With the serialization of this script finished, as a conclusion I thought I'd provide an essay of sorts on the changes I made to the story of ROTJ and the reasoning behind those changes.

THE YEAR

In official continuity, ROTJ takes place in 4 ABY (4 years after the Battle of Yavin), about six months after the events of The Empire Strikes Back. Luke didn't return to Dagobah to finish his training with Yoda like he promised, instead spending the interregnum with his friends searching for Han. When he does return to Dagobah after Han's rescue, Yoda tells him he has all the skills required and needs no further training. I feel this statement is at odds with what Yoda said in the previous movie, wherein Luke was clearly not prepared mentally or physically to confront someone as powerful as Vader. Could Luke have transitioned from the reckless neophyte he was in TESB to the stoic warrior he was in ROTJ in six months all on his own? Perhaps under the right circumstances, but I don't think Luke's particular circumstances —preoccupied with tracking down Han while struggling with the knowledge that his father might be a mass-murdering darksider — were the right ones.

I decided it was important that Luke return to Yoda as soon as he could following the events in Cloud City and spend as much time furthering his Jedi training before the events of ROTJ unfolded. So I set my version of ROTJ in 6 ABY. That gives him two years or so in which to evolve into the Jedi Knight we see in ROTJ.

THE OPENING SCENE ON IMPERIAL CENTRE

I lifted this scene wholesale from the ROTJ radio drama. Not only did I feel it was a better way to open the story than having Vader talk shoptalk with Jerjerrod, I felt it was the perfect way to establish the Vader-Palpatine dynamic I sought. Vader isn't a subservient milksop like he is in the film; he actively seeks to depose Palpatine and take his place with Luke's help. Palpatine isn't blind to Vader's ambition; he will see Luke replace Vader or have Luke destroyed, whichever's the easiest path to nullifying Vader's threat to him.

FROM TATOOINE TO NAR HEKKA

In keeping with my goal to keep this a conservative rewrite, I was originally going to keep the Jabba sequence on Tatooine, but then I got to thinking. Would relocating the action from one planet to another have any real impact on the storyline? Not at all. Would it provide the reader with a new experience and help to expand the universe? If done right, yes.

So I put Jabba's palace on Nar Hekka. Like Tatooine, it's a desolate wasteland located at the ass-end of the galaxy, but its environs are still significantly different from Tatooine's so as not to feel like Arrakis 3.0.

THE JABBA PALACE SEQUENCE

I did everything I could to shorten, streamline, and improve this sequence without making any severe alterations. For instance, Oola's death scene; I merged it with Jabba's introduction, tightening the pacing.

THE RESCUE PLAN

In the final film, Luke's plan to rescue Jabba doesn't make a whole lot of sense and relies on dumb luck to succeed. I made a number of changes to the scenario to make it more plausible/sensible (I'll leave it up to the reader to determine how successful I was at that.).

Right off the bat, Luke isn't with the Rebels; he's away on Dagobah. Furthermore, the Rebel Alliance is in serious disarray following the Battle of Hoth and various other skirmishes with the Empire in the interim; they can't allocate the resources to rescuing a low-importance figure like Han. This leaves Leia, Lando, Chewie, and the droids to rescue Han on their own without any assistance or backup.

PLAN A

Leia sends Lando & Chewie to Nar Hekka to get a lay of the land, then infiltrate Jabba's palace and covertly smuggle Han out. Shortly thereafter, communication with Lando & Chewie is lost. Leia assumes the worst — that Lando and Chewie were captured and/or killed by the Hutt's men — and goes to Plan B.

PLAN B

Leia decides to gift Threepio and Artoo to Jabba, hoping the gesture will appeal to the Hutt's better natures and bring him to the bargaining table. This gesture fails, so Leia goes to Plan C.

PLAN C

Leia, disguised as Boba Fett, sneaks into Jabba's palace in a bid to rescue Han herself. It's a poor plan, almost guaranteed to fail, but it's the only course of action left to her at this point and she's desperate.

