CT Why is Return Of The Jedi considered the weakest of the originals?

A lot of others have given many reasons why.

Though making Luke and Leia brother and sister is the worst for me, plus incest! I think Lucas said he wanted something powerful for Luke to snap and really go for Vader and almost turn before saying no. For me it could have worked just as well with Vader discovering Luke loves her and intending to kill her as punishment for Luke not turning etc, that could have worked just as well in jmo.

Though when people mention Han, some blame should be attached to Ford who pretty much had a "I'm bored" look on his face.

But for me a major issue is pacing. It's pretty terrible, with large parts seeming to have no real relation to the main plot.

side note, I always wondered though whether they should have gone with killing Lando (Mod edit: Not appropriate) off as I think it was originaly intended. It would have given a bit more pathos to Han feeling he won't see the Falcon again.

 

Also forgot to add is location. In ANH with Tatoonie and the Moon of Yavin and even the Death Star you had the feeling of being in a different Galaxy on alien worlds. That was added in ESB with Hoth/Dagobah and Cloud City but in RTJ with Endor I just felt like I was looking at a North American wood.

 

I only consider this the weakest of the ot only because ESB and ANH are better movies

 

I wasn't around then, but from what I heard is suffered the same thing as the Prequels did, some of the fans were getting too old lost their inner child.

That and the woks, but that's all I got.

 

Well, the issue I have with the Ewoks is not the idea of the Ewoks (i.e., alien bear creatures), but more the way they were presented in the film, i.e. as cute, cuddly teddy bears. The first scene with Wicket established the tone here - i.e., he was more cute than threatening, even though he did do some damage against the Biker Scout.

IMHO, if they were going to use Ewoks in the film they should all have been more like Teebo?! (the Ewok with the dark fur & the snarl) in the scene when Han/Luke/Chewie escaped from the trap and were lying on the ground - that particular Ewok looked fairly menacing - the problem was that most of the others looked too much like teddy bears to take seriously...

 

I've been saying this for years, but I always thought Revenge of the Sith, the whole PT as a hole but particularly Sith, basically serves to make the "Jedi" Emperor / Luke / Vader stuff even better. If anything, Vader's turn in ROTJ was always a bit of an eyebrow raiser for me, it's awesome but it feels random. Vader's turn on the back of the PT feels like a more complete thing. For all the flack about Anakin's characterization in the PT, overall the character as presented (someone who inherently does want to love) does serve to make me feel that Vader would suddenly turn on Palpatine like that. But I really think Vader's character in ROTJ as the broken down conflicted servant of Palpatine works like gangbusters if you have the events from the 3rd act of Sith bouncing around the back of your head. Luke's "You failed, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me" moment was really cool anyway but I think the weight of PT adds even more heft to that specific beat.

Short version: ROTJ = a decent sequel to ESB. ROTJ = better as a sequel to ROTS.

 

I always thought it was because the Ewoks looked just like what they actually were: Little people in costumes. Terrible.

 

this is a semi-copy & paste from another thread, but I do want to defend one aspect of ROTJ that everyone seems to bag on is saying Harrison Ford "phoned it in" in that film. I don't see it. I see Ford trying his damnedest to elevate Han's quips in ROTJ ("Then we'll do it real quiet like!" "Then why don't you use your 'divine influence' and get us out of this?" "Y'know, I think my eyes are getting better, instead of a big dark blur I see a big bright blur" and more) because it's arguable Han simply doesn't have as many fun lines in ROTJ that he has in ESB and ANH. But I see him trying.

 

An earlier post hits the nail on the head in that its not quite as good a movie as the first 2. However ROTJ is still one of the best action adventure movies ever made, its just that the first 2 were so good.

After the success of ESB being such a different film in its tone and story, I wonder why they felt it necessary to make ROTJ similar in many ways to the original SW movie. Don't get me wrong, I love ROTJ but they didn't need to do that with certain story elements.

Why is that comment not appropriate? On first viewing I thought the scene with Han and Lando in the hangar bay was almost leading the audience in to thinking that Han will lose the Falcon (and obviously Lando) in the battle.

