uh... yeah...
if i didn't know any better, I'd swear they were trying to make him look like a bad guy of some kind.
Yeah, real scary.
Like I said, that scene combined with Leia's bikini-fest is just some really dodgy shit to toss in a film that the "brains" behind said was more geared for a younger audience than the previous two. I like my Star Wars bad guys to be big, "classic" supervillains, not skeevy sexual predators, which is basically all Jabba amounted to. If we're to be shown that he's such a scary villain, show him offing or ordering the death of someone who is supposed to be "impressive," like, say, the every-so-useless Boba Fett. I have no idea why he would do such a thing...I'm just tossing it out there as something that would far better build up a character as someone we're clearly supposed to see as an intimidating and threatening villain in the mold of what we've seen so far as opposed to some pervert who offs his abused sex slave when she doesn't let him molest her.
I know it's almost cliche to pile on Lucas at this point, but what the hell was he thinking with the slave girl stuff? Look, if you want to play up Jabba's "decadent" side a little, fine, but randomly dropping this scene of some scantily clad woman pleading for her life and then executed in such a way that the film really lingers on her abject terror and her gruesome demise (made even more explicit in the special edition) just really stands out like a sore thumb not only in a pseudo-kids film, but the entire goddamn series.
I know I'm playing armchair psychiatrist here, but didn't Lucas go through his divorce either during filming of RotJ or just before it? His marriage crumbles as his wife leaves him and we're all "treated" to a scene of a female character resisting the advances of a male character, trying to get away from him, so he gleefully punishes her in a way so she can never escape? Jeez, Georgie, why don't you tell us how you really feel? Wait, we get to see the one strong recurring female character "defiled" and then enslaved? Oh, and then Luke and co. are going to be fed to a giant vagina with teeth? Phew, good thing that they can escape after Luke's schlong-like lightsaber erupts from the head of the equally phallic R2-D2. Too bad that they then have to save the day from the giant metallic breast in space, complete with nipple-of-death, that's threatening the entire galaxy.
Honestly, I don't know what's weirder...that all that stuff is in a "kid's film" or that I'm odd/obsessed/pathetic enough to think I see it.