CT Empire or Jedi? Which do you feel is the better movie?

Empire had a cliff hanger but gave us more than enough to chew on and ponder as kids. It expanded the universe like no other sequel I can think of. Aliens is great but is Alien on steroids, Godfather 2 maybe.

 

Empire looks better, but Jedi is the better Star Wars film.
Empire has a sloppy script. Jedi is sloppy as well but it doesn't really attempt to hide it like Empire does IMO. Either that or people elevating Empire has made me look at it more critically. But it honestly might have the most contrivances of the OT.

Also, Vader is a better character in Jedi than he is in ANH or ESB. He gets better in each movie, but where ESB Vader just seemed like an even cooler version of ANH Vader, RotJ Vader feels like the Anakin we would come to know in the prequels and beyond. He's less badass and more broken. His costume probably looked the best in ESB though.

 

I can't tell if you're bashing RotS, but I think the Mustafar balcony scene is very effective in context. You're wondering if he's so far gone that he is denying his pain- but then you see the tear.
If I'm reading way to far into your vague statement, let me know lol.

 

Story or script? I think the Empire script is easily the strongest out of all the movies.

I personally feel Luke is such a self important wet blanket in Jedi. And Vader also loses all the fun in this one too and doesn’t do anything. He stands around until the final fight.

I still love all the Han and Leia stuff in Jedi though. I love the speeder bike chase except for know-it-all Luke’s backseat driving. And all the Jabba scenes, and the space battle.

But Empire is just perfect. I think of an example when the Falcon goes through the asteroid field it’s like a beautiful ballet to music. And the carbon freeze scene is just gorgeous filmmaking.

 

Speaking of the Hobbit, the emotional moments ring way more true in fanedits. Thorin's death scene actually hits hard when Tauriel is not even a character.

 

Vader/Anakin works because he is a broken butcher. Every moment he continues to exist is a monument to his own sins. The reason why the Mustafar scene works is because it's a harsh image of the consequence of Anakin's own actions. After years of grueling combat and sacrifice, he stands with the carved-up corpses of the CIS leadership at his feet and he feels more desperate and alone than ever.

 

I'm gonna go with ROTJ as the best. Granted I'm biased because it's my favorite and there is often a difference between best and favorite. But ROTJ has not only one revelation but many. It has "Your father he is," "He's my father" and "Leia is my sister." ESB has the one (albeit mind-bending "I am your father!") The entire movie is a climax to the greatest trilogy of all time, it showed us Vader under the mask, Jabba the Hutt for the first time and the Emperor at his horrific best. It also has the greatest scene of all; the dual culminating with Vader losing his hand. I just can't deny the top spot for ROTJ.

 

I tend to default to TESB but truly I flip flop quite a bit. Vader is at his most iconic in TESB. Look is his coolest in ROTJ. My favorite movie moment of all time is in ROTJ, where Luke calls out for Vader to save him people in the theatre started yelling at the screen, "C'mon! Save him!" and when he did the audience erupted in cheers much like we see in MCU films right now.

 

I remember that moment in the theater as well. Highly emotional reaction from the audience.

 

That's a cool memory. Nothing like that typically happens in British cinemas, or it certainly didn't back then. I have noticed that American audiences treat some movies as a kind of event and are happy to cheer and clap during the picture. That would likely cause a great deal of tutting and private complaining (nobody would dare intervene and cause a scene) in our cinemas lol

 

I learned a lesson though. Here, if you are expecting cheering do not go with a morning crowd. I bet there are some locations where the morning crowd works, LA, NY, but otherwise go with the afternoon or evening. The Endgame audience I had was dead for a 10 am showing.

 

I would always have to go with The Empire Strikes Back. I know that it has almost become its own in-joke to cite it as the best one, but for me it always will be. It is a beautifully crafted film, and it just hits all the right notes.