 

The characters of Han and Leia got shafted in Jedi. Lucas felt that Han had taken over Empire and instructed Kasdan to back off on Han and focus on Luke. You can see some of this in the Rinzler book, I think, when HF comments that Lucas seems not to like the character of Han anymore. Han's quips were sophomoric in ROTJ where they used to be snarky and his character had suddenly lost all his street smarts. (Stepping on sticks? Accidentally hitting Boba Fett from behind instead of, even blind, kicking his butt? Hotwiring a door wrong?...come on, that's not Han Solo. That's Homer Simpson.)

Carrie Fisher has been quoted as saying she had no idea how to play this "different character" that Leia turned into in Jedi, and I feel a little bit the same about Ford's performance. My read on that performance has always been of an actor trying REALLY REALLY hard because he didn't trust the material and the audience being able to see him working (i.e. his reactions are too big, his expressions are too cartoony). I didn't think that he was phoning it in. I think that we can see the actor working to make the character and the material work - when it didn't -- and the audience really needs to believe it's effortless or they think that the actor wasn't trying. Usually the problem is that the actor pushes too hard when given meh material and from that comes a sub-par performance.

My feeling was always that if Lucas felt that Han had run away with ESB, then his obligation/Kasdan's obligation was to up the A game on Luke and not to pull back on Han. Your job as a writer is to keep what is good and working and fix what is not working. Instead, in ROTJ, they bailed out on what was working to focus on Luke but NOT to fix what wasn't working with Luke's story in ESB. Except for those few scenes on Death Star II, I don't think they really did up their A game on writing Luke.

Of course, ROTJ is one of the top 20 moneymakers of all time, and nothing I've written has broken even. So really, what do I know?

 

You say that as if Lucas had no control over what was written for Han in ESB. The story originates from Lucas, surely Empire happened as he wanted it to.

Personally I think that ROTJ had a lot happening, especially in the last act with 3 major action scenes going on and that was quite unprecedented in cinema I think at that time. But something had to suffer as a result of all that action on screen and it ended up being some characters.

 

I don't think the history bears out, and Lucas' later statements imply that Lucas was not very hands-on for ESB. He was in the midst of forming Lucasfilm and ILM as the behemoths they would become (as opposed to the shoe-string operations they were when ANH was shot) and dealing constantly with the issues of financing that over-budget, behind-schedule film himself. He was a lot more hands-on with ROTJ. Kasdan is on the record as saying that Lucas felt Han ran away with ESB and want him to pull it back in Jedi. There's still some debate over whether Lucas is being serious or facetious when he says he thinks Empire is the least-good film of the six. So I think there's a good body of evidence out there that ESB is not entirely what Lucas wants it to be.

Couldn't disagree more with this concept. Action scenes should SERVE plot and character, and in a film with a good story, action does not mean something has to suffer. Dramatic action reveals character and character conflict, and there can be a lot of dramatic action even in physical action scenes (I'd argue that the most "dramatic action" in ROTJ was actually in the "physical action" scene of the lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader). The belief that plot/character and dramatic action need to be sacrificed for physical action scenes is why we have so many beautifully shot, jaw-droppingly effects-filled action films these days that leave us cold.

 

I think that the characters at the end (with the exception of the Vader/Luke duel) suffered as a result of the action going on. I don't believe for one minute that should be the case at all with any action adventure film, but I think it did at the end of Jedi and we ended up with Leia and Han especially not having much meat to their roles.

 

I agree totally that they did suffer, my unhappiness with ROTJ is always that the characters didn't need to suffer if there was a better story in which the action occurred. ROTJ feels like such a painful lost opportunity, story-wise.

 

No I do not. It may be weaker than say Empire Strikes Back in terms of plot twists and action, but Return of the Jedi proved to be a fine conclusion (although Special Editions added and subtracted from the quality of the movie). I consider it to be just as good as Empire. I liked the Ewoks since they're supposed to be like the native americans. I will say that only the storm troopers are the weakest in the trilogy. They're are many reasons why some fans consider it to be the best: 1) The greatest space battle ever! 2) This movie had the most at stake not just for the rebels, but the empire too. 3) The most emotional lightsaber battle of all time. 4) Villians revealed. If you didn't see the Special Editions, then you finally got to see Jabba, the Emperor himself, and Vader's face.

There's some things that did piss me off like "killing" off Boba Fett and the Special Edition musical number. But the movie is worth watching and I always include it in a Star Wars Marathon.

