Channel72

Also, General Dodonna is around on Echo Base, unlike in the final draft, where he disappears from the story. But all that exposition about the state of the Rebellion, if included, is probably something that should be summarized in the opening crawl.

Juno Eclipse said:

The love triangle between Han, Leia and Luke is, uh, a little strange and unsettling, to say the least, given what we saw on the actual screen and since.

I’d say the love triangle is still there in the final version - most notably in the scene in the medical bay where Leia kisses Luke to embarrass Han. But in the final version, the love triangle was serendipitously downplayed apart from that one scene. Notably, there’s almost nothing left of Luke’s romantic feelings for Leia.

Apparently R2 and C3PO got involved in some kind of sitcom comedy antics in Echo Base, resulting in Princess Leia’s wardrobe getting drenched with water due to a heating unit malfunction.

It seems like they were trying to figure out a way to hide it from her - but fortunately the Empire arrived and forced everyone to evacuate, which provided a convenient cover story for the droids’ shenanigans.

darklordoftech said:

In his TPM review, Plinkett said, “I don’t care if it’s explained in a book because I can’t read”, yet when Episode VII was announced, some EU fans were hoping that it would begin where the EU timeline ended and argued that if anyone was confused by all the EU characters and Chewie being dead, they should read the EU books, and I was thinking, “but Plinkett can’t read”.

Well, I don’t know how to read either, so I understand Plinkett’s frustration. But I feel like the backstory for Episode 7 is basically equally as removed from where Episode 6 left off as the EU, such that it requires the same amount of backstory explanation as the EU anyway, so there’s really little difference.

I mean, what’s the difference between requiring background info about “Intergalactic bio-tech aliens ransack Galaxy, a moon falls on Chewie, Han & Leia have kids, etc.” vs. “New Empire led by new Palpatine rip-off appears, Han & Leia have evil son, Luke is depressing now, Han is a smuggler again, a ‘Resistance’ exists for some reason, etc.”

I mean the Episode 7 backstory basically requires the same amount of homework anyway in order to make sense of what’s presented in the movie, so it probably would have made little difference if Disney actually just kept the EU and dropped the audience off in the middle of it some time after the Yuzhaan Vong (too lazy to Google correct spelling) f’d up the entire galaxy.

It’s important to note that the main value of the Plinkett reviews was they were essentially a compendium of salient critiques about the Prequels. I don’t think Plinkett actually introduced a single original point of criticism. I don’t say that to disparage the reviews at all - rather, I say it to refute the oft-heard claim that widespread dislike of the Prequels resulted from the viral popularity of the RLM reviews, or that Prequel criticism could be reduced to parroting a list of Plinkett points.

A 1999 movie review of Phantom Menace articulates almost every main Plinkett point about TPM, a decade before Plinkett.

And multiple 2004 posts from this very website bring up the “no main character” criticism.

And anecdotally, most of Plinkett’s Prequel criticisms are things my friends and I talked about privately throughout the 2000s, before the Plinkett reviews. A lot of these criticisms are just obvious - especially the CGI stuff and the overall “feel” of these movies in comparison with the OT.

The main value of these reviews was that (1) they compiled all the most salient criticisms in a single video, (2) the criticisms attacked the fundamental problems with the Prequels, rather than the more common mainstream “Jar Jar is stupid” critiques, (3) they used a unique, comedic framing to express these criticisms, rather than the typical 2000s “rage critic” where the reviewer just screams and rants about how the movie sucks, and (4) they employed some really hilarious editing techniques, like cutting off a rambling point mid-sentence to move on to another segment.

Of course, regarding point (3), it seems a lot of people were put off by the “Buffalo Bill” serial killer voice. I personally found it pretty funny (I thought the comedic device of exaggerating the obsessive sci-fi nerd stereotype by merging it with a deranged, pizza-roll eating serial killer was brilliant at the time). But I’ve seen many people say the reviews were unwatchable due to the voice, which perhaps somewhat limited their audience appeal.

