I was actually responding to rennervision, not you. I don't argue that ROTJ has flaws. But rennervision's point seemed to be that people only liked ESB because ROTJ was "bad." I was arguing against that fallacy.

Is Judith still working?
I can think of a lot of good junk movies and even more bad junk movies. Empire is not one of either.
Jedi on the other hand would fit more into the catagory of good junk although I use that term loosely since it had a lot of problems, some of which have mentioned in this thread.
Bad junk? Episode one and two.

I too find this the case. I dont know anyone that likes Jedi better than Empire or A New Hope.

No. TESB is good because ROTJ ends the story. If we had been left hanging with Empire's non-ending for the rest of our lives, no one would be proclaiming it to be better than the first Star Wars. I'm highly skeptical anyone in 1980 said, "Wow! That was so much better than the first one!" (I sure don't remember anyone saying that.) Only after we got to see all three movies present one grand story did Empire suddenly start finding so much favor with everyone.

I'm still not seeing your point. Being part two of three, of course Empire will have a cliffhanger type ending. If Lucas had never intended to make a third film, he would have ended it differently. I still don't see how ESB's quality is dependant on ROTJ, though. Even if you never saw the conclusion of the series, you could still appreciate the high quality of filmmaking and dramatic storytelling that is so clearly present in ESB.

Not true. I agree with most here: ESB is better than ROTJ. We need to be realistic and stop puffing out our chests and speaking for "most." If we did, there wouldn't be a damn non-oar DVD on the shelves. ROTJ is the most easily accessible of the three OT films.

And the box office doesn't lie, ROTJ was more successful than ESB. THESE are the masses I am speaking of. Aside from the big revelation, I bet the casual fan can't really point out one thing from ESB. Again, I am talking about the unwashed masses here.

These same masses are the ones who made the SE's huge hits and will make them huge sellers on DVD. They also don't give a damn about original cuts.

Not in terms of ticket sales...if you do an ADJUSTED gross from 1980 and 1983 ESB beats it out. Not by much, but still does. Ticket prices really took a jump between 80-83.




The Empire Strikes Back
Gross
$290.2

Adjusted Gross
$555.7


Return of the Jedi

Gross
$309.1

Adjusted Gross
$533.2

so give or take not too much difference...roughly the same amount of people walked thru the theater


Yes I have no life...

That big revalation you refer to was the ultimate in the whole OT.

I agree, most people in my age group that I have talked to who were around 10-15 years old in 1977 are NOT in favor of any changes in the OT whatsoever...and yep sad to say most of the ones that grew up on ROTJ or later are the ones that are in favor of letting george rape the older kids

I don't see how anyone can approve of the changes when what we get is a musical number in ROTJ. *shudder*

Gone With the Wind
MGM
$1,240,554,000
$198,676,459
1939^

2
Star Wars
Fox
$1,093,654,300
$460,998,007
1977^

3
The Sound of Music
Fox
$874,430,400
$158,671,368
1965

4
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
Uni.
$870,985,600
$435,110,554
1982^

5
The Ten Commandments
Par.
$804,340,000
$65,500,000
1956

6
Titanic
Par.
$788,043,700
$600,788,188
1997

7
Jaws
Uni.
$786,403,900
$260,000,000
1975

8
Doctor Zhivago
MGM
$762,191,700
$111,721,910
1965

9
The Exorcist
WB
$678,891,600
$232,671,011
1973^

10
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Dis.
$669,260,000
$184,925,486
1937^

11
101 Dalmatians
Dis.
$613,491,900
$144,880,014
1961^

12
The Empire Strikes Back
Fox
$602,829,100
$290,475,067
1980^

13
Ben-Hur
MGM
$601,720,000
$74,000,000
1959

14
Return of the Jedi
Fox
$577,524,800
$309,306,177
1983


Looks like Empire is even more now.

Well the point I was trying to make was that altough ROTJ (originally) grossed 263 mil and ESB 244 Mil 3 years earlier they pretty much had the some amount of customers, so that point of the argument is moot. Its not like there was a 50-100+ mil dollar difference.

I certainly would NOT call the ROTJ:SE a "huge hit". The $45 Million it made is pretty paltry, especially when compared to the $138 Mill. Star Wars: SE raked in. I mean, that's only $10 Mill. more than what the E.T. re-release made and everyone seems to call that a disappointment. I guess people realized over the years that Jedi just isn't up to snuff.

the trilogy is 5 stars in my video movie guide

I hate all this Gross/Adjusted Gross/Box Office Receipts stuff. Prices always change, but a ticket is a ticket.

Why would it be so hard for movie sources to count "Number of Tickets Sold" instead?

Billboard charts for CDs for example, count the number of CDs sold, not revenue.

Yeah because there were so many muppets that kids wanted to see it over and over and over again.
The other movies were both kids and adults, this was geared more towards the kiddies.

WRONG! SW has always been aimed at a "family" audience. Barney is aimed at kids, Jenna Jameson at adults.

For a re-release, $45 Mil is damn good! Also factor in that the hype for the re-releases was winding down and, at the end, a bit overexposed. I think that the SE releases were a bit botched by having them all so close together. I think having a four month period between would have helped the ESB and ROTJ numbers out a lot. The real finish line here was the home video sales though and that dictated the release schedule.

I think that people were expecting ET to do ANH type rerelease numbers and were disapointed that it didn't.

I've bitched about that for ages. $$$ is meaningless due to inflation. I'd rather just no how many people went to see a given movie.

Its a marketing ploy. Studios are trying to sell movies now. It helps sell tickets and, more importantly DVD's, if a movie makes the top 10, top 20, top 100 of all time. This gets people excited about the movies and they sell better and are rented more.

It makes the studios more money to report gross, because the crap of today is going to have bigger revenues than the great movies of old.