MooWaza

Channel72 said:

G&G-Fan said:

Luke’s plan to rescue Han makes complete sense when you realize the reason his plan is so complex is because he’s going out of his way to not have to kill Jabba. Because that’s what Jedi do. Negotiate, not kill.

His first plan is to use the droids as a bargaining chip. Lando is planted there so he can get them out after Han is freed, and they lose nothing. That fails. So Leia’s sent in to free him, but she’s caught. Crap. So Luke has to go in himself. He calmly tries to negotiate with Jabba one last time, but he refuses. He knew about the Sarlacc, but not the Rancor, which is why he’s surprised by it. He planted the lightsaber in R2 in case he was gonna be thrown in the Sarlacc pit. Because otherwise they’d nab it off him when preparing to throw him in. And thus we get the sail barge scene.

Luke’s plan isn’t actually needlessly complicated, it’s just that we saw the worst possible scenario because Jabba is stubborn and insane.

Well, sending in Leia automatically gets Chewie thrown in a cell. So Leia has to now extract Han and Chewie. I guess this could work - after all, they needed some way to get an audience with Jabba in the first place, and there was an open bounty on Chewie. But the problem is we just never know what the original Plan A was supposed to be, e.g. we don’t know how they planned on extracting Chewie if Han was successfully rescued. The answer is of course “somehow” (maybe Lando had keys to the cell). That’s fine, but it makes the plan feel arbitrary. I’m reminded of Palpatine’s nebulous plans in Phantom Menace, where again we only see contingencies and we must try to infer what the original plan was.

Also, I think Luke would prioritize showing up himself as Contingency Plan A, rather than risking the lives of both Leia and Chewie. Luke seemed to believe there was a reasonable chance a Jedi mind trick might work on Jabba. Perhaps he wasn’t so sure - but if he believed it had like a 50% chance of working, it seems attempting the mind trick would be the preferred option rather than first resorting to a plan that risked both Leia and Chewie.

I had always interpreted ROTJ to be implying that Luke and Leia were not even coordinating with this rescue plan. I thought they were acting independently. I interpreted the event as: Luke sends in the droids, which fails. Luke now decides to show up himself, but before he arrives, Leia and Chewie (acting independently) show up and get caught. Not sure who Lando was working with, but probably Leia/Chewie.

The plan might make sense - it’s just that it seems somewhat arbitrary to the audience, because we’re left in the dark about so many details. Like, did Luke know Jabba would head out to the Dune Sea for a theatrical execution? I guess so - it’s plausible Jabba is known for doing this, Luke is from Tatooine, Luke seemed to prepare for it by placing the lightsaber in R2, and Luke seemed really calm during the ride out there. But it’s also possible R2 had the lightsaber because Luke believed he’d be searched for weapons at the door. After the Rancor, Luke seems to have lost all hope in a peaceful outcome, so why not have R2 toss him the lightsaber then? The crowded interior of the palace seems better suited for a lightsaber massacre than out in the open. Maybe R2 just wasn’t present at that time. Okay, but what if R2 wasn’t present at the sail barge either? What if Jabba’s staff decided to assign R2 to some other duty instead of the sail barge?

This kind of elaborate planning that ignores all the unpredictable variables is common in movies in general, so it’s not specifically a problem with ROTJ. But there are some good bank heist or prison escape movies, where the plan is explicitly spelled out and all variables and contingencies are known to the audience in advance - which I feel makes watching it unfold much more interesting than watching it unfold when you don’t really know what’s going on.

Anyway, there are some other problems too. Like, we take it as a given that Lando was sent to infiltrate Jabba’s palace, and somehow managed to get hired as a guard. Fine. But shouldn’t Boba Fett recognize Lando? I mean, sure, Lando wears a mask that partially conceals his face (but not his voice), but it seems like a major risk to send in one of the few Rebel Alliance members who could be identified by one of Jabba’s regular hirees. I guess they just didn’t have anyone else capable of pulling this off, so they sent in Lando and just hoped he never had to take off his mask around Boba Fett. Or I don’t know, maybe Boba Fett isn’t there so often.

Finally, Vader is still searching for Luke at this point. You’d think Vader would be monitoring the situation in Jabba’s palace - probably via Boba Fett. Does Boba Fett recognize Luke when Luke shows up at the palace? Maybe he doesn’t (he only briefly saw him in ESB), or maybe he does and was trying to capture Luke before falling into the Sarlacc Pit and then promptly dying and certainly never escaping and going on to have further adventures. Maybe Boba Fett was just unsure how to proceed when caught between the conflicting interests of Jabba and Vader. But anyway I doubt any of that was intended in the writing. Lucas stated in an interview that Boba Fett was just basically a generic henchman in this scene - his earlier relationship with Vader and his role in setting a trap for Luke was seemingly not considered.

It seems like this movie forgets that Boba Fett was present for certain events in Empire Strikes Back.

They were clearly working together as you can see in the deleted scenes of Return of the Jedi. Whether this is valid is up to you since they’re not in the final movie, but it shows the original idea when making the movie.