 

One of the biggest misinterpretations is that the Ewoks overthrew the empire. No, they helped the Rebels take down the shield generators by fending off against troops, but Lando blew up the second death star with that little guy and Wedge Antilles helped. Luke Skywalker saved Darth Vader from the dark side causing Vader to kill the emperor therefore ending the empire. SO Darth Vader killed two birds with one stone. He destroyed the Sith including himself as well as the empire. So give Vader some credit. He's the real hero of the original trilogy.

 

Hi all,

Let me begin by stating that the following is all just my honest opinion, and I hope it provokes interesting debate.

For ages I have wondered why, for at least a couple of years now, that Return of the Jedi is the Star Wars film I personally rank the lowest of all six films. The reason? For me, it is how much missed potential the film has, which to me is far worse than a film which is just plain bad. ROTJ is a film that could have been great, and had a few really good scenes, but is so much of a missed opportunity that it ends up being the weakest Star Wars film IMHO. After thinking about it seriously, I came to the conclusion that I feel this way for two big reasons:

Reason number 1: In the entire first section of the film up until they leave Tatooine, there is a deep simplification of Good and Evil which is more cartoony than in any of the other five films. The whole way the situation unfolds isn’t just reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon, with laughably evil and loathsome gangster thugs getting ‘gloriously smashed and annihilated’ by our so called heroes - it’s far worse than that. It actually makes a mockery of the whole point of Luke Skywalker’s main character arc, that of whether he will or won’t turn to the dark side, because it skips on any sort of conflict relating to his choice to 'purge the universe' of Jabba the Hutt.

Why? Because naturally, although it is terrible for a Jedi to kill except as an absolute last resort, it is also apparently true that if there is a disgusting alien slug trying to kill you and torture you and your mates to death for no good reason - basically, because said alien slug is a sadistic force of evil who likes a good laugh - then it’s not only ok to kill said alien slug’s cronies - not some of them, but all of them, without any mercy, and only two warnings - but to blow up his entire skiff. No negotiation, not really…just two warnings, and then ‘blam’! I didn’t see this as a problem when I was younger…after all, it was all very black and white then.

But apply this to anything remotely plausible in the Star Wars universe, and the tone is all wrong. Instead of showcasing how Luke has become a (somewhat) ruthless killer who uses his powers and abilities to brutally and mercilessly exterminate his enemies - not unlike his dad - it’s all portrayed as glorious and awesome, with triumphant music playing as they speed away from the destroyed skiff. In doing so, good and evil are reduced to literal colours of black & white. Luke, Leia, Han and co are ‘good’, so whatever they do here must be justified! And that to me is a huge problem.

There is no somber reflection. No questions asked. Just ‘Because Jabba mocked and ignored me when I gave him a final warning, I’m gonna kill all his thralls and blow him to kingdom come’. This scene is unprecedented throughout all six films in being the one and only place in which the ‘heroes’ defend themselves by killing villainous crooks in cold blood - all of them. Now, there would appear to be many more examples of this throughout the saga, but after examining this scene carefully, I have come to the conclusion that it is the one scene in which the ‘good guys’ commit a massacre, and said massacre is not shown to be frightening or wrong. In all the other examples, things are different. In Anakin’s extermination of the Tusken tribe, this is clearly shown to be something bad. There is not a single other battle in the OT or PT in which the good guys were clearly far more powerful, and didn’t need to kill all the bad guys, but just did so anyway - this, the battle on Tatooine in ROTJ, is the only one in the OT. And, in the PT, any such examples are portrayed as morally wrong or questionable. But here? It’s all cheers and smiles.

Conversely, one could argue that it comes down to self-defence. I disagree. Why? Because from the very moment Luke’s lightsaber entered his hands, he was pretty much a terrifying force of nature and power. Nothing could stop him. So why didn’t he give them another chance? That’s why I don’t call it ‘self-defence’. Self-defence is fighting back against a foe which is trying to wipe you out. If the tide turns, and you end up wiping all of them out, then you’re no better. So to me, it’s not self-defence so much as it’s “Mob Justice”. You can call it a battle all you want, but let’s face it - there are no attempts to take prisoners or minimise casualties once the fighting starts. As soon as that lightsaber drops into Luke’s hands, it’s a bloodbath. Seriously, I challenge anyone to find a comparable scene in any of the other five films which is portrayed in such a glorious and triumphant manner AND also with similar circumstances. (Fights for genuine self-defence against the Empire/Separatists etc don’t really count, since they never really ended up like that - unless one goes for the ‘there were civilian workers on both death stars’ view, which is a different kettle of fish and one I’d rather not digress into here.)

