FIRST OFF. I am not George Lucas. Neither are you. It would be a fan-made "remake". I can't go sell this to millions of people and make it an official change to the canon. You're taking it far too literally, and far too painfully.
Okay, the way I'm reading that paragraph -- other than "literally" and "painfully," as is apparently my wont -- you have taken this discourse to a more personal, visceral level. I'll keep that in mind.
Established facts gets debunked all the time. Just because you survived a car crash doesn't mean you aren't going to die in the hospital at a later time. Just because the doctor says you will live, doesn't mean it's completely impossible for you to die the exact same evening. There was strong doubt in everyone at that time whether Han would live or not. And it made Leia's kiss to Han much more meaningful if he never got to see her again. In ROTJ, it is so cut-and-dry that it pretty much renders the sad ending of ESB assinine and pointless. There is no lasting effect of loss or slight darkness.
First of all, Han's survival wasn't just established, it was
firmly established. There are the two points of evidence I mentioned in my proof above, and to those, I wish to add a third piece of evidence. The only reason Vader had Han frozen was to test the freezing apparatus's suitability for freezing Skywalker. He was worried that the facility was crude, and his subject would not survive the freezing process. He wanted Skywalker to survive his journey to the Emperor. Would Vader put someone in carbonite if there was even the slightest danger that, after surviving the freezing process, they would randomly die a few days later? Of course not; Vader fully expected anyone who survived the freezing process to be perfectly safe inside the carbonite.
As for "debunking" facts, capriciously "debunking" an established fact in a dramatic work is dangerous. The audience's trust in the storyteller will waver if he changes his mind on the big things for no real in-text reason. If the storyteller establishes that Han is alive with statements by several characters and story logic, then says, "Oh, he's dead after all," everything else the storyteller promised earlier in the story will be called into question.
And the ending of ESB wasn't sad. It was cathartic. It went so far as to visually depict Luke's external healing to evoke in the audience the idea that he had healed internally, as well. It's a real stretch to see most of the heroes escape the villain, reunite in a place of safety, have their injuries practically (and magically, to the audience) reversed, look upon a sight of singular beauty, hear stirring music -- and call it "sad."
Just how much time would you want to waste in the movie by having Han and Lando fight over a strained friendship? by losing Han, we lose an anti-hero who became a hero. That is tragic. It is disturbing. It makes for a more lasting effect after the movie is done.
Just because something is tragic and disturbing doesn't make it a good idea. But I'll keep in mind that you want the movie to be tragic and disturbing.
By the way: DID I SAY LANDO DIES RIGHT AWAY?!?!? No. Your argument about 'surviving sarlacc pits while you're slowely digested' is meaningless to this certain article I made. It's nitpicking and irrelevant. Those are the words that come to mind while reading your replies, my friend. "Nitpicking" and "irrelevant".
No, you didn't say he died "right away." You said he died "undoubtedly." That is what I was addressing. The dramatic purpose of the Sarlacc pit -- as opposed to, say, a firing squad or a guillotine -- is that you don't know what happens to the people who fall into it. There is, by design, some measure of doubt. And, if Jabba is to be believed, the people who fall into it
probably survive. I guess someone could fall at an unfortunate angle and break their neck, or have a heart attack or some kind of allergic reaction to the Sarlacc's biochemistry, but those would only be the exceptions that test the rule.
I added Wookies. There are no Ewoks in this version. A primitive human settlement of a tiny size would most likely not be noticed by the Empire. Even on our planet it is not rare to find tiny settlements smack-dab in the middle of Nowhere Central. The village probably wouldn't know (or care) about the Death Star construction. Your comments really piss me off, dude. They really piss me off.
No, we are actually pretty good at locating settlements smack-dab in the middle of Nowhere Central. We have satellites and things now. In fact, we've had them for about fifty years. The Empire has been around for 25,000 years. (Even if you ignore everything from the EU and Obi-wan's statement about a thousand generations of Jedi, we know that the culture under Imperial rule has had interstellar space travel for at least a thousand years.) That's more than enough time for them to develop surveillance technology on par with ours, and they'd certainly deploy such technology in order to protect a secret military installation.
What you've done is taken one of the things that makes RotJ unbelievable and compounded the error. In the real movie, the Empire is apparently unaware of or unconcerned by primitive aliens constructing large traps and amassing next to their power generator. They didn't clear fields of fire, build fighting positions, designate exclusion zones, etc. But we can rationalize this (and many EU authors have) by saying that the Imperial military is biased against non-humans, seeing them as less of a threat. Aliens are evidently not considered fit for service in the Imperial military, so it's easy to imagine the Empire overlooking an alien threat. When you add a human settlement in your notional movie, we cannot use this rationalization, and are forced to conclude that the Empire's grand secret weapon was constructed under less security than Return of the Jedi itself.
After finding the exact location of Jabba's hideout they came back to get Luke and Leia. Like they probably (we never know for sure) did in the real ROTJ movie. They needed sleep though. They waited until they got some sleep before all journeying back to Jabba's hideout. But Leia decided to leave early because she was desperate. By 'night' I obviously mean when they all were resting and sleeping.
That's all great, but doesn't explain why Leia would still be on the Medical Frigate after Luke's operation was done. I guess she might've been visiting the Joes, or talking to a shrink. Maybe they admitted her under something like "combat stress" and she meekly accepted. Other than that, she had no business on a hospital ship. Personally, I think she (and the Alliance) would prefer that she be in a better defended place as soon as Luke's hand was working.