As this is all going down, Luke, back on Dagobah, senses the danger his friends are in. He leaves and makes the trip to Nar Hekka. He eventually retrieves the lightsaber he stashed in Artoo months back, and saves them all from Jabba. And it's a good thing he did, too. Because the Alliance would've never come to their aid.

REMOVAL OF BOBA FETT

Fett wasn't handled at all well in the film. He becomes just another of Jabba's faceless, silent mooks, then screams like a girl before falling into the Sarlacc's gullet like a *****. I don't care that he "got better" in the post-ROTJ EU; it's still an ignominious end for what was originally a cool, enigmatic character. So I cut him out of this script. I kept his armour, though, as a small treat to the Fett fanboys.

THREEPIO'S CHARACTERIZATION

I felt Threepio was too flanderized in the film. I guess Brian Daley felt the same way, 'cause in the ROTJ radio drama, he went out of his way to write Threepio as a braver, less whiny character. It was a good direction for the character; I just added "less oblivious" to the mix.

HAN'S CHARACTERIZATION

Like Threepio, Han's characterization wasn't that great in the film; he provides some half-assed comic relief, moons over Leia, and that's about it. I tried to improve things a bit — include some good scenes and dialogue from the radio drama and novelization to bolster his characterization — but I don't think I succeeded too well on this front.

Honestly, it would've worked better if I'd had Han die after getting shot by the shadow trooper, but that would've exceeded the purview of this script.

LEIA IS THE OTHER SKYWALKER(?)

I don't like the "Leia is Luke's sister" retcon, and I don't like the hamfisted way in which it was handled. The former I can't do much about (Dark Empire and the Thrawn Trilogy are both in my personal canon, and both kinda need the twin angle in order to work), but I can do something about the latter.

Luke and Leia are brother and sister, yes, but this information is conveyed implicitly, not explicitly. Luke intuits the relationship, but he doesn't state this revelation out loud and Obi-Wan never confirms it. It all becomes subtext. So the individual reader is free to interpret this development however they see fit.

THE EWOKS

The Ewoks simply don't work in the film. Not because they're short, but because they're cute — obnoxiously cute. Whatever redeeming qualities they have are buried beneath all the cute. So I made it my #2 priority to strip away all the cuteness and reinterpret the Ewoks as killers more akin to the Noghri from the Expanded Universe.

First of all, they aren't teddy bears anymore. I made them pint-sized versions of the "Bushbaby Chewbacca" from the old concept art:





Furthermore, I made it clear that the Ewoks have been at odds with the Imperials occupying their moon for some time prior to the Rebels' arrival. The Imperials have been trophy hunting the Ewoks as if they were brute animals, while the Ewoks in turn have been mercilessly killing any Imperials who fall into their traps, skinning them, eating their flesh, using their bones in their jewellery and decorations, etc. Such a visceral depiction makes it clear as crystal that the Ewoks are formidable, dangerous beings not to be trifled with.

LEIA'S CHARACTERIZATION

Leia fared better than Han when it came to characterization, but she still didn't get much to do in the final film. She got to look pretty, and the bike chase was awesome, but aside from that, she traded uninspired lines with Han and got shot in the arm. Meh. Retconning her into the daughter of Darth Vader and the sister of Luke should've been cause to focus on her more, yet she was just another extraneous wheel.

The adjustments I made to Leia's presentation were minor, but they were sufficient to give her more presence in the storyline. She formulates the plan to rescue Han, not Luke. The Ewoks revere her, not Threepio. It is her quick thinking which saves her friends from the Ewok bonfire, not Luke's. She helps the Rebel strike team take the bunker and set the charges, and not Han.

THE SEDUCTION

For me, ROTJ's major failure is in the presentation of Palpatine's "seduction" of Luke. Instead of presenting sound, reasonable arguments for why Luke should join the dark side and follow in his father's footsteps — appealing to logic or Luke's sense of ethics — Palpatine's just like: "Hate me, kill me, join me". That's it, that's all. It's bad writing and a poor interpretation of how the dark side affects those who submit to it. I made it my #1 priority to fix this entire scenario.