This might be a slightly odd opinion by most people’s standards, but it’s just my personal view - nothing negative meant by it. I honestly don’t think many others would look at the scene in this way, but in light of what the story is essentially about - Darth Vader’s redemption, and equally importantly the question of whether Luke will or won’t become a Sith, I think all of his actions in the film are of importance.

The book does briefly touch on this, with a line towards the end of the section where Luke and his friends are sentenced to death by Jabba implying that Luke’s desire to ‘rid the galaxy of the stench of this evil crime lord’ (or words to that effect) may have been slightly motivated by darker impulses. “Slightly” is kind of an understatement given that he and his friends apparently kill not only Jabba but every single person/alien/creature who worked for him. :0 The fact that ROTJ makes the whole thing very childish, even humourous, due to the villains in question all being alien (pretty much at least), is something which makes it even more dehumanised.

Reason number 2: With the exception of the conflict between Luke, Vader and Palpatine on the Death Star, both the space battle and the ground battle on Endor are completely implausible on many levels. This goes beyond a cartoon approach to battles and into the territory of ‘the writers just didn’t care’. The Ewoks are a massive part of the problem, but I won't go much into that (since this criticism is more familiar), so let’s look at the space battle. It has one huge, glaring problem, and this again is a scenario that does not occur in the same absurd, implausible way in any of the other films.

What is that problem? That there is no reason for the Rebel Fleet to not have been utterly defeated, forced to retreat or get wiped out. That is, aside from this reason: Because the plot says they could not lose. Seriously, the entire space battle is ridiculous after you’ve seen it once, because as soon as you know that the rebels themselves are aware that they won’t stand a chance…and yet, somehow they do anyway, it all becomes silly.

First, we have the Rebels flying straight into a trap. The Empire’s plan, naturally, was to trap them, to engage them only with tie-fighters with the intention that they would be destroyed by the death star. That’s stupid, because it doesn’t work. As we’ve seen, this doesn’t happen, because after only two on-screen rebel cruisers have been destroyed, the rebels decide to ‘engage the star destroyers at point-blank range’, preventing the death star from firing on the rebel cruisers again.

Ok…now, from the standpoint of keeping the death star from firing (from fear of hitting their own ships presumably), this is a plausible strategy on the rebels’ part. From the standpoint of anything else, it is suicide. Or at least, it would be if the film actually played by its own rules. Admiral Ackbar says explicitly that they won’t last long against star destroyers at point blank range. Perhaps this wouldn’t matter, so long as they lasted long enough for Lando and co to penetrate the death star and blow it up.

And that’s exactly what happens. Except, instead of the rebels apparently suffering loads of new casualties during this time and the battle being portrayed as a senseless bloodbath, you just get a couple of ‘redshirt deaths’. I still cringe at the death of the rebel pilot who gets incinerated while howling in agony in the fight along the death star’s interior. Why? Because he’s a classic ‘redshirt’…he dies, but of course Lando is fine, naturally.

Then one of the pilots crashes into Piett’s super star destroyer, bringing it down. By the end of the film, it looks like the rebels have inexplicably won.

So honestly, how come the rebels won at the end? Because the plot required them to. You can go and say that in theory, it’s possible that the rebel fleet’s change of tactics took the Imperial fleet by surprise, and that they were unable to engage the rebel cruisers effectively due to being told ‘not to engage’, but this is ridiculous. None of it is plausible. I refuse to believe the Empire was so stupid that they literally just sat like ducks and didn’t even fight back, and that the rebels won by slowly destroying them this way. Due to superior numbers alone, plus quality, the Imperial fleet should have had the rebels on the run by the end, whether or not the death star is destroyed.

The only explanation for the rebels’ ‘victory’ is that the Empire was taken by surprise, and this somehow lasted long enough for the rebels to destroy the death star, and once it was destroyed, presumably the Imperial fleet was demoralised despite still being superior, and then retreated. Ok...just about plausible. But still, not really, because it makes the Empire look weak and incompetent, and their military is supposed to be the most powerful force in the galaxy.

