Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (director's cut): Luke vs the Rancor

A scene that never made it to the final cut, although this in Lucas' script for the movie. The excerpt is taken from Rinzler's book, 'The Making of Return of the Jedi. Enhanced Edition.'

Return of the Jedi is, in my view, the most flawed film of the original trilogy.

The reasons this film is not as good as the other two are, in my view, three: 1) Alan Hume as director of photography; the poor lighting style (good maybe for the '60s or '70s) can be seen esp. during the Endor shots and in the Throne Room scene, where Lucas added in post something on the emperor's face to improve the terrible lightning, rather than doing reshoots. 2) The absence of Gary Kurtz as producer: Howard Kazanjian replaced Kurtz after he resigned for going over-budget with Empire. While Kazanjian was very good in handling the colossal production, the lack of Kurtz's creative input during the shaping of the story resulted in a pointless tripartite second and third acts that deflated the overall narrative, making it anticlimactic. I doubt Kurtz would have quietly accepted Lucas' lame recycling of older concepts (bear in mind that George wanted to have TWO new death stars originally!), or the introduction of the teddy bears. 3) The absence of Marcia Lucas, who divorced Lucas in 1982, after a crisis that started during the pre-production of ROTJ. Say what you want, but as soon as they divorced, Lucas' creative outputs spiralled into madness and mediocrity (the Last Crusade is the only exception, but that's because Spielberg, thankfully, put his foot down). Marcia seems to have been the voice of reason that made Lucas' films better, both in terms of story and in editing.