Sorry for another Star Wars thread but I didn’t want to hijack this thread where seveal people rank RotJ as a bad film. In some cases worse than Ep 1 and 2 !
Was it just the Ewoks that put people off? What are the other reasons for haiting Return of the Jedi?
I thought I hated the Ewoks 'till I met a character named Jar Jar…
Aside from the overly-cutesy Ewok moments and the loathsome extended musical number in Jabba’s palace, I like Jedi just fine.
i’m figuring it was the ewoks. if they had been wookies or something less teddy bear the feeling may not be as off-putting.
i wasn’t bothered by the ewoks. i could have lived without the song thing at the end though…
i reckon it is an icky rat, cute squirrel thing.
I didn’t hate ROTJ, but I hated several elements:
The other major problem with the movie, of course, is that they did not bother to write a new script. They’re blowing up the Death Star AGAIN?
If you build it they will come (and blow it up).
Actually, given how many people have seen the various movies, I’m sure you can pick any of them and find someone who will insist it’s (one of) the worst of the lot…
Thanks for that site, I was wondering if it was just that we were older when we saw RotJ or if there was real quality diferences.
A second Death Star was a bit weak since it had been done in tNH so much better.
Ewoks and the fact that there is **no freaking way ** Vader deserved to be in the pantheon of fallen Jedi with Obi-wan and Yoda. This is the man who betrayed the Jedi and blew up Alderaan, people! There is a special circle in the depths of Jedi Hell for the likes of him, last minute act of redemption or no. Right down there with Brutus and Judas. I don’t care who he saved in the end…damned he is and damned he will always be!
Oh yeah, Boba Fett dying like a screaming bitch didn’t help.
Ah, but what did Vader, Obi-wan and Yoda all have in common? The all died in front of Luke *That *is what he joined Obi-wan and Yoda.
He was a bitch.
Agreed. The idea of Redemption (especially of a life that was so committed to Evil) is so glibly handled, all the other minor annoyances pale in comparison.
Grand Moff Tarkin blew up Alderaan. After saying he wouldn’t, no less. That’s why he gets the key to the Grand Moff’s washroom and Vader does not.
Not that this exonerates Vader or anything.
I didn’t hate RotJ, but I did hate Leia’s camoflage outfit. Fortunately it was balanced out by the sexy harem outfit.
What about the flower child outfit? And why exactly did the Ewoks have something for her to wear in her size? :dubious:
I agree, a second Death Star is weak, but they could have carried that off. It seems like destroying it, killing the emperor, and having Darth Vader die wouldn’t be quite enough to spell the end of the Empire. Sure it might have turned the tide in the Rebels’ favor by having cut off the head of the empire as such, but they portrayed it at the end as being too much of a final victory for my taste.
If we take the expanded universe as canon, we later find that not only did the empire remain a force to be reckoned with for some time, but we find that Palpatine has an endless supply of clones of himself. That rather renders the victory in Jedi moot.
If we just go with what we’re given on screen, then there are still quite a few star destroyers and stormtroopers to be taken care of. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t just having the threat of force lightning and force chokes hanging over their heads that gained their loyalty. I got the impression that the empire was just that: an empire, and one that was big enough to survive the losses that they took at Endor. After all, they sure seemed strong enough after their defeat at Yavin.
Whatever the case, there was still a lot of work to be done after Jedi that they seemed too blissfully unconcerned with. Maybe portraying the empire’s search in ESB as an act of desperation on the part of a badly crippled dictatorship could have set them up for explaining why the defeat at Endor really did mean the end of the empire. It wouldn’t have made for a very exciting movie if they’d discussed in detail the economics of having two Death Stars getting eradicated along with all the manpower on board, but perhaps if they’d just given a friggin’ NOD to that possibility, it would have helped.
On the whole, perhaps it would have been better if it had been darker (and I don’t mean having the Millenium Falcon get destroyed; that would have just amped the level of suck, much like killing off Trip in Enterprise did). It seems to me like they just wanted to take care of rescuing Han Solo and then wrap up everything else with a tacked-on happy ending, quality be damned
Perhaps if the Ewoks really had been Wookiees with some level of technology beyond a bunch of bullshit gummi-bears hangliders or stone age weaponry, their victory over the Stormtroopers on Endor would have been more credible. Instead we have a bunch of cute bullshit.
And cute is the much more visible downside of Jedi than the Death Star/assassinated head of state problem. Aliens are nice. We got a good sampling in the original Star Wars at Mos Eisley with some rather clever concepts. However, Jedi just had too damned many that were too damned stupid looking. It’s as if the only species at Jabba’s palace of which there were more than one, aside from humans, were those stupid Gammoreans. And on that note, anthropomorphic animals make shitty aliens, in my opinion. That’s one universal complaint I have about Star Wars since Jedi: they have an inordinate number of ill-conceived alien species. Much like the excessively busy space battle in Sith, it becomes too much to process after a while.
THAT is what has been bugging me all these years. Also, her hair is done up extremely elaborately. Do not tell me the freaking Ewoks did that. And trust me, I used to have very long hair, there’s no way Leia could have done it herself.
C’mon, the Ewoks had been doing braids to supplement their income for the tourist trade for many years. I can’t explain the Flower Child outfit, though.
You know, after being fanatical about Star Wars and seeing the first two movies an absurd amount of times in the theatre, I saw Return of the Jedi once and felt bad about it.
A big part of it had to do with expectations going in. I was still expecting the promised Wookie battle. The Ewoks weren’t just a lack of the fulfillment of that promise – they were an insulting perversion of it.
And the second Death Star was less than inspiring. Sure, the destruction of the Death Star was supposed to be the end of the third act, but Jesus, George, you used that in the first movie when you thought that might be the only one. Apply yourself a little, wouldya?
And I think by the time ROTJ came out, I was old enough to realize that Mark Hamill, (and therefore Luke) was a freaking wanker. It didn’t help that in ROTJ Luke was supposed to start acting like a dark, mysterious Hero, instead of a whiny farmboy on an adventure. Ick.
Anyway, it wasn’t too longer after that movie came out that I gave my entire (ridiculously complete) collection of Star Wars toys away as a child’s things. If only I had foreseen the existence of ebay. :smack:
That being said, I was surprised to find that I didn’t hate Return of the Jedi as much as I remembered, when the Special Editions were released. Not a total waste of time – just seriously flawed.
