Multiple posters have already corrected me on this in the last three weeks and 120+ posts. I also conceded I didn’t remember the movie as well as I thought I did, and I dropped the argument, 3 weeks and 90 posts ago.
Um no. Star Wars doesn’t need a prequel. That little scene in Ben Kenobi’s cave on Tattooine in which he shows Luke the light saber, that’s all the back story that was ever needed.
What’s done is done. Forget the many prequels and sequels. They’re only okay at best. Focus on new stories in the SW universe, like the Mandalorian. That’s Star Wars done right.
Amen. Sometimes less is more.
As flawed as Return of the Jedi is, the inescapable fact is that NONE of the prequels or sequels helped the core story.
Also, maybe the story was never really that deep to begin with. Sacrilege! I know, but it’s the truth. It was only ever intended to be anescapist fanatasy/sci-fi story. Reading more into it is sort of silly. And the reason episodes 4-6 are so endearing is probably more nostalgia than anything else. On rewatching the first Star Wars, I hadn’t realized how boring it actually is for about the first half hour, at least until we meet Luke. Innovative, yes, but not compelling by today’s standards.
Is there anything more fun to watch than nine movies about union busting and trade relations? 
That’s an interesting take, because every time I rewatch Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back I’m struck by how damn fantastic they are.
The Return of the Jedi is a deeply flawed movie. It’s not as dreadful as the prequels and at least it finished the story, but it’s a step on the way down from SW and Empire to the prequels, and makes it kind of not at all surprising that the prequels are awful.
I’m not a fan who’s possessive about SW or obsessed with the consistency of canon, so I’m already fine just personally disregarding the movies I think suck.
I’m curious as to what you mean by this, can you elaborate?
RickJay can answer for himself, but my one-word answer to this is: Ewoks.
Totally agree. In fact, I routinely re-watch the first half of Star Wars. I think it’s great. Once they are in the dogfight sequence with the Death Star, I find it less compelling.
RotJ has a weird structure, where there’s this extended first act about rescuing Han Solo that is basically its own self-contained story arc that resolves completely when they escape Jabba’s Palace, and then immediately jumps into a second, almost unrelated story arc about destroying the second Death Star. Almost nothing from the stuff set on Tatooine carries over to the second arc. No significant antagonists carry over, there are no unresolved plot elements, nothing that happens to the protagonists (like Han being blind, or Luke getting shot in his cybernetic hand) have repercussions in the rest of the film. The beginning of the film feels less like a first act, and more like the last episode of a television series before the climactic two part finale.
There are a number of significant problems with it.
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It severely misuses the characters; Han Solo, especially, is left with little of substance to do, and his character just kind of becomes a generic guy.
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They clearly ran out of ideas for “big ending to movie” and there’s one too many storylines going on at that point.
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The opening act of the movie isn’t connected to the rest of the film. As Miller points out, there is literally not a single thread between that and the rest of the movie.
Happy points out that the Ewoks are dumb, and they sure are, but removing them would not fix the problems with the movie’s story.
The fact that the plot revolved around blowing up another Death Star was inexcusable.
That’s my only real problem with the movie. Three movies in and you’ve already run out of new ideas? Really?
Not to mention Darth Vader suddenly becoming a good guy in the end – never mind all those people murdered, planets destroyed, etc.
Arguably, you could place some of the blame on Empire Strikes Back for leaving Han’s story on a cliff-hanger.
(I’m not a big fan of the whole Cloud-City-without-Luke part of ESB, to be honest.)
My other problem with ROTJ (and I never see anyone else commenting on this, so maybe it’s just me), is that I think some of the acting is just flat-out bad. The scene where Luke tells Leia that he’s her brother, that Vader is their father, and that he’s going to try to redeem Vader because “there is still good in him” has always struck me as incredibly flat and amateurish. Like junior high school drama club level performances from both Hamill and Fisher.
Well, sure, but skilled writers has resolved cliffhangers before. ROTJ is a case where they really didn’t. It has great scenes and set pieces, but honestly the movie is just so devoid of imagination. “OK let’s just have them get Han back, and then, I dunno, let’s blow up another Death Star.”
Even the revelation that Leia is Luke’s sister is dumb. “Well, Darth Vader being his father was great… who else can we say is related to him?” It really adds nothing to the story. It givens Vader something to goad Luke with and enrage him but otherwise it just, ya know, happens, and it has almost no emotional impact.
As smarter people than me have pointed out, the genius of the “I am your father” reveal is that no audience member with the IQ of a Cobb salad thinks Luke will be killed at the end of Empire, so how do you add some dramatic oomph to that showdown with Vader? Well, did they ever.
It’s a TERRIBLE scene, and Harrison Ford has some clunkers too, but you can’t blame actors in those situations. The scenes are just badly written and they’re directed poorly.
I think it’s there mainly because they had to explain that cryptic “There is another” line from Empire. That had been included, from what I’ve heard, to add some little bit of tension or intrigue–“ooh, who could this mysterious ‘other’ be?”–and then they had to resolve it somehow. They went with, “The other is Leia, and she’s Luke’s sister. Sure, why not?”
Funny thing is, Vader actually means father in German is something.