 

I would echo many of the thoughts in this thread. ROTJ has some of the best heights (Throne room scene is one of the best in the saga and that space battle is still bananas after all these years) and it was my favorite as a kid (I was born in 1976). However it lows are easily the worst of the OT. I liked the Ewoks as a kid, but they get worse and worse with every rewatch. It just ruins any suspension of disbelief, makes stormtroopers a joke (granted, far too many SW films have made the troops on the bad side (droids/FO stormtroopers/etc) into basically a joke), and I think they were a bad choice. I actually am ok with the Jabba stuff (except the atrocious Jedi Rocks... the original song was actually pretty good and fit the scene).... even though Luke's plan is dumb and there's really whacko stuff going on (torturing droids? LOL)... but seeing Luke kick ass as a Jedi for the only time in the OT still works for me (and as a kid that green lightsaber reveal was awesome! IIRC the trailers all had a blue saber as the color was changed somewhat late in production since the blue wouldn't show up well in the desert). While I love the space battle itself... the whole plot line of the 2nd death star was a bad choice (although to be fair it was repeated a 3rd time in TFA!... and semi-repeated in the last part of TPM LOL).... and that terrible effects shot of the SSD crashing still bugs me. It's like... OMG this space battle is the most amazing optically composited effects sequence ever put to flim.... but then we cut to an explosion that would have looked bad in ANH!

TESB? Close to perfect. It definitely has the best feel of any SW film IMO. It's surreal and you really get the sense that everything is taking place in a GFFA. Hoth, Bespin, Dagobah etc just feel like this exotic places that are like nothing in our world. What's crazy is even the silly/ridiculous space worm works somehow (it really shouldn't - in almost any other film I'd be like WTF? that is idiotic!.....but somehow I'm ok with it in TESB). It also has some of the best scenes and for my money the BEST cinematography. "The force is with you young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet" is possibly my favorite moment in the entire saga; the tension, the visuals the absolutely perfect cinematography. That entire duel is just amazing. It's the one film (other than maybe Rogue One) where you really feel like the Empire is so powerful and unstoppable; the Hoth battle is wonderful - the hugely overmatched Rebels fighting a rear guard action against an implacable foe. The Yoda sequence, something that could have dragged and been boring is just magical. It's eerie and feels almost like a dream. Of course we have to mention the star of TESB in many ways - Darth Vader. TESB is THE Vader movie and his performance is amazing (and terrifying when I was a kid). The reveal was horrifying and 4-5 year old me was totally freaked out and had no idea what to expect in ROTJ. Everyone in the movie is terrified of Vader, the rebels, his own troops, Lando. Boba Fett was the only person who would dare to question him (which made Boba Fett seem completely awesome despite such limited dialogue). The score was amazing, the effects still look great even after all these years, I could go on.

To summarize TESB is the most consistently excellent film of the Saga (and tbh I'd rank Rogue One 2nd in that category) and it's also the most tonally consistent (something that ROTJ (and honestly several of the more modern films) struggled with - it's hard to take the Endor battle seriously when their's bad childish comic relief in the middle of it - notice this doesn't happen in the space battle - which is excellent). I still enjoy ROTJ - and they actually got the hard stuff right..... the stuff that really bothers me in ROTJ would have actually been easy to fix.

 

OMG - so as an addendum.... we had to clean up and pack for a quick post xmas vacation today so I threw on the OT for myself and the kids. I forgot how bad some of the lazy shots in ROTJ actually are.

There's a few matte paintings (esp the hanger in the Rebel command ship) that are just awful. It's really jarring after you just saw the beautiful matte paintings in TESB a little while before. TESB just had much better attention to detail; some of the stuff in ROTJ is almost straight up lazy (to be fair, they may have been burnt out pretty badly at that point).

 

There is some of that, to be sure. Nobody knew what they'd signed up for when they made the 1977 original - who among them could have guessed it would turn out to be one of the most popular movie franchises of all time? So I'm sure after working more or less non-stop for 6 years, some of the crew and cast may have been feeling some exhaustion.

 

ESB for me, even though I think the RotJ throne room scene is truly superb. I just think every second of ESB is immersive and spectacular. I like all of RotJ, but Endor isn't quite as engaging for me as Hoth or Bespin or Dagobah. I don't rate the ESB cliffhanger above the RotJ throne room scene. I think both are really top notch.

 

Empire. I love RotJ but it is really silly in so many places, y'know, moments that should have a little bit more of weight, like Han e Lando reunion, Leia's feelings about being Vader's (Anakin) daughter. I love the movie but the it does feel like it is lighter than it should. Also, never loved them Ewoks, if they ceased to exist i would not mind at all.

 

ESB is my favorite movie of all time, so ... yeah.

With that said, ROTJ is the first SW I was old enough to see in a theater, so it holds a special place in my heart. The throne room finale is perfect.