However, as I said, we’ve arrived at a point where these reviews need to be watched with some historical context in mind. Nowadays, Youtube is a career and countless movie reviews with 1-hour or more runtimes exist. But in 2008/2009, the idea that someone would actually make a 1-hour movie review about Star Wars or Star Trek would register as insanely anti-social to many. Only an extremely anti-social obsessive sci-fi nerd - a real-life incarnation of “Comic Book Guy” from the Simpsons - would ever do something as anti-social as that. The reviews therefore leaned into this by employing dark humor, making the narrator a deranged psychopath who watched Star Wars movies with his victims, and casually discussed Star Wars action figures while one of his victims was tied up in the background.

I think like 80-90% of their Prequel criticism is valid.

I remember the most contentious point brought up in the reviews (back like a decade ago when there was a lot of discussion about this) was that the plot (to Phantom Menace mostly) is hard to follow, incoherent, or under-explained.

People that disagreed usually reacted by saying something like “What? I understood the plot when I was 10! Why are you so stupid???” or “Is RLM so stupid they can’t understand the plot of a kids movie??” or whatever. Regardless, I agree with the overall point RLM makes regarding this issue.

I do think the famous “character personality test” is a bit over-rated and requires some cherry-picking to really make it work. It’s pretty easy to describe character traits for Qui-Gon, for example, besides just “stern”.

Muppet Babies referenced Star Wars in every single episode.

And The Muppet Show had a Star Wars themed episode, guest starring Mark Hamill.

If we’re including the 90s, there’s an episode of Friends that brings up adolescent fantasies about Princess Leia in the golden bikini.

Of course, Back To The Future mentions Darth Vader. (A movie, not television show, but whatever)

I found some of them extremely funny - particularly the whole bit going over Anakin’s approach to romance.

It’s often forgotten that the Plinkett reviews were somewhat novel at the time, being among the first “long-form” reviews with an hour or more runtime. They came out at a time when Youtube videos had a length limit (I think maybe 10 minutes max or something), and so they were initially released in 10-minute segments. At the time the Phantom Menace review was released, I remember the length of the review being commented on frequently. Of course, nowadays there are tons of extremely lengthy movie reviews on Youtube.

Also, there is a lot of “lost context” going on with these reviews. The reviews themselves formed something of a meta-joke, playing around with the idea of an obsessive sci-fi nerd that would make such long reviews about a science fiction franchise. The fact that the obsessive sci-fi nerd is also an insane serial killer is for the sake of an absurdist exaggeration of the stereotypical basement nerd. (The meta-joke is probably more evident with the Star Trek reviews than with Star Wars.)

However, this meta-joke is now somewhat obscure, and likely lost on a 2023 audience, because the “obsessive sci-fi nerd” stereotype has mostly disappeared. Formerly nerdy stuff is mostly mainstream now, and being extremely enthusiastic about Star Wars is generally not correlated with “weird obsessive basement-dwelling nerd” anymore. So the whole Silence of the Lambs/serial killer schtick has lost a lot of social context, and probably comes off as inexplicable to many viewers.

Anakin’s father was a random alcoholic homeless man who spent most of his days wandering around Mos Espa aimlessly, scraping by via begging, scamming moisture farmers, and gambling on pod-races, only to usually pass out drunk in an alley behind Watto’s junkyard where all his earnings would be stolen by Jawas.

Shmi Skywalker met him once and took pity on him for some reason. They had a brief fling. He was occasionally charming, if a bit unhygienic. But ultimately Shmi got sick of his antics, and filed a restraining order with Gardulla the Hutt. In order to spare little Anakin the shame of his loser dad, Shmi concocted a ridiculous lie, telling Anakin (and everyone else) he was the unlikely product of parthenogenesis. Anakin’s father was okay with this because (A) it meant he wouldn’t be obligated to pay child support, and (B) he usually had no idea what was going on.