THE SECOND DEATH STAR

Nope, not a fan of Death Star 2: Electric Boogaloo. Right from the start, I knew I was going to replace it with the Eclipse.



I didn't know how to facilitate that goal at first; I could've just replaced all mentions of "Death Star" with "Eclipse" and called it a day, but where's the creativity in that? Then I came up with the idea of making the Death Star II a hologram, the linchpin of an ingenious ruse to draw the Rebel fleet into a trap then finish it off once and for all.

The hologram idea's a tad hokey, I admit. Still, I like the "red herring" aspect lent to the proceedings.

THE BATTLE OF ENDOR

I didn't include fighter-to-fighter dogfights in my depiction of the Battle of Endor. Why? It's part of my personal sci-fi philosophy: Space battles are fought with capital ships, planetary battles are fought with fighters; rarely shall the twain meet.

PALPATINE'S FINEST TROOPS

I'm not keen on how stormtroopers are portrayed as incompetent cannon fodder, and ROTJ is especially egregious in this regard. I took it upon myself to correct this. In my interpretation, the troops on Endor really are among Palpatine's finest; included in their ranks are Palpatine's own personal black-armoured shadow troopers.



Their armour can easily withstand stone arrowheads and are resistant to standard blasterfire. Even when injured, they are incredibly hard to kill.

AT-DPs INSTEAD OF AT-STs



I don't like the AT-ST design; they look like giant mechanical Tweety Birds. The AT-DP is a far sleeker, impressive design.

WHY VADER DIDN'T ASK LUKE TO TAKE HIS MASK OFF



DARTH VADER'S POSTHUMOUS FATE

Darth Vader began life as Anakin Skywalker. Anakin was a good man; he loved his wife, his friends, and his home. In time, he came to fear for the safety and security of that which he loved and cherished. He came to doubt that the powers of a mere Jedi were enough to preserve all he held dear from the chaos he saw rising about him. Palpatine took advantage of Anakin's fears and offered him the power he needed to keep his wife, friends, and home safe. So Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. Vader became one of Palpatine's enforcers and saw that the emperor's will was followed to the letter. When Palpatine's enemies rose to challenge him, Vader killed them in Palpatine's name. He did not enjoy what his emperor commanded of him; he loathed the assassinations, the pogroms, the exterminations; in time, he loathed himself for his participation in them. Yet he believed in his heart of hearts that everything he did was for the greater good of the Empire. Order must be maintained, and with it the safety of Imperial citizens everywhere. Yes, Darth Vader had good intentions. The best intentions.

Anakin Skywalker was a good man. A remnant of that man remained in the black shell of the Dark Lord of the Sith. To the end, he harboured noble sentiments and a love for the son he had never been able to watch grow up. In the end, he performed one good deed: He abandoned his ambitions — his lust for power and Palpatine's throne — and slew the emperor to save his son's life, knowing it would come at the cost of his own. Yet a single good act cannot cleanse the soul of a man with the deaths of millions on his conscience. Darth Vader died in his sins, repentant but unforgiven. He is consigned to the cold and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth which await him in the Outer Darkness. There he must serve out his sentence until he atones.

THE END

Since Vader wasn't redeemed, his ghost couldn't appear with Ben's and Yoda's to Luke at the end. To compensate for this absence, I included a vision from the past of Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Luke's mother in happier times. I was deliberately vague in describing their features. Some people envision a young Alec Guinness as the young Obi-Wan; others stick with Ewan McGregor. Lots of people are married to Hayden Christensen as Anakin; others prefer Sebastian Shaw; still others prefer David Prowse himself. Most will probably envision Natalie Portman as Luke's mother. The individual is free to picture the three characters in whatever form pleases them most.

Pretty good overall but I’d replace throwing palpatine with just running him through and a hologram with a shell. An elaborate decoy meant to lure the rebels into a trap. Hell of a few years pass you can have the rebels regain some strength