CT Reconstructing the end of ROTJ with Storyboards

I have attempted to reconstruct the shooting script & various other plans for ROTJ's final third using scanned storyboards available online as my primary source. This took some time, and also used behind the scenes videos, the Rinzler book, etc. I have done my best to document the whole thing here:

https://macrobinoculars.wordpress.com/

It may be interesting to some of you to read through the whole thing, though I find the Space Battle and Rebel Assault sequences to be the most interesting. Do not neglect the Analysis page, which has some really interesting behind-the-scenes photos of storyboards. Please note that you can download a big PDF with all of the storyboards for your own use.

I welcome any questions, suggestions, critiques, or (best of all) any scans or photos of storyboards that I'm missing.

This is my favorite storyboard that I found during the process:

 

I enjoyed the write up and analysis.

My assessment of this was that the original intention was to have a sort of battle of large ships, with Star Destroyers and Rebel Cruisers firing at each other like ships of the line in old sea battles. I suspect that the limitations on the practical effects they were willing and able to do with the large, and very expensive and time consuming models to represent damage to the ships was insufficient to make it feel realistic enough.

As per the start of scenes 120/121:
"The two armadas, like their sea-bound ancestors, blast away at each other in individual point-blank confrontations. A Star Destroyer explodes. The Rebel victor limps away, its back half alive with a series of minor explosions. The Rebel cruiser manages to move in next to a second Star Destroyer before it explodes completely, taking the Imperial Star Destroyer with it."

Consider the effects challenges of selling this scene to an audience. There would need to be some sense of the damage being dealt with the weapons. Just drawing explosions on the outside of the ship hulls would look somewhat cheap (and is more or less what was done with the ion cannons disabling the star destroyers over Hoth). In the sort of broadside battles that is described, having big ships explode into nothing is a lot less believable than smaller fighters disintegrating (plus the fighters were smaller cheaper models they were willing to actually blow up). This practical effects challenge may have been the basis for cutting many of the storyboards from scenes 120/121, and could be the "black friday" event.

Many of the cut space battle storyboards (perhaps most) are directly related to these big ship engagements, and outside of the super star destroyer, there is no real depiction of damaged capital ships in the star wars movies. The ships we do see die do just explode into nothing, either far in the background, or after being shot by the death star's super laser. One would expect that if they were able to accomplish believable especial effects for damaged capital ships, they would have had at least a few examples even if the space battle scenes were changed to focus more on the fighter battle for other reasons.

 

That was definitely the original intention, and you can sort of see it in the blurry storyboards at the start of 120. Even when that sequence moves on to the adventures & demise of a Y-Wing, it takes place in the context of dodging the broadsides of rapidly closing capital ships. You can also see it happening the establishing shot in 126:

Note the Stardestroyer that's on fire in the middle background.

Perhaps similar problems are behind the absence of the establishing shot of the Starcruisers bombarding the Death Star surface as well - not being able to convincingly depict the destruction.

There's also some time/cost saving going on, I think. When Lucas made the big Black Friday cut, he certainly cut many of the shots we're discussing, but he also rearranged the scenes and used portions of the first Space Battle sequence to fill out the now cancelled second sequence. That required revising some of the shots that were being kepts, which meant more effects work. Easier to just leave things out of shots and simplify them, I think. I don't know how else to explain the final version of SB 48 at the start of scene 112.

 

Concerning realistic damage to capital ships, the challenge must have been in time and money, not the ability to make it look right. Wrath of Khan showed what was possible in that era of VFX, and it's still some of the most impressive space battle action ever filmed.

IMO, Lucas did an amazing job of making an amazing story with the all the resources he could muster. He made a virtue out of necessity and the final result was probably better as a result. Much like Spielberg being forced to film most of Jaws without showing the shark because the robot wasn't working right, and it turned out much creepier and more suspenseful than simply showing us the monster.

 

You make a good point, it was probably not simply it could not be done. I looked up what they did for battle damage special effects in The Wrath of Kahn and found this. It is very cool.

https://forgottentrek.com/the-wrath-of-khan/the-wrath-of-khans-visual-effects/

I am far from certain that depicting the battle damage was the major factor involved, although to be fair the Wrath of Kahn had only two ships and a few added effects in each scene, where certain shots from the battle over Endor had hundreds of elements that needed to be composited.

I am also not certain that it was battle damage the cuts were done for. I do feel fairly certain however that it was the capital ship combat itself that was not playing well, for whatever reason that may be, and that scenes that a lot of time and effort had gone into were not working. The capital ships played a major role in most of the scripts and storyboards until very late, so it would not have been a decision made easily.

 

Wow, Zanthra, great point about Wrath of Khan! Really fascinating to learn it was partially done with stop motion.

There's always, of course, the possibility that the final third of the film was running too long, and something had to go. Maybe the capital ship action was fine, but not quite as exciting as the starfighters, and there were some issues with how it looked, so...there it went. We'll probably never know, unfortunately.

I just made a big update after being given a look at a fan-scanned revised 3rd draft of the film. It definitely changed some scene orderings & script details. I've also included links to relevant videos throughout, a few more storyboards that have appeared online, and a look on the Sources page into what storyboards typically look like.

The only big thing I'd like to do, other than get the missing storyboards, is do a detailed analysis of how things were rearranged in the editing process. Maybe someday!

 

wow. you've really put in some work there , good job.

 

While I would have loved to have seen a more fleshed-out space battle, my guess is from a storytelling standpoint it was outranked by the Luke/Darth Vader/Palpatine conflict and the Endor ground battle, and so when it came down to allocating time and other resources, the space battle was the easiest to trim.

 

Just wanted to announce that I've made a major update to the site. It now covers the entire film from start to end, and has a gallery page for viewing all of the storyboards without the script. Enjoy!

 

This is awesome, thank you. Which storyboard are your favorites?

 

I love this alternate opening to the film, with the DS II slowly appearing over the surface of Endor as the shuttle comes around.


Sometimes the storyboards are a lot more cartoony than the final film. Sometimes that's a problem (see: the Ewoks), sometimes both versions are good.


Ramming speed!


A much more dynamic version of what we got in the final film.


Love when the storyboards have to include big arrows to show motion


This looks awesome in a storyboard. Not nearly so exciting in the movie.


Originally, Han & Leia shot all the stormtroopers that confront them at the door before Chewie shows up in the Walker.

There are two sections from the draft of the duel...




Karate!



Both the "Karati" and "Electronic Wind" ideas were bad, but it's fun to see them anyway.


Gotta love how evil the Emperor looks in cartoon form


Not to mention how anguished Luke is


This is just how it appears in the final film, and it's just as good.

But this is not in the film.

 

Part 2 of my favorites
Given that my entire impetus for the project was figuring out what got cut or changed in the space battles, and how many hours I spent flying B-Wings in X-Wing in the 90s...

.

How can this not be my absolute favorite part?


Big fan of this one

 

yeah the B-Wings ended up with hardly any screentime, and yet Kenner produced a big expensive vehicle of it for the toyline.

 

At least they got some love in toy form

Not that kind of love

 

They're replaced with A-Wings in RA 55 on September 14, 1982. That's less than a year before the film debuted, so the toy design & production process was doubtlessly well underway by then. This is also what happened to C2-B5 in Rogue One, to cite just one example.