A year before the outbreak of the Clone Wars, Anakin’s father died from acute liver failure at a random outpost a few kilometers southwest of Mos Eisley. He was buried in an unmarked grave, which was later desecrated by Tusken raiders.

Years later, Chancellor Palpatine, knowing Anakin’s father was a random drunk loser, made up some ridiculous story about Darth Plagueis screwing around with the Dark Side to auto-spawn a kid, as part of an elaborate ruse to trick Anakin into spontaneously mass-murdering almost everyone he ever knew. Somehow, it worked - even though creating life is not technically the same as preventing someone from dying.

Superweapon VII said:

Here’s a hot take that might upset a subset of the forum: Fans haven’t “started to come around and start showing the prequels the appreciation that they should have gotten in the first place”. It’s almost exclusively the fans who always loved the prequels unironically continuing to love the prequels unironically, be they the gushers from the days of yore or the kiddies who’ve grown up on them now adding their voice to the echo chamber.

The only thing I can say in terms of appreciating or reevaluating the Prequels, is that the Disney Sequels at least made me appreciate how George Lucas really tried to make his Prequels different from the OT in terms of story, aesthetics, locations, plot, themes, etc. The Sequels came off to me as mostly soulless regurgitations of the OT synthesized by a particularly boring AI (with the partial exception of TLJ, which presented an entirely different form of sucking). This made me at least appreciate Lucas’ desire to actually tell a story, rather than just shamelessly capitalize off of the OT.

And yet, sadly, the Prequels still seemed to suck the few times I rewatched them over the years; they just suck in very different ways than the Disney films.

The core issue is Lucas has some really inspired ideas, but sucks badly at writing (a fact he admits on multiple occasions) and seems to have a very different philosophy about the fundamental nature of Star Wars than a significant percentage of the original OT fanbase, as well as a significant percentage of the people whose creative input shaped the OT.

Palpatine’s death at Vader’s hands was probably the most incredibly poignant, perfect ending possible to the saga. Despite ROTJ’s many flaws, they really nailed that ending. It’s so rare that a saga like this wraps up with such a perfect resolution.

Of course, Lucas decided to decrease the poignancy factor by ~30% by dubbing in Vader saying “No! No!!!” before killing Palpatine. Sometimes I just don’t understand that man.

And I think Palpatine’s death was probably the least ambiguous death possible. Nobody ever had any doubt that he was dead. Future installments that unwisely decided to resurrect him (Dark Empire, Rise of Skywalker) did so through cloning - which doesn’t negate the fact that he did in fact die in ROTJ. Just because someone dies doesn’t mean a clone of that person cannot later be created.

Bomma72 said:

This is the truth, he wins about 99% of the whole trilogy, rules the galaxy for decades and dies with his offspring the most powerful person in the galaxy. Objectively he won. He has a few bad moments, in decades of dominance.

And yet his office is so tacky. Can’t he find a better interior designer on Coruscant?

NFBisms said:

Andor’s political statement continues with an economically friendly, free To access archive

Andor’s political statement is significantly diluted given that this statement is promulgated by a corporate behemoth traded on NYSE. But also, “Revolutionary message co-opted by hyper-bourgeois entertainment oligopoly - news at 11”

Oh man, I forgot about words like “flaming” and “flame wars”. These words sound so stupid in 2023. Let’s all agree to pretend we never said them.

Anyway, to throw in some more useless anecdotal evidence, yes - the Prequels were very controversial in the early 2000s to maybe around 2013 or so, at least on Star Wars Internet forums. Just go to any old school Star Wars Internet forum (including this one) and read posts from around 2001-2010 (if they go back that far) and you’ll find that almost every other thread is some heated argument about the Prequels. As Kellythatsit mentioned, there was even an entire stupid terminology used back then to describe both sides of the argument (“bashers” and “gushers”, oh god it’s embarrassing to even type those words now) because the phenomenon of arguing about the Prequels was so common.

