They need to fix the blue screen stars being in focus when the background of the throne room is out of focus. Always bugs me. They could have tied in Han's rescue to the rest of the film more. Maybe while undercover, Lando finds out about the Empire secretly moving lots of construction material, and a darker, less idealistic Luke wants to pursue that information instead of rescuing Han. Leia would want to risk doing both. It would give Lando more to do and provide some character conflict/insight with Luke and Leia.
As my favorite Star Wars movie, I don't think Return of the Jedi needs any work whatsoever... but, I may offer a tiny change: don't kill the Emperor! As one of my favorite villains ever (and portrayed flawlessly by Ian McDiarmid), I would love to have seen Palpatine go on to antagonize the protagonists in the sequel trilogy.
Do you mean undercover like this: He went through all that trouble to disguise himself, but he still looked like Lando, albeit in a horrible disguise. Those aliens working in Jabba's palace must have been a bunch of dimwits if they couldn't tell that that was a lousy mask.
It only had to be good enough to fool Fett, and keeping in the dark smoky background/not looking directly at Fett at any point helped. Lando Calrissian likely wasn't that well known in the galaxy outside of the casino scene; he wouldn't be caught dead gambling on Tatooine. To Jabba and everyone else at the palace, Lando would have been just another disposable guard. As long as he did his job, nobody cared what he looked like under the mask.
Especially since the clones were prone to not see obstruction and bump their head on a door. Unless the stormtrooper wasn't a clone
According to the 'From a Certain Point of View' collection of short stories, that guy was one of the very same troopers that Obi-Wan mind tricked at Mos Eisley. Apparently he bumped his head because he was still suffering the after-effects, which seems to include a splitting headache.
I happen to know the actor who did the voice of the "These aren't the droids we're looking for," trooper: Terry McGovern (aka Launchpad McQuack).
I was watching RotJ today and it struck me just how many backup plans Luke burns through during his rescue of Han. First they send in Lando to gather intelligence. Plan A: Jabba accepts Luke's offer to negotiate for Hans release. Plan B: Leia infiltrates using Chewie as cover and rescues Han in the middle of the night. Then they have to rescue Chewie and the droids, Lando probably was supposed to take care of that. Why didn't Lando just try to smuggle Han out himself? Han doesn't know Lando is on their side yet, and would probably blow their cover. Plan C: Luke uses the mind trick on Jabba. Plan D: Luke grabs a blaster while talking to Jabba, kills him and they fight their way out. Plan E: Lando tells them their is an opening for an astromech waiter on the sail barge, and that if everything goes south, that is where to they would be executed, so Luke hides his Saber in R2 and they fight their way off the barge.
100% agreed. It did feel like 2 separate stories, of which one felt completely superflous and drawn out: Story one: Get Han back and set the stage for some disgusting jokes to be made on "Family Guy" nearly 25 years later, fight the big bad Emperor who overlords the whole show, and end the saga with a happy happy joy joy parade because this ain't Blake's 7. The Vader/Luke/Emperor story being a proper sequel and was very engaging. Unfortunately, we also have story two shoved in: This part revolves around the stunt doubles for the Charmin brand toilet paper bears waddling around the forest looking for more trees to rub up and down on, which are called "Ewoks", and think humans are tasty - just how often do people visit Endor to begin with for the Ewoks to have become masterchefs for this sort of cuisine? Maybe the Empire, since there's a landing pad there and everything, drops off choice criminals for the Ewoks to devour, but they should have "Bam, knock it up a notch" by bringing in this chap: (Part of a disturbing but great movie, from 1973...) Granted, SW was always about merchandising, but the Ewoks - apparently based on the Viet Cong - were THE most obvious form of merchandising ever given the intended audience (of a typical age range that loved to hug teddy bears), which says a lot considering the 1977 movie was nothing more than a glorious, glorified toy ad with all the trappings of a cheap B-movie underneath. And to think some critics preferred the 1977 original before it was renamed "Chapter IV" by the time they saw 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back", which is exactly what the franchise needed at the time - to give some depth to the characters.. Coupled with yet-another-death-star, which took the Empire (rather less than 3 years) to build up enough of a new one to scamper across the galaxy with... and then comes episode 7, for which it I am thankful for because episode 8 is a breath of fresh air from what I've read so far (Porgs, which appear to be Star Wars' half-baked half-answer to the 2005 Doctor Who series' "Adipose" notwithstanding) and I can't wait to see it since the writers apparently are trying something new with the new characters and that's an instant +1 in my book... Yes, every movie needs a boss or big bad, but eps 4, 6, and 7 all have death star-style things... but 6's manages to be more ludicrous than 7's - for which Han was being "the audience" in addressing what everyone was thinking at the time, "yet another death star trope?". As much flak as ep 7 deserved for doing yet-another-death-star, there is more innovation to the planet killer base as opposed to another big death star ship that 6 lamely trotted out of the writers' barn. More plausible too despite the starkiller base destroying oodles of planets across the entire galaxy in seconds, so ultimately one positive is canceled by one negative but I digress... ...Why was yet-another-death-star needed when the Emperor's throne room and funky fresh clad-red guards already made for a neat playset for the kids and some compelling drama for the teens and adults? With Star Wars, any number of dogfight scenes in space was enough to awe and there was enough character development to also keep the story going, the entire Ewok subplot was padding. And if Ewoks were real, one could shave them for pillow stuffings so the geese can keep their own down instead. So remove yet-another-death-star, get rid of the Charmin bears and keep Mr Whipple Emperor and expand on his screen time, capture sister Leia since Vader finally realized Luke had one (bad choice of words, everyone remembers she tongue-wrestled him rather deeply long before anybody - including the saga's writers - came up with the notion they were siblings, whoops), and do other things than showing what Ewoks like to make for breakfast after they worship clunks of circuits inside a metal suit... It's safe to say VI is not my most favorite of the franchise. Mostly because it's a rehash that feels too lazily written (at the time) and with way too much padding for all the subplots that, if that wasn't bad enough, also happened to be for the least compelling plot strands... and then there's the Ewoks, which didn't inspire many people or their wallets to - in 1983 - choose an Ewok plastic action figure over the latest plastic Vader figure... current franchise ratings: 5 4 3 6/7 tie (the Emperor and Kylo Ren both make fantastic villains, the Emperor is pure evil, but Ren is unpredictable) 1 (Darth Maul was far better than a hundred CGI objects whizzing light sabers and a love story that was as wooden as Endor...) 2
Still the third best Star Wars movie of all time. I agree that the Ewoks were too cute and they shouldn't have beaten the stormtroopers so easily. Having another death star destruction climax wasn't very original. I heard Gary Kurtz left because a more original ROTJ outline was abandoned by Lucas.
Kurtz was let go during production of Empire Strikes Back after going over budget again. If I'm remembering correctly, the story meeting for Episode 6 took place a year or two later. I love all of RotJ, even the second death star. It looks so eerie half finished. I even love the Ewoks. The troopers are actually beating the Ewoks until Chewbacca and two teddy bears commandeer a walker, and blowing $#!+ up. There's that scene where they're all fleeing back into the forest, and one teddy bear falls, and his comrade turns around and says "come on!" then he shakes him and starts eweeping. And I think the space battle is the most visually stunning of all the films to this day. And the Emperor scenes are some of the most compelling in SW(imo)
Any construction worker would tell you that even with a hard hat on, it still wouldn't be fun to have a 20 pound rock dropped on your head from 20 feet up.