Because it’s fashionable would be my guess. Kevin Smith included a comparison of the two sequels in one of his movies where he trashes ROTJ, and it seems to stem from that. It’s not completely warrented in my opinion; the movie has its faults - more in the Jabba sequence than on the forest moon - but it’s about par as its predecessors and isn’t half as uneven as the recent prequels.
Above and beyond the whole Ewok thing (they don’t even have opposable thumbs!), I’ve always been bugged by the space battle at the end… I can’t believe that a Super Star Destroyer could be taken out by a single A-Wing, and I don’t like that the Imperial fleet disappears as soon as the Death Star is destroyed.
Ewoks.
That is the first hint that Geroge Lucas is learning the Dark Side of Moviemaking.
Storm Troopers with their advanced technology cannot stop an onslaught of cute, teddy bears with weapons nothing more advanced than sticks and arrows. They are a premonition of things to come. Premonition of…JAR JAR BLINKS!
Beside that I couldn’t find anything else to fault Return of the Jedi. Sure, they have to blast another Death Star, but at least this time they have another obstacle to get through - the Shield Generator.
You’re kidding, right? Were you around in 1983? Was anyone listening to 13-year-old Kevin back then?
Many millions of people saw the movie when it first came out. And if they had even two brain cells to rub together they saw all the flaws listed here and bunches more. And since most people before the advent of the Internet did indeed have two working brain cells they very properly trashed it in every conceivable way (not knowing that Lucas’ future work would make it look better in nostalgic haze).
Kevin Smith? :smack:
Ewoks and that little blue elephant wanna-be Muppet thing did me in.
There is s a theory that Lucas holds the legions of Star Wars fans in utter contempt; Boba Fett dying screaming like a 12 y/o girl is but one example.
Lucas is such an absolute control freak that he couldn’t stand the thought of a popular character he didn’t personally create specifically to be a popular character upstaging his creative control.
So he killed him.
It’s a theory I’ve heard, and based upon some of the stupid shit I’ve seen in his movies, it’s one I give some credence to.
You’re operating on the assumption that the manner in which Boba Fett was killed was supposed to be girly. It was cartoonish, but, um, the Ewoks? Hello? George Lucas makes cartoonish movies.
It’s also generally true that Boba Fett’s silly legend has grown since 1983 through scads of grindhouse books and fan fiction; he was a popular action figure from 1980-1983 and all that, but no more than his cool role in “The Empire Strikes Back” would have suggested he should be. He wasn’t quite the nerd cultural icon in 1983 that he is today.
Simply put, Lucas and the writers and such probably did not mean for the scene to be as silly as it was, just as they seemed to believe Jar-Jar Binks would be a well-liked character, or that people wouldn’t notice they recycled the “blow up the Death Star” plot.
And here’s proof!
For me it was the whole business about Vader being Luke’s father, Leia being Luke’s sister, and Luke’s quest to redeem his father. Absofrickin stupid, IMHO.
I have more of a problem with the effect, the only truly distracting special effect in the movie, which consists of a ghostly reflection of what an A-Wing would look like if if it hit a Star Destroyer.
To be fair, the destruction is explained. The fighters concentrated “all fire power” on the Executor, brought down the shield generators, and the ship was able to get through (by accident) the control room. No one flies the plane = plane goes down.
I’ve never hated a Star Wars movie. I don’t think I have it in me.
But what I, and a lot of my friends saw happening was deliberately putting things in the movie (like ewoks) that you just knew were only there to sell Mc Donald’s & Burger King Kid’s meals, and lots of toys at Christmas time.
Before Star Wars, it never really occurred to me that someone would put things into a movie just to sell Happy Meals & toys. It was kinda sad. Sure, I had Star Trek toys & Planet of the Apes toys, but they didn’t actually make the shows & movies to sell those toys, did they?
Now you see it all the time. Whenever I see a LotR, or Harry Potter, or Star Wars, the whole time I can’t help thinking, “ok, that’s going on a Burger King drink cup, ok, that’s going to be a toy at Christmas, ok, that’s going to be a boss fight when the video game comes out,” etc., ect.
It was just kinda sad, seeing it go commercial. Back then we were into punk rock too, and hated it when anything “went commercial.”
I’ll say this.