Anyone who tells you otherwise, or tells you that the Internet loved the Prequels until Red Letter Media came along or anything similar is blatantly wrong.

Off the Internet, it’s much more difficult to gauge popular sentiment. But I recall that in the early 2000s the prevailing sentiment of popular culture towards the Prequels (or at least Phantom Menace) seemed to me at least to be mostly negative and prone to mockery.

For an example of early Prequel criticism (so early it was actually written before the Phantom Menace was released to the general public), see this 1999 review by Eli Roth (complete with dated 90s lingo), and also look at the comments section: http://web.archive.org/web/20000305191203/http://www.leisuresuit.net/Webzine/articles/starwars_rev.shtml

You’ll notice that even in 1999 - before the movie was even released to the general public - and a decade before RedLetterMedia, all the usual anti-Prequel talking points of today are fully present (over use of CGI, juvenile tone, Jar Jar, under-developed plot, breaking continuity with the OT, dull acting, etc.)

Regardless, I’ve met people in their late 20s that genuinely were surprised to learn that there was ever widespread dislike towards the Prequels on the Internet. There’s obviously a generational aspect to this, and I can understand why younger people might be skeptical about this, since it’s so different than the prevailing attitude today.

Mocata said:

Well that was brief. But satisfying. Oddly enough the dialogue between Fett and Kast has been in my head since the 1990s when it was in the SW magazine. The ‘you’re nobody’ bit should have been the kind of thing that Mando said to Gideon before he died. What could have been eh.

Strange what sticks in your brain for 25 years. Why does the name Jaster Mereel still exist in my mind but I can’t remember where I put my wallet? Anyway I might find a few online copies of Dark Empire or the Thrawn trilogy.

Because the name Jaster Mereel is objectively awesome.

Twin Engines of Destruction is what should have happened in The Mandalorian when that small-town sheriff guy was wearing Boba Fett’s armor in the Season 2 episode with the Krayt Dragon.

There’s so many classic Boba Fett comics that are just incredible. I don’t understand why none of these storylines were adapted for the live action Boba Fett show. [Insert more bitching about Disney, etc. etc. everything sucks now, etc., get off my lawn]

I haven’t read any of these books, but the concept at least seems interesting. This seems to be the first attempt to write Star Wars stories that don’t either (1) rely on known characters from the mainline movies or (2) center around the eternal Jedi/Sith struggle in some way.

But I don’t quite know what to make of the High Republic yet, based off the descriptions/summaries I’ve read. The setting and backstory sounds vaguely “Star Trek” inspired, e.g. focusing more on exploration, space travel being more difficult and slow, weird sentient plant beings (I think?) as villains, etc. And of course, a sentient rock is the most Star Trek thing ever. The descriptions I’ve read and some of the imagery I’ve seen reminded me a bit of the original Star Trek movies (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II, III, etc.) with the Jedi instead of Starfleet. But that was just my impression - I haven’t actually read any of these books yet, so I am probably way off. Regardless, it sounds very interesting.

Val Kilmer as Anakin sounds pretty cool.

But I’m not sure about Lucas’ perception of Anakin around the mid 1980s. I agree he would almost certainly have conceived of Anakin as probably around 19 or 20 rather than a little kid. But I’m not sure if Lucas’ 1980s Anakin would simply be a translation of Hayden Christiansen into a 1980s equivalent (i.e. some 80s teen heartthrob/bad boy type).

The only definitive clue about Lucas’ actual mental image of Anakin around 1983 is the fact that Lucas cast Sebastian Shaw as elder Anakin. Shaw’s brief performance suggests Lucas perceived of Anakin as British, maybe because Kenobi was British and Lucas thought of Anakin as coming from the same world/environment as Kenobi. Gary Oldman (mentioned in the podcast) sounds like a possible candidate. Some of the actors mentioned for 1980s young Kenobi may also have been considered for Anakin by Lucas.