And yes, I like the ewoks. I know opinion is divided on that, but to this day, when I see that ewok steal the speeder bike and then hang on for dear life, I get a big silly grin on my face. I also get a blast out of the ewoks preparing to roast Han and Luke for food.

 

Empire by a mile.
ROTJ has some great moments such as the brilliant throne room scene and the impressive space battle but it also has...
- Awful pacing
- The messy, convoluted, way too drawn out rescue sequence
- Some of the worst aged effects in the trilogy such as flat looking matte paintings, the fake looking speeder chase, the capital ship crash, etc
- Weaker performances from the main cast, seriously felt like Ford was checked out already
- Really uneven tone
- The Ewoks: terribly unimaginative money making ploys which ended up making the Empire look like a joke
- The Leia reveal which I never personally liked, always felt unnecessary and weird
And I could go on but looking back at TESB, what are its noticable flaws?
- Eh the kiss scene is awkward but really that's ROTJ's fault so...
For me TESB is the perfect Star Wars movie so there's really no comparison

 

Jedi has always been my favorite, although Empire and SW are close

 

I would agree. Vader not being melodramatic is part of why he is interesting in ROTJ. It's nice to see the small touches. He keeps turning his gaze from his master to Luke quite a bit when they arrive, as though he is both concerned for his son and taken aback by how much Luke is willing to stand up to him. It's little touches like this that foreshadow his later decision well. Jones' voice carried the conflicted emotions as well as the simple body language from Prowse. How old was Vader supposed to be? 45 or 46? He's got a lot on his mind in that movie.

Oh, I'm sure it was more painful for those who saw TESB when it came out in 1980. I suppose it was painful and shocking to me because I was ten years old when I first saw it. I had to deal with the fact that Vader had just severed Luke's hand and then revealed that he was his father. I also didn't know what was going to happen to Han, and I think that Carrie Fisher as Leia helped make me concerned for the man. But I was mainly concerned about Luke in the aftermath of that duel, since this was the first truly adult story I had ever seen.

Overall, I would say that ROTJ is not as good as TESB because of the problems pertaining to how Jabba's palace was depicted. I like the movie better once we got off of Tattooine. That may be a fun part of the story, but Luke's plan in terms of the order in which he sent people into that palace just doesn't make sense. The Ewok situation I believe was more interesting as a kid not because they were cute bears, but because it's a mysterious forest, and you don't know what's going to happen. I always saw it more like a Don Bluth situation. To me, the throne room sevens and Luke and Vader's relationship are what make ROTJ great. TESB is a better film overall because Gary Kurtz allowed Irvin Kirshner and Lawrence Kasdan to steal Lucas' film from him, honestly. Lucas had some good ideas, but the film is great because it was a collaboration between the filmmakers, the actors, and other artists. Every scene in that movie is engaging. The only flaw in TESB in my estimation is how Leia is not as vital to the story as she is in ANH and ROTJ. It's almost as though they forgot where she came from, but she is important because she helps us to care more about Han. Han has many chances to run away and be selfish, but he is forced to stay and help her and his friends. I don't really like the bad boy aspect and how Leia gets into him without saying much as to why, but I don't hate it. But I can see a relationship like that becoming more healthy over time. Leia was 22 and Han was 32ish. I'm not a fan of age gaps like that, but I've seen worse. I think Luke, Vader, and Lando are handled the best in TESB. C-3PO is hilarious in both movies. No complaint in that era. I loved 3PO as a kid. I never really was into R2 that much, and I actually have come to like him better with age. Anyhow, I just feel that TESB is more cohesive, and ROTJ is a very good movie that is like four different stories rolled into one. That said, I'm glad that Lucas had some influence over the editing. He said the movie was too slow before he edited it, and Kirshner said he thought the completed film flows too fast. I can't imagine it being slower, but I feel the pace of it is better than hat of most Star Wars films. Anyhow, I do like how the novelization explores Luke's training under Yoda in more depth. That said, I respect how Yoda is depicted having genuine love and reverence for the Force despite being a celibate being. The Sith always talk about the Force in simplistic terms and rely on raw, negative emotion for their power. Yoda has more respect for life and the universe in general, and it is helpful because he actually is quite grumpy with Luke sometimes, given his situation, whereas I got the impression that he was very concerned about Anakin.

 

Good points. But I think Rotj has more of a space fantasy vibe that ESB lacks, don't you agree?