough to keep the attack away until Han and co. disable it. Then the fleet could arrive and take on the Imperial fleet.

You could even conceivably keep some of the smae shots of the DS2 laser destroying the fleet ships, instead it comes from the generator/gun on Endor.

Then you just transfer Luke to Coruscant and have the Emperor's tower on Imperial city and have that throne room be HIS real throne room.

shanerjedi said:

About the RotJ change to Coruscant idea, why would Endor have to be changed?

 

You could keep Endor the same with the same mission but instead of blowing up the shield generator protecting the DS2 it's some big gun. Hell, it even looks like a gun!

Maybe that gun is some thing that worries the rebel fleet enough to keep the attack away until Han and co. disable it. Then the fleet could arrive and take on the Imperial fleet.

You could even conceivably keep some of the smae shots of the DS2 laser destroying the fleet ships, instead it comes from the generator/gun on Endor.

Then you just transfer Luke to Coruscant and have the Emperor's tower on Imperial city and have that throne room be HIS real throne room.

 

 A large gun on the "sanctuary moon" (orbiting Had Abaddon) shooting at the DS2s and ships is from the Revenge of the Jedi draft as well. In the draft Leia and a team of rebels take it over and blow up one of the Death Stars with it.

A lot of suggested ideas here are in the Revenge Draft. Funny.

Matticon

Some of the suggestions I've made I pulled straight out of earlier draughts some of the ideas in there are really good (some of them not so much so).

Here's my idea for the Had Abaddon thing… How about the entire Death Star II idea is ditched, instead, the space battle would take place near the surface of Had Abaddon's capital, with ships doing attack runs on many of the Imperial Buildings. (Maybe Lando could enter the Imperial Palace and destroy it's Power Core?) But to bypass the planet's shield, Han Solo and his gang have to disable the Shield Generator located on the planet's forrest moon (Or it might make more sense if the shield generator was located on Had Abaddon, but in one of the few forests left on the planet. You could add traces of the Empire starting to industrialize it, thus forming an "Ewok/ Lorax" kind of thing) The Luke battle will take place in the Imperial Palace in the Emperor's Personal Throne.

It's a very rough concept but the only major changes would be re-shooting the space battle with models, but now Endor doesn't need to be altered too much…

Interesting idea, TML. It allows you to keep the Endor footage while making the story more interesting. I like.

The Golden Idol said:

Interesting idea, TML. It allows you to keep the Endor footage while making the story more interesting. I like.

It would also help with the idea of the Empire collapsing after Return of the Jedi, because if their capital was destroyed, that is usually a pretty good sign that their side has lost the war.

The Guns of Endorone is a good idea and it could be used to expand the ground battle.

The only problem I can see in that context is that for the audience to really connect you'd probably need more footage of the main characters than you currently have.

The only three that anyone could possible re-shoot are Artoo, Chewie and Threepio if you had access to really good props.

It could work but it would be rather bold and experimental for the final film of the saga (not that that's a bad thing).

It does however take a bit of a wrecking ball to the space battle (much of the major character scenes there involve or include references to a Death Star).

Even the duel has the Death Star woven into the texture of the scene.

Once again I'm not dissing the idea but pointing out things that need some consideration in the hope that we can have a lot of fun working it out.

I think a Death Star should still be present, but perhaps should be destroyed early into the battle. I think having it destroyed by the crashing Super Star Destroyer removes it from the scene in a convenient way, before the palace is destroyed.

Change Akbar's relief reaction shot to after a full explosion of the Death Star and then cut back to the palace, where people are evacuating knowing that the Rebels have penetrated the service channel and are heading to destroy the reactor.

If we're going to fantasize, I think replacing the Ewoks with an ignored, marginalised populace of rebel aliens living in the darkness of Had Abaddon's undercity would be a good way to finish the story off.

It's a way of showing that the Empire's citizens are prepared for a popular revolution and, in showing the oppressed condition of these people, solidifying the evil of the Empire for the viewer. I also think a properly armed group of local rebels, who know their territory of the undercity far better than the Stormtrooper recruits who only venture there to harass and dissuade them, would make for a more convincing challenge to the Emperor's "finest troops".

This group would initially suspect Han and Luke of being imperial spies. Only once proving himself to have the powers of a Jedi would the leader of this group (who could, perhaps, mention having known Obi-Wan in the past) be convinced that they are working for the Rebel Alliance as they claim.

The whole "Imperial undercity" environment would also make for a more exotic fantasy setting than the national park of Jedi.

alright fellas this is my attempt in removing the fat lightsabers that has plagued rotj along with some color correction the video will be coming soon