I used to imagine Anakin as something like a young Malcolm McDowell (although he was much too old to actually play Anakin in the mid 1980s.)

Oddly, the phrase “trash compactor” is never used in A New Hope, or anywhere else in the OT. But I suspect a lot of people are absolutely sure it is.

Pakka said:

The limitless universe that existed from 1977-1980 started to shrink as soon as Vader said “I am your father”, and just about everything that has happened since has continued to make it seem smaller. Even mainstream critics have started to notice that, while it’s supposedly set in an entire, sprawling galaxy far, far away, Star Wars feels very “small-town”. Everybody knows everybody, everything is too connected, and there are few real surprises.

I don’t entirely agree with this idea (I grew up in the generation after where the OT was on VHS and the Special Editions were my first theatrical Star Wars experience), HOWEVER I can completely understand this sentiment. There’s something about the 1977 Star Wars that captures this feeling of limitless possibilities - producing an intense, child-like curiosity about what’s beyond the horizon. The fact that the movie is set in “the furthest place from the bright center of the Universe” (to paraphrase), instead of like, some 1977 equivalent of Coruscant, along with the very lived-in aesthetic, the straightforward directing, and the hinted back stories, all probably play a large role in producing these feelings. There’s so much that’s tantalizingly unknown that we only get glimpses of, out on the frontier in a vast cosmos. (I get a similar vibe occasionally from Ridley Scott’s first Alien movie).

But nowadays, all of that enticing Star Wars imagery has turned into “IP”. Like, every single weird alien in the Mos Eisley Cantina was at one point strange and new - each weird creature suggested an entirely different civilization or world existing somewhere out there. But now they keep copy-&-pasting the same Cantina aliens everywhere in Star Wars. Every Star Wars bar, outpost or underground nightclub has the same alien species. (We paid $4 billion for the rights to hammerhead alien! We’re damn well putting hammerhead alien in our new Star Wars cafe!) Meanwhile, there’s an exhaustively detailed Wookiepedia article about the history and culture of each species.

While I understand this aspect, it’s hard for me to really understand how the Vader revelation in particular shrinks the Universe. Of course, I get how the Vader revelation can be seen as narrowing the focus of the story to this one family. But… even without the Vader revelation, Luke, Ben Kenobi and Vader were always intimately connected and likely to be the focus of any potential sequels. (Ben trained Vader, Vader killed Luke’s father, etc. Luke was always about two degrees of separation from the Emperor of the Galaxy.) The original Leigh Brackett script of ESB (which has mostly the same plot as the real ESB, except Vader is not Luke’s father) still focuses heavily on Luke and Luke’s relationship with Vader. Even if the “I am your father” revelation never happened, it’s hard to imagine the subsequent Star Wars sequels unfolding in a manner that didn’t revolve around Luke and Vader at their emotional core. Nothing hooks an audience more than character drama - so it’s difficult to imagine some alternate timeline where Star Wars sequels were made that didn’t continue the story of the main cast.

The real problem is Star Wars has lost the sense of the tantalizing unknown, the limitless possibility just beyond the horizon. Now we all know what’s beyond the horizon. It’s probably Tatooine. Or a planet that looks like Tatooine (and probably has Jawas or Jawa-equivalents). Or Coruscant again.

And it doesn’t help that every planet in the Galaxy is just a quick 1-hour trip away via hyperspace. I actually take the opposite view from the essay about “Star Wars as surrealism instead of sci-fi”. While I don’t want Star Wars to be hard science fiction, I think that if the sci-fi angle was played up more, it would be easier to maintain that sense of the tantalizing unknown. If it took months or years to travel from the Outer Rim to the core worlds, or if most of the Galaxy was remote and unexplored, or if the Empire lasted for centuries or millennia, instead of decades, etc - these are the sort of details that better convey this sense of vastness and possibility, and of the tantalizing unknown in fiction.