And the Ewok problem has been there from the start. There is no way the Empire would have lost here either…without being stupid and incompetent, which they are. Why not just incinerate the entire forest? Why not use AT-AT's? Why not just kill all the rebels once they capture them immediately rather than all this gloating 'you rebel scum!' and that nonsense. Again, the Imperials come off here not like a serious threat, but instead as colossal idiots, and it cheapens the entire saga. Aside from the stormtroopers sometimes being bad shots in ANH and TESB, the Empire is otherwise portrayed as terrifying and incredibly powerful in both of those films. Not as a force that would lose everything due to incompetency.

Quite simply, I’m saying this: Return of the Jedi reaches a conclusion not really by having the good guys fight tooth and nail, or by coming up with an amazing strategy, but instead by making the villains act like complete idiots. Thus, the conflict between Luke, Vader and Palpatine aboard the death star is the only great thing here IMO. Yes, we can buy the idea that Vader could be turned back to the light side, although the Emperor's arrogance and overconfidence, although lampshaded by Luke, still makes him a far weaker villain that he was in, say, ROTS, IMO. Even the good stuff here is cheapened, sadly, by the childish absurdity and unbelievability of everything else happening outside the death star.

The worst thing about all this is that there’s not a single example of this happening in any of the other five films. In the other films, there are some cases in which either side in a battle makes stupid mistakes leading to their demise. But there is nothing quite so frustrating as this, a battle which literally reduces everything (minus the Luke/Vader/Emperor scenes) to the following: the good guys have to win, and since they can’t do so without the villains being utterly stupid, the villains have to be utterly stupid. Compare this film to TESB, in which the only stupid thing is how bad shots the stormtroopers are, and the difference becomes even more marked. How is there any suspense if the bad guys act so stupidly that they are outwitted and defeated so easily?

Let's just quickly go through all the films' conclusions to check this:

TPM: At the end, the heroes defeat the villains due to Obi-Wan's skills, Anakin's unique abilities, and the Naboo's clever strategy. The bad guys are arrogant, but not really incompetent.

AOTC: At the end, the heroes defeat the villains by actually having a superior quality army that also has far greater numbers.

ROTS: At the end, the villain defeats the Jedi because they are arrogant and naive, and because he is a diabolical genius who has planned all of this down to the last detail and is playing everyone like a puppet. The heroes do some stupid things which make their downfall come even quicker, but they aren't outright incompetent, and they still do their very best - it's more that the villain is simply too cunning and they weren't prepared for that.

ANH: At the end, the heroes defeat the villains due to Luke's strength in the force and his skill, and Han's skills as a pilot. Otherwise they would have lost. It's this edge of the seat suspense and the fact that the Empire really is powerful and anything but incompetent (notice how they are able to completely defeat the rebels' attack force with relative ease) that makes ANH's ending so great - because it is earned.

TESB: At the end, the villains defeat the heroes because they are more powerful and the heroes don't stand a chance. End of story. No one is made to look conveniently stupid, everyone does their very best on both sides, and the only reason the Falcon escapes is because of a stroke of genius...not because the villains were idiots. Thus, it is powerful.

And now ROTJ: At the end, the heroes defeat the villains because the villains are bad shots, because the villains don't fight very well despite being the most powerful force in the galaxy, because the villains are unbelievably arrogant and stupid, and because the villains don't actually put up much of a fight. To make matters even worse, in the one part of the film which mostly works, there is still a problem: Palpatine, who was a twisted genius in the prequels and able to actually make evil look good and good look evil (by twisting the minds of Anakin and the citizens of the Republic against the Jedi), is, here in ROTJ, just a cackling moron who doesn't even have an angle on how to turn Luke to the dark side - he just goads him, and assumes he can never lose.

See the problem?

And therein lies, in my opinion, why ROTJ is a huge missed opportunity.

