The point of the kiss was to make Han jealous and the way the scene plays out it's clear Luke is well aware of the intent and very amused by the whole thing. Clearly those two have been bouncing off each other for going on 3 years by this point and this is likely far from the first time something like this has happened. So yeah, she didn't hold back and in hindsight that's probably a moment they'd both rather forget, but even so, it was never meant to be a real, heartfelt kiss. Just two friends who are very comfortable around each other, almost as if there was an implicit trust. An unspoken preternatural bond. Like as if somehow they've both always known...something. Regardless as to whether or not it had been decided at that point who the "other" was (pretty sure it wasn't) it's pretty clear from the movie and indeed the pre-production notes that Lucas had decided early on that Han was Leia's romantic interest. Right from the first notes Luke was going to spend half the movie training. A romance with Leia was never on the cards after ANH.
Yes, but it WAS the cards in Star Wars. Going by Star Wars, Vader was very much a "known" individual. People knew who he was (if not where he came from) and had somewhat informed opinions of him. Some thought him foolish, others terrifying. I thought that one of the best scenes with Vader is from the radio play, where he shows up at a spaceport at the same time as Leia. His terror isn't because he's some Jedi Knight Force Guy. It's because he commands the entire power of the Imperial Government and can flex that power at a whim. (Never forget, the origin of the Empire is Watergate.) As I said earlier, I think a lot of the weight of Jedi's problems have roots with Empire. In Star Wars Vader was a henchman. An oddity. You didn't really know what he was up to other than wanting to crush the Rebellion by any means necessary. Empire and Jedi cemented his allegiance to the Emperor as an individual (and established Palpatine as Force sensitive). But in Star Wars his obedience is to Tarkin. (It is interesting that this is obviously not always the case because Leia notes this relationship as something she didn't know about.) I tend to think that the universe we get in Star Wars is a little more interesting than the one we end up with in Jedi where it all comes down to three people in a room. And then the Prequels tried to connect those dots of how we got from what we thought we knew in Star Wars to where we ended up in Jedi. With some "I'm going to confound expectations" problems that further mess the whole thing up. The other thing that Empire and Jedi somehow introduce is that Anakin's identity is secret. In universe, who the hell cares that Vader used to call himself Anakin Skywalker? It's not secret that Darth used to be a Jedi Knight. Or that he believes in the Force. It's a secret that he used to be THAT Jedi Knight. And who cares about this secret other than Luke? If this secret puts the Empire at a disadvantage, then why does Bail keep it? Arrrrgh.
In which precisely nothing of note happened beyond Luke looking a little dumbstruck and a sardonic exchange with Han that was more about their evolving relationship than any serious feelings for Leia. The tone of the exchange implies at least some kind of previous encounter. She's hardly surprised by it. Indeed, she literally says she should have known Vader was doing Tarkin's bidding. As for his subservience, it's pretty clear that they're peers in terms of power, though each with a particular area of responsibility. There's give and take from both of them and the closest thing to Tarkin giving Vader an order is treated more like a request. If you read how the original script was developed, the PT hewed fairly close to most of the basic ideas that came from that process. 1) The secrecy is mostly for Vader's benefit. His psyche requires Anakin to be dead, so dead he stays. 2) There's also the fact that the Jedi are an outlawed religion with it's members officially held responsible for an attempted coup and more than likely, the Clone Wars as a whole. An accusation made much easier given Dooku's status as a Jedi Master was public knowledge. So openly having a Jedi as the second most powerful figure in the Empire (even if only the upper echelons are even aware he exists) is going to be problematic at best. 3) Having an air of mystery around Vader makes him all the more scary given his powers and authority, thus making him all the more effective as an instrument of terror. The secret also protects Leia, which is always Bail's highest priority. If word gets out that Vader is Anakin Skywalker, then it's only a matter of time before word of the secret being out reaches Palpatine's ears. He's naturally going to ask himself "Well, who could possibly know about that, and how?" Him tracking it back to it's source would expose Bail, Leia and the entire fledgling rebellion. It's just too big a risk and even if they could prove it (which they can't) the worst it can do is only slightly demystify Vader.
Does anyone else find that the now-blinking ewoks look even cheesier, than they did without that? It's so poorly applied and seems like nobody really cared about it, except to have it in there, that it doesn't breathe any life into the costumes, whatsoever ... Wicket's especially. I find it kind of distracting, really, because it seems so unnatural.