Ronster said:

Darth Caliban said:

Bobson Dugnutt said:

Darth Caliban said:

So basically no additional story elements, dialogues or anything with alternative worldbuilding information like Han with the girl (Jenny?) in the cantina during the rough cut for ANH?

There are probably some alternate line deliveries, or different pieces of dialogue that suggest other things. Han saying “That bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell changed my mind” was cut, which implies another adventure they had before ESB, for example.
It is likely however, that we generally know about just about everything that was cut, and that there aren’t any big subplots, sequences or scenes that have been cut out or kept under wraps.
People will debate forever still though that Luke missed the first time during their chasm swing, or Leia spat on Tarkin, or Vader’s TIE exploded, or the Biggs scenes were in there from the start. It’s fun to think about, but it’ll never be proven in anyway.

“I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading, but rumors, true or false, are often revealing.” - Hans Landa

By the way, to come back to the speculated about additional AT-AT scene, is it known if a set for the compartment for the stormtroopers inside the walker was ever built for ESB?

Can’t remember ever reading anything about it, but if they built it, i’d guess they would have used it at least for some test sequences.

After Wedge downs the AT-AT with the tow cable that scene was expanded upon in story boards basically the rebel troops and the Storm Troopers were to have a small gun battle outside the downed AT-AT and the troops running out the trench shouting “Come on!” is still in the film but the rest is it is likely un-filmed or unfinished. They just blew it up it was easier.

Which never really made much sense. Somehow, falling down makes the metal easier to penetrate. They should have just cut away after the AT-AT fell - that’s enough for the audience to understand it was taken out.

Marooned Biker Scout said:

Contrast that to Andor, real sets, real people, reactions, everyday life on various environments, though notably Ferrix and Aldanhi, It draws us in, grounds us as viewers, we’ve been there, we identify and believe those familiar surroundings. Even when we are shown the lower levels of Coruscant, or the ISB HQ, they have the similar grounding, background extras going about their day.

(Along with some beautiful cinematography, direction and editing, of course.)

Yeah, definitely. And that’s because many of those shots on Coruscant are actually just real locations that were digitally touched up to look more Star Warsy. I think one of the locations on Coruscant is the McLaren headquarters in England, and the ISB HQ is a plaza in the Canary Wharf in London.

It’s the reason Coruscant seems so different (and more tangible) in Andor than in the Prequels.

I also liked the depiction of Coruscant in the test footage for the canceled Star Wars Underworld show. It was closer to the Prequels in style, but it also had this more grounded, Blade Runner vibe.

RogueLeader said:

They could’ve emphasized that Han was using his smuggling skills to sneak the ground team onto the Endor moon. They could have even explained that Han himself paid for the clearance codes, using his criminal connections to procure them. And I do think having Han let Lando fly the Falcon also contributes to his character growth as well.

Yeah, and this suggests all sorts of enticing possibilities if only there was more time or more movies. I mean, you could have an entire subplot about Han and Lando going on a mission to get those clearance codes from like Black Sun or whatever, which could easily fill half a movie. And I think this highlights another issue with ROTJ: it was hampered from the start, because it had the monumental task of satisfactorily wrapping up the whole saga, which includes rescuing Han, resolving the conflict with Vader, revealing the “other”, and overthrowing the Empire, all in about 2 hours! And Empire Strikes Back didn’t exactly leave us off with the sense that some final showdown between the Empire and Rebellion was immanent. Considering all this, it’s really a miracle ROTJ turned out as good as it did.

k-slam64 said:

If Jabba has a palace, why does he live in the dungeon? All he does is lay around in bed all day smoking space weed and hanging out with his loser friends.