 

Mod action: Merging with existing 'Why is ROTJ considered the weakest of the originals' thread

 

I cannot not agree with you... but still I love me some ROTJ

 

Even bigger problem along this line: ROTJ also makes the heroes look stupid. Every character's IQ dropped at least 30 points between ESB and ROTJ. Luke's plan to rescue Han made no sense and his milquetoastiness with Ben when Ben had been lying to him all along was embarrassing. Han stepped on sticks and after allegedly being "a natural leader" almost got cooked by teddy bears. Leia has no reaction of any magnitude to the revelation of a Sith Lord being her biological father, just stands there kinda dumbly telling Luke to run away, when she's run away from nothing in the whole trilogy and then acts as if nothing has shaken her for the rest of the film ("It's not like that at all. He's my brother." Isn't that nice? OH AND BY THE WAY I'M GOING TO HAVE ISSUES FOREVER BECAUSE VADER IS MY FATHER... And all of them treat that hateful Rebel Briefing scene as if they're joking around in a bar, not getting instructions from high-level military leaders on missions that are nearly suicide missions.

Gah. Everything was dumbed-down in that film.

 

I agree with everything in this post. And maybe this is petty of me, but in the Obi Wan/Luke scene, it *really* bothered me the way Ben just casually sits down on a rock (or log, or whatever it was). WTF? Ha ha, why does a "Force ghost" need to "take a load off"? It just seemed off to me.

Also, Leia wandering off to hang out with a tribe of teddy bears while a serious mission is under way, seems really, really, stupid. WTF, Leia?? Get back to work!! The galaxy hangs in the balance here!

And I know, people have tried to do some brain gymnastics to try and come up with some logical reason for her actions. but so far I have bought none of them.

 

Yes! Oh,and also: Han's in charge of the mission on Endor. Luke, Leia, and Chewie volunteer to be hiscommand crew. But it's his mission to run. Here's what his friends and girlfriend do:

1. Luke goes AWOL, with Leia's permission. She has no authority to give that permission. Neither ever asks the leader of the mission for permission. (court-martial)
2. Leia, as Yanksfan noted, goes to hang out with the Ewoks instead of trying to find her military unit. Leia? One of the high-ranking Rebels? (court-martial)
3. Chewie goes for a piece of meat instead of even trying to maintain any military discipline. It's the only time in the entire series he acts like an animal with no ability to control himself, instead of like an alien creature of human-level intelligence (needs to have a choke collar and a newspaper rolled up and tapped on his snout)

With friends like these...

 

I agree about Ghost Obi-Wan sitting down but I always kind of dug it because it's somewhat goofy. As for Leia hanging out with the Teddy Bears, I do think she's rather lost and the Ewok that just helped her is leading her towards somewhere where she can get her bearings / more assistance from the locals. The dress and hair braiding, though, that one throws me for a loop.

 

Luke was very much playing himself up for Jabba. Making himself look bigger than he was.

As for Yoda, he knew what Luke went through on Bespin. He lost the last remnants of his innocence, was tempted with power and a relationship with the father he idolized. He turned that down, preferring death to the Dark Side. He grew more in that moment than he did throughout the rest of the movie. There are other, less painful ways to realize that lesson, but in the end Luke took his own path.

Also the Ewoks are totally cool. With Star Wars focusing on icons and myths, Ewoks are your teddy bears come to life. When you are younger, they are your best friend and your protector at night.



Also, the eat people and I'm convinced that the Rebels gave the Ewoks the Imperial prisoners as the main course of the feast that night.

 

Totally agree. The worst part is how all these silly moments - in which, as you rightly say, characters who we know were very smart in the first two films act like complete idiots here - were probably included for cheap laughs. Is ROTJ supposed to be a kids' comedy film? Considering the content of the scenes aboard the death star with Luke, Vader and the Emperor, the answer would appear to be no.

Aside from the completely inappropriate opening first forty minutes or so on Tatooine (which I'll elaborate on in a moment), the film is also tonally inconsistent from scene to scene. It wouldn't be if the scenes on Endor and with Lando and Ackbar were filled with a sense of urgency, danger and foreboding, like the one aboard the death star. But they aren't, because of the same reasons I listed in my earlier post - to recap:

1. The battle on Endor. No real sense of danger because the Imperial troops, who are meant to be the greatest, most powerful and most terrifying fighting force in the galaxy, are reduced to stupid buffoons who are defeated by teddy bears and a tiny number of rebels. Is there a single other battle on the whole OT (or PT) that makes its villains look so stupid? No. I've checked this thoroughly, and there is no way in hell that the rebels wouldn't have been wiped out. Again, how is there any real sense of urgency or danger when the villains stop being scary and threatening? Nothing like this ever happens in ANH or TESB. Or the prequels. There is NO logical reason for the Empire to have been beaten by the rebels and the ewoks on Endor. NONE. They lost only because the plot required them to. That's why this is so frustrating, and only watchable as an adult if you treat it as a comedy.

