The Return of the Jedi we never got

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Citan

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Return of the Jedi in its inception was to be a very different film.

-Steven Spielberg's (!) as George Lucas's first choice for the director's chair. However, it couldn't materialise after Lucas had dropped out of the guild following the release of The Empire Strikes Back. David Lynch and David Cronenberg were both considered as well.

-Han Solo was supposed to die. Harrison Ford didn't care much for the character. He's been pleading Lucas to kill off Solo since Episode V (this was the reason for Han being frozen in Carbonite). RotJ co-writer Lawrence Kasdan agreed with Ford and felt he should die either after a failed attempt at rescuing from carbonite or during the explosion on Endor. But Lucas disagreed, feeling dead Han toys didn't have much of a future. Solo survived, much to the annoyance of Ford.

-The ending was meant to be much more bittersweet. Not only han would have died, but Leia (shattered after many losses on the Resistance army)) would become quite insecure about her role as of Queen, and Luke, psychology scarred with eveyything he went trugh, to walk on the sunset alone (like a spaghetti western).

-Yoda was not meant to appear in the film. His character arc was deemed to be complete. He eventually was included in the film. Lucas was fearing the possibility of younger viewers dismissing Vader's claims from ESB as a lie (Following a discussion with a psychologist).

-Endor was meant to be a scary planet to be inhabited by terrifying lizard-like creatures. Neither good or evil, they would have annihilated the imperial troops on the planet like butter. A "concerned" Lucas dropped the idea altogether. He felt the crittters wouldn't be popular with kids and lead to poor merchandise sales.

-Another proposed proposed scenario for Endor was for it to be inhabited by Wookies. Problem was, Lucas wanted a Nature vs technology theme in the film. Seeing as Chewbacca was able to repair AND fly ships, it would have made the planet too technogically advanced for the sake of the plot. So Ewoks were used instead (I'm sure toy sales impacted Lucas's decision as well)

-One of the ideas for the ending would have Luke put on Darth Vader's mask, and say "I am vader now". Lucas dropped in favor of the happy ending we got, feeling it would be too dark for kids.

-Gary Kurtz had numerous disagreements over the direction of the film. He didn't care much for Lucas using another Death Star and having Han Solo survive the film. When his bosses at Fox got wind of this, he was quietly asked to quit.

Do you think the film would have been better had they stuck to the orignal plans?
 

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Having Luke turn would make for a terrible ending, it just means good can't overcome evil.

Han Solo was an ancillary character so his death would've been fine for a character development, but him dying or not wouldn't affect the story in any way. Since him and Leia were a subplot.

The wookies thing I thought was a well known story, but I heard it was more because an army of wookies would've been too expensive.