I don’t have the rabid hatred for Jedi that a lot of people have, but I do see it as a lot of wasted potential.
Frankly, I’ve always found the Jabbas palace bit rather boring and sometimes just skip past it.
Frankly, the 2nd half of the film seems like a good idea and works pretty well until the Ewoks start beating the stormtroopers.
Okay, I realize that stormtroopers aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs out there, but these are displined troops with automatic energy weapons, aircraft and armor fighting stoneaged primative screwheads. I realize that Lucas was trying to make it a vietnam analogy, but the NVA and VC had the advantage of recieving arms from a competeing superpower that were at effecitvly equivlent to those their enemy had. Plus, the VC weren’t teddy bears.
And frankly, all the stromtroopers had to do was sit around the bunker and keep anyone from getting close. And that screwed that up!
The Space battle I love though. I’ve got a weakness for grand battles.
Oh, and the Death Star thing doesn’t bother me.
They have two. Big deal. Since when have governments ever shied away from building the biggest and most destructive weapons they can( damn the cost)?
Why have one WMD or nigh invincible battle station when you can have two for twice the price?
Ewoks
After The Empire Strikes Back came out , the expectations for the third movie was high , enough so that Jedi being what turned out to be a decent Kids movie , was a major let down for people expecting a lot more.
The only decent thing that came out of the movie ,was the rebel/ new republic govt had created an atrocity ,where the ewoks were wiped out as a species. Now if only Jar Jar could go the same route.
Declan
I always liked Ephant Mon, the elephant guy. But then again, that might be just something that stuck with me as a kid.
I think it can make a little sense having another death star. My guess is that they didn’t start the second one after the first one was destroyed, but decided to begin on it during the production of the first.
O.K. on Ewoks:
The Ewoks did not defeat an army of stormtroopers!!!
The Ewoks helped to provide distraction and confusing with the purpose of making it difficult for the Imperial troops to defend the sheild generator. Rebel troops, led by Hon and Leia, breeched the defences and succeeded in destroying the sheild generator because of clever improvisation and a good plan.
When the shields came down, the Death Star was destroyed- taking with it the source of supplies and reinforcements for the Imperial troops on the ground, not to mention the chain of command and their ticket back home!
If several nuclear bombs had been dropped on Rome at the time that the Ethiopians were fighting Italian invaders then the Ethiopians would have “won”!!!
Why is this so hard for people to comprehend???
Dude, the Ewoks must have killed at least two dozen stormtroopers between them. Tripping them, smashing their AT-STs with logs and rocks or whatever, hitting them on the head…
They didn’t defeat an army, but they did significant damage. Which was stupid.
I really like Return of the Jedi. Sure, the Ewoks are annoying and the warmed-over ending could have been done better and it probably is the worst film of the original three, but it’s still great and heaps better than the prequels, so there.
By means that were sufficiently lethal- all applied with an element of surprise.
The surprise being that two-foot tall, three-fingered critters managed to engineer and construct those lethal devices. I’d have been impressed to see such critters manage to fell a freakin’ Redwood, much less get several of them hidden in the canopy in such a way that they could be used as remotely operated, synchronized battering rams. How many of those little bastards did it take to hoist one of those logs, anyway? And how many times did their efforts result in unexpected meat-and-fur trebuchet shots? “Base, this is Squad Captain TK-3489 We’ve been getting sporadic reports of faint rains of pulverized woodchuck. It’s all over some of the speederbikes. Any idea what’s behind this?” 
I think the main problem with Jedi is that it was the first movie where Lucas really started really playing to the demographic of very small children, who were with him from the start, anyway. (Yoda might arguably be a step in that direction, but he was somehow less offensive.) “What do little kids like?” The like soft, cuddly things. Little things. Yoda was a success, but he wasn’t just small, whimsical, and yet powerful. Let’s have more little cuddly hero things! Increase the cuddly factor by 500 percent! People like a teaspoon of sugar in their coffee – let’s give 'em half a cup of sugar!
This strategy hurt ROTJ, and Lucas didn’t learn from it soon enough. No-sa he-sa didn’t.
Now I can look back on it and just go with the story and not sweat the small stuff (heh,) but when Jedi came out, it was expected to be better than Empire by at least as much as Empire was better than Star Wars. It was a let-down.