Of course, maybe Leia became completely useless as soon as the funding from Alderaan dried up and her presence at Echo Base was merely tolerated by General Rieekan. Maybe she bums a ride on any Rebel spaceship that'll host her. But I digress.
Maybe they don't use full hyperdrive this time. Maybe it had an Imperial tracking device attached to it.
We've already seen the tracking device trick, too. I guess
maybe the Falcon would slow down enough for enemies to track her; maybe Lando flies the "fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy" more conservatively than Han. But in order to be followed, the Empire would have to know where the Falcon was before it made the jump to lightspeed, or intercept it in transit (something we've never seen in the films, and requires specialized technology in the EU). That just pushes the problem of the Empire locating the Falcon back. Again, this is something their best forces, under the direct control of the highest echelons of command, were unable to do for a number of years. What has changed to make the Empire so good at Falcon hunting?
This is sort of like something Lucas tried in an early script for Revenge of the Sith. Imperial agents rather easily captured Luke on Tatooine, as a sort of segue between the Tatooine segment and the Had Abaddon segment. Fortunately, Lucas was wise enough to drop that; he realized that the Rebel Alliance, and our heroes especially, had been characterized as supremely elusive in episodes IV and V, and there was no reason to change that for episode VI.
Here is another example of you nitpicking. Who's to say they didn't BREAK THEIR NECKS WHILE FALLING INTO THE PIT? NO ONE KNOWS WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENS TO THEM, JUST THAT THEY PROBABLY DO INDEED DIE.
Well, "probably" is different than "undoubtedly," so I guess you're about 33% of the way to my position. (The other two thirds comprises acceptance of Jabba's statements, consistent with his demonstrated predilection for torture; and that bit about the dramatic utility of the Sarlacc as written for sequels.)
Here is an example so you can maybe understand. I sincerely hopes this helps you.
Leia: Tell them we want to make peace. Tell them we need their help.
Chewie: *turns to Wookies and growls stuff.*
I sincerely hope that helps you understand where I was coming from. -_-
Here is a counter-example:
Wookie Chief: Hraawwwn!
Leia: Chewie, what did he say?
Chewie: Hraawwwn!
Leia: Damn, I knew I should've brought Threepio.
Please. Do not insult yourself. Do not insult me, either. You said "elegantly resolved a love triangle by turning it into classic comedy"...... Okay. There are many things wrong with what you said. If you were that much of an 'elegant' thinker, you would have been able to formulate the answers to your own questions; but instead, I have to answer them for you. There is nothing wrong with that... but... you get my meaning.
Okay, if there's many things wrong with what I've said, let's hear 'em. All I see here is insults, and they're really funny if I imagine you saying them aloud with See Threpio's voice. "If you get my meaning, sir."
She is strong in the Force just as Luke was. Raised in a primitive village, the Force did not withold itself from Leena.
So now her village was primitive, too? And she flies an X-wing against an Imperial superweapon? Sounds like something out of an L. Ron Hubbard novel. You can call this thing Battlefield Endor when you finish it.
Since when does the Force "withhold" itself from people? The PT/OR Jedi made their headquarters on the most cosmopolitan planet in the galaxy, there was nothing primitive about them, and they were strong in the Force. Vader and Palpatine enjoyed every technological benefit available to men in their position, and they were strong in the Force. There's no evidence that the Force has some sort of culturally regressive bias, or that it's even aware of relative cultural development. Nor is there any evidence that the Force is sentient enough to withhold itself from the unworthy.
The closest we've got to the Force choosing who can wield it is the Force balancing itself by creating a "Chosen One" to wipe out the lightsiders when they vastly outnumbered the darksiders -- and even that is veiled by vague Jedi eschatology and bias. But that's from the prequels, so can be safely ignored here on OriginalTrilogy.com, I think.
Now, perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but you're using Leena's advantage in the Force to respond to my incredulity over her ability to fly an X-wing. The Force may be powerful enough to let a "primitive" person fly an X-wing into battle, but that kind of extremely technical instinct is far beyond anything we've seen Force-users do to date. Luke had years of flying experience before he flew Red 5, and even then, he was only given the fighter in the gravest do-or-die emergency. The attack on the Death Star II was well-planned, and it's doubtful they had spare X-wings sitting around that they'd loan out to some primitive without a single hour of flight time.
I'm sure you want to come back with something like, "Well, maybe one of the X-wing pilots got the flu or lost his glasses, WE DON'T KNOW!!!" And that's a perfectly possible story development. But it's so unlikely as to beggar belief.
Luke didn't lose a father. His father was already long lost to evil. He gained him back by convincing him to be non-evil. And now his father's spirit can be with him forever.
That's lovely. But his father died. His ghost showed up, briefly, with no promise to return or be available when needed or desired. I never assumed Anakin was back "forever," and neither did the EU writers. The idea of him hanging around forever is a bit too sweet for me. I prefer the original version with the majority interpretation: Luke saves his father, only to lose him moments later. It makes Vader's story the story of an anti-hero who became a hero. It makes Vader's final words much more meaningful if he can never speak to his son again. It's disturbing and tragic.
Luke won a sister. AND a lover. That is the greatness behind my version. He got the girl he wanted from when he first saved her in Episode IV. He also found his sister. A win-win-win situation. Much like in the actual ROTJ... but unlike the actual ROTJ, my version still holds realistic to logic.
The logic that even though it is a happy ending... there is also a strain of sadness. In knowing a good friend was lost. Han Solo died like a man. He took it like a man. And just by knowing that fact at the end of my version of ROTJ, I'm sure it will give everyone a more emotional and triumphant feel. A more realistic feel... that not everything is perfect, yet so many things really are.