Because he’s like a cool rich friend that throws parties and hires live bands to party in his basement. One time back in the 80s he got Sy Snootles to show up and she did a live performance of Lapti-Nek, everyone was so high. I think this one chick was eaten by a rancor, and Boba Fett was there maybe. It was wild. Then in the morning after everyone woke up he let us hang out on his party yacht.

It’s really hard to create new, compelling characters, let alone to get people to watch them, especially in a franchise like this with so much historical baggage. Andor created at least two new compelling characters, which is amazing. Timothy Zahn did it as well in the 1990s. But… that’s pretty much it for post-Lucas Star Wars in my opinion (although I haven’t read most of the latter-EU or seen many of the cartoons, so maybe I’m missing out). I liked Seasons 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian, but I have to admit it wasn’t really because of the character work. But maybe IG-11 should get an Emmy.

God, Andor is so freaking awesome. I wish more people watched it so it would have more influence steering the future direction of Star Wars. But then, maybe if too many people watched it, the executives would start meddling with it, and start demanding they insert Baby Yoda into at least 2/3 of all scenes. Then we’d end up with Season 2 of Andor starting out, and Baby Yoda is just there with no explanation. Then after Cassian Andor is captured by the ISB and interrogated/tortured, we regularly cut back to Baby Yoda eating cookies, then back to the Imperial torture droid.

StarkillerAG said:

And the first moment I mentioned, Lando arriving with the cavalry, has been documented to have been in the movie from the very beginning: it was in Colin Trevorrow’s “Duel of the Fates” draft, written before Endgame even started filming. So that obviously couldn’t have been Endgame inspired.

It’s also in Lord of the Rings, when the Rohan army arrives at the last minute to turn the tide of the ongoing battle at Helms Deep. That goes back to the 1960s.

I don’t think Han should have died in ROTJ.

The problem is that it was difficult to figure out what to do with his character after the rescue. They decided to throw him with the Endor ground team, but it often feels like he’s just along for the ride. But then, I guess the same could be said about Leia. The problem is, unlike the first two movies, post-Jabba ROTJ is the first time in Star Wars where the main characters’ involvement in the unfolding plot doesn’t exactly seem necessary. Like, why are Han and Leia specifically leading the Endor ground team? It could really be any senior Rebel doing this, and neither Han nor Leia have been established as “Seal Team Six” types. Luke, on the other hand, ends up doing something that only he specifically can do: confronting Vader.

This is unlike ANH and ESB, where each character is doing things specific to that character’s ongoing arc. In ANH, Han is a smuggler/criminal caught up in larger events, and Leia is a Senator secretly leading a Rebellion. In ESB Leia continues leading the Rebellion and Han is split between his old life and his new responsibilities. But in ROTJ, we’re just suddenly presented with some mission parameters by the Rebellion’s top brass, and for arbitrary reasons our beloved main characters are assigned arbitrary roles. (Why is Lando - who we’ve only found out even joined the Rebellion a few seconds ago - given a leading role in this critical mission? Something about the Battle of Taneb?)

A more natural use of the characters, given their previous history, would be for Leia to replace the role of Mon Mothma or Ackbar, for Han to lead the attack in the Falcon, and for Luke to lead the Endor ground team. Alternatively, it would also make sense for Luke to lead Rogue Squadron in the Endor space battle. But the problem is that it’s simply not feasible to write the story this way, because this would effectively remove Leia from most of the onscreen action, and it would separate the main cast even further. Plus, whatever role Luke is assigned, he needs to abandon at some point in order to go confront Vader. So it’s pretty difficult to find a way to satisfactorily position all the main cast given the parameters of the Battle of Endor, in a way that feels completely natural in-Universe but is also dramatically effective.

I think to really make it all work, the parameters of the Battle of Endor themselves would need to be reworked in some way. I feel like Han really should be in the Falcon, but then we need something for Lando to do. Maybe an entirely new subplot is required, like having Lando recruit a secondary fleet of smugglers or whatever. (Oh god that sounds like Rise of Skywalker, nevermind.)