2. The space battle above Endor. I won't bother quoting my earlier post, but quite simply, why does the film ignore its own internal logic? Ackbar says: "At that range we won't last long against Star Destroyers!" (or words to that effect) when Lando suggests they send their cruisers in and engage the Imperial fleet at point blank range, to avoid being hit by the death star. So how come they do? How come, by the end of the film, they have not only survived but are (apparently) winning? And even that isn't made clear. The whole thing feels rushed and incomplete. The Empire does not seem scary or threatening here either, because once the rebels decide to engage at 'point blank range', there is no reason for the entire Imperial fleet, which clearly outnumbered the rebels significantly, to not have moved in for the kill and annihilated the rebels. Again, how did the rebels win?

And we have scenes like this:

"Freeze!"

"Smash!"

"Whoaaaaaoooooooooo!"

- my bad imitation of Han throwing that pack of...something...at the Imperial officer and knocking him down an apparently really deep hole, causing him to make a noise sounding like a drunk guy being hit in the stomach.  And this in the same film with scenes like the following:

"You will meet your destiny!"

"Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"Ahahahahaha! Good...ahahahaha!"

- my bad imitation of Vader blasting Luke off that platform and causing the Emperor to cackle like a loon. Not to mention the Emperor's force lightening...which actually is scary. Anyone see the problem? Fight on Endor played for laughs. Fight above Endor implausible. Deep conflict on death star played deadly seriously. Aside from threepio saying 'this is such a drag!' and other nonsense in AOTC during the fight there - and at least the fight itself was played seriously - there is nothing that reaches this level in the other films, where one of the sides in a battle is actually made to look - not individually, but as a whole - like completely incompetent idiots.

And to cap it all off, the intro of the film on Tatooine. Has anyone considered what I said in my earlier post about Luke and his friends actually being pretty ruthless here, and yet it all being played as a glorious triumph? I genuinely think that if you look at it from a different perspective - by which I mean, if you remove the obvious bias pretty much everyone will have against Jabba the Hutt for being a disgusting crime lord with no redeeming features whatsoever, and in favour of 'our heroes' - if you take everything subjective in that section of the film out of the picture and look at it purely objectively, what is it? Nothing but a powerful young vigilante deciding that a crime lord and his entire criminal empire must die because they are...uh, too dangerous/bad to be left alive?  Yeah, pretty much. Self-defence is self-defence. It ceases to be defending oneself when you, in 'self-defence', decide to kill EVERY LAST ONE of the people who have tried to kill you and your mates.

And if one doesn't look at the scene in this way? Then it reduces morality to pure black & white. No conflict at all. When Anakin committed massacres, it wasn't ever considered to be 'justifiable', as a massacre basically, well, isn't. So how come here, it's perfectly ok for Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Lando et all to utterly annihilate Jabba and his crime syndicate? Because the film wants the audience to HATE Jabba, who is a disgusting alien slug that treats other living beings like garbage for no reason other than, well, it's a good laugh. And yes, considering that Jabba and his cronies had worse morals than a swarm of flies, and...no redeeming features...from that point of view Luke's actions are totally on the money.

But not for a Jedi. Or a high ranking member of an organisation that is supposed to use violence only in self-defence.

I guess what I'm saying is not that the massacre shouldn't have taken place, but more that it should've had a different tone. Not: Yay! Our heroes have freed themselves and kicked some alien butt! But instead, something more somber, reflective, and with the tone of: It Had To Be Done. There was no other way. Jabba's minions were totally dehumanised to the point of being, well, cartoon mooks. Literally. There is no realism whatsoever in an ENTIRE group of people all just being sadistic, self-serving jerks who get a laugh out of others' suffering and are happy to serve a criminal whose entire existence seems to be based on taking pleasure in others' pain.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why, IMHO, the entire first part of the film on Tatooine is little more than a live-action cartoon.