No, I actually found the Ewoks to be surprisingly believable, all things considered. I never got the the full blood feud level of hatred directed towards them:
I've never noticed Ewok's blinking or not blinking, so no. Unless it's only a blu-ray thing, which I don't own. I had to look it up on Youtube:
The whole plot with rescuing Han from Jabba really needed to be explained. As a kid, as an adult (the 2 times I've watched SW since I've matured past 10), the whole plan of why characters are there before the film (Lando), the diversions of disguises, letting Chewbacca be taken captive, everyone's 'places' towards the final battle of it, make literally no sense. Did they plan it all out, if so, how did it make any sense, or were they just insanely stupidly lucky that everything just happened to work out perfectly? Because somehow I'm thinking the latter.
There was not that much complication to work out, honestly. A New Hope is the most adult of the original STAR WARS movies, the most mature in its storyline, characters and plot and that movie was completely self-contained. Return of the Jedi only had two objectives: to button up the franchise with one last blockbuster and to serve as a demonstration reel for ILM, now that STAR WARS wasn't around to float it. And being the most "light hearted," perhaps, it felt the most free to announce itself with "... hey! It's only a movie." So, there's all of the sloppy logic and odd positioning of people you mentioned, because ... why not? What competition did STAR WARS have, at the time, really? Nobody. It was guaranteed to make a shitload of money, so why bust their balls connecting dots in a convincing way? Why not make it all Muppety? Throw in a Tarzan yell, just for the hell of it ... why not? It was STAR WARS ... release it and they will come ... in droves. As do I ...
I'm sure it wasn't the first, but it's the good guy version of "Ah ha! No you have me RIGHT where I want me!" that we've seen in so many movies of late. (Into Darkness, Skyfall, probably an X-men somewhere.) So I wonder what would have happened if Jabba had said yes to Luke's offer. "Um, yeah. Can we have all of our spies back, too?"
Maybe getting Han back was just an incentive, and taking down Jabba was the main goal. Perhaps the rebellion was sick of him selling their people out to the empire, and by creating a power vacuum, they could gain underworld allies. So they had to get the A-team all in place, before executing "Operation: Slime Spill."
I think it would have been better, although still fairly contrived and awkward, if Leia was the Other but not Luke's sister, instead Bail or Leia's mother had been a Jedi (but thought it better to wait for her to start training when she was older). Although frankly it is a bit of a problem imposed on Jedi by Empire-thanks to Empire throwing in the pretty out-of-place concept, Jedi would have *had to* either introduce a whole new character or make an awkward revelation that a character we already knew for some reason had Force powers/Jedi potential (that they probably didn't know about). I think stretching out Luke's story and the battle against the Emperor from not three to six films would have been too drawn-out, made the last four of those six films feel very anticlimactic compared to how significant the first two were. Film three should be pretty climactic and conclusive.
Remember in ANH, at the site of the Jawa massacre, Obi-wan told Luke that it couldn't have been the sand people who did the killings because the skill that would have been required to carry out the operation against the Jawas could only have been done by the superb marksmanship of Imperial storm troopers. Yet the storm troopers looked like a bunch of bumbling morons against the Ewoks. I found that to be so annoying that it sort of made me root for the stormtroopers to wipe out those pesky Ewoks. Besides those Ewoks were too cute for their own good. How did they manage to get around so quickly with their short stubby legs anyway. One of my favorite scenes of the forest battle was when one of the Ewoks almost decapitated himself with his sling. Rey is a different new female lead character in the next trilogy. Was she the character that was originally intended to be Luke's sister?
The stormtroopers were like bumbling morons in ANH too. How did they miss Han and Chewie after he ran screaming down the corridor at them? Or when Luke and Leia were stranded on that ledge? I know it's all part of driving the plot forward but let's face it, the stormtroopers being crap at shooting has been a running joke since the first film came out. Obi-Wan's little conversation to Luke about how accurate they were turned out to be nonsense didn't it?
Pretty sure Obi-Wan's point wasn't so much that Stormtroopers were exceptional marksmen, just that the (relatively) precise location of the blast points indicated that they knew what to shoot at to disable the crawler. Had it been Sandpeople the blast points would have been random because they're technologically ignorant savages.
At that point in the film? Were they? I was always under the impression they just stuck a tracking device on the falcon and let it escape, not order the troopers to miss.