Besides the Ewoks, what were the major criticisms with RotJ not being held as high in regard as first two? I don’t really get it and basically chose to ignore...

Wow. That extended singing number in beginning at Jabba’s Palace was both odd and disheartening.

If you choose to ignore, why are you asking?

There's a general Star Wars discussion thread in movie talk if you want to talk about the movies more. This thread should really focus on the UHD releases.
https://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk...on-thread.html

curious. ok, i'll go through 17 pages. if someone wants to pm me, thanks. i will not continue to take up any more valuable posts in these so populated forums...

You can post a new question/comment there, you don't necessarily have to go through all the pages first.

However, discussions are split into various forums for a reason. Movie Talk threads are for talking about the movie. the DVD or HD Talk threads are for talking about that particular release of the movie. From a pinned post about threadcraps in DVD Talk:
https://forum.dvdtalk.com/dvd-talk/2...ease-read.html
You've been a member for nearly 20 years, you should know this.

oh, ok. i had no idea what these forums were about. now i know. phew.

After Empire steered the Star Wars franchise into a more grown-up direction, Jedi does a hard course correction to bring it into kiddie territory and overshoots. Basically, George Lucas saw all the money coming in from action figure and toy sales and decided that the true purpose of Star Wars was to sell merchandise to children. Hence the introduction of adorable teddy bears into the story. The plot involving a second Death Star is also an unimaginative retread of the first film.

Just like Episode 7.

I like Return of the Jedi even though it does have flaws. There’s a lot about it I like a lot and has some of my favorite Star Wars moments.

Jabba’s Palace/Han’s rescue is a fun way to start out. The speeder bike chase on Endor is good. The interaction with Luke and Vader after Luke surrenders himself. The throne room duel and the aftermath (Luke taking off Vader’s helmet for their final moment and Luke’s funeral for him on Endor).

I can see where some view the Death Star II as a retread, and I agree with it being so, but truthfully it never really bothered me. Visually it being only partially finished looks cool.

The Ewoks are probably what drags the film down most, but really I’ve never hated them like most people. They have some moments where they’re kind of fun. It is silly though how easy it is for them to take on the Imperial army (with the assistance of the Rebels).

I always loved ROTJ as a kid in the 80s and I can’t bring myself to hate it even knowing it has pacing issues. All the Jabba stuff is classic monster movie adventure and the last act is just nonstop good, even with the Ewoks.

I agree with this. While RotJ isn’t the best Star Wars movie, it was my favorite as a kid. Mostly my love for the whole Jabba’s Palace/Jabba’s Barge/Sarlacc sequences at the beginning. As I grew older, I appreciated the Luke/Vader parts of the movie (The Luke/Vader duel is my favorite sequence in the entire series).

I agree that the Ewoks are the worst part of the movie, mostly because of the kiddie aspect of it but I do like how they play into the main plot and it makes sense that they were the one thing the Emperor didn’t take into account for in his master plan to trap the rebels.

As far as the second Death Star, I’ll be honest, as a kid, with its half-constructed look, I always assumed it was still the first Death Star half blown apart from Luke’s trench run in A New Hope. Maybe going under the assumption that it was the same Death Star helped me ignore the repetitive plot device.

That actually could have been a cool idea if the Death Star was just very damaged and not completely destroyed. Would have made it not feel like a recycled idea.

My biggest issue with ROTJ beyond the lazy, lazy, LAZY resolution of the love triangle/another Skywalker plot thread, is just how bored everyone seems. Every single character is less interesting/exciting than they were in Empire. I also don't really buy into the "drama" of the throne room stuff, but people seem to like it and I've written about that before and I won't belabor the point.

Harrison and Carrie look bored. Hamill looked overwhelmed, and was trying to hard. He wasn't that good of an actor at that time and I think was over his head and was just trying too hard. The "I'll not leave you here, I've got to save you" line to an unmasked Vader in particular makes me cringe every time...

Maybe the director, (be it Richard Marquand or Lucas hiding in the back seat) should have tried harder. Mark was good enough to be Mozart in Amadeus on Broadway before ROTJ. He even auditioned for the film, but Milos Forman couldn't see past his Luke Skywalker image.

I never bought Luke's transformation between Empire and Jedi. He goes from impetuous brat getting his ass kicked, to obi wan in black between films with nothing to indicate how exactly he got there.

I don’t see him as having that much of a transformation really. He grows more with the Force, but he isn’t a master Jedi or anything. Not so much that it’s jarring for me not to buy his character.

He didn't even seem like the same character to me, but that's true of most of the characters.

I am just glad that Rian Johnson wasn't in charge of explaining how Luke got from the Luke in Empire To Jedi. The vagueness will do.

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned - the reliance on matte painting backgrounds. Even though Jedi cost the most, it actually looks incredibly cheap in more than a few scenes. Exhibit A - the hangar bay scene with Han and Lando. How utterly boring this is shot... compare it to the previous movies when they would actually be walking past ships, under the X-Wing wings, the camera doing interesting things... none of that here. I think that's what bothered me the most... the laziness that started to set in, and it came from the top.

But don't we deserve an in-depth depiction of this in the films, and not books or comics?! I mean, we clearly really, really need a Snokesplanation, we'd better get a Lukesplanation, too!

My beef with ROTJ is the pacing of the movie. ANH & ESB are paced perfectly, where ROTJ comes to a grinding halt at certain points in the movie (especially when they meet the Ewoks). Once Leia meets Wicket to the Luke/Leia conversation about their mother is just dead space filler for that movie. That is the only time in the OT that I can seriously go to the bathroom or get something to eat and not regret missing anything.

It kind of feels like the writers didn’t know what to do with Han and Leia in RotJ. They needed to address the main storyline with Luke and Vader so decided they’d just send Han and Leia on some side quest. Han isn’t even manning the Millennium Falcon during the main battle! Instead they’re relegated to disarming some reactor shield. The pacing, and movie as a whole feels slightly disjointed because of that.

YMMV of course, but I got the sense that he's still naive and cocky (like when bargaining with Jabba), but a little more reserved after getting his ass handed to him and having his worldview turned upside down. As a kid, I always chalked it up to having trained more with Yoda, but as a teenager, I had realized he never went back to Dagobah between ESB and ROTJ.

Ugh, man. You know, if they just had Snokes as "imperfect clones" of Palpatine created in the process of trying to get his body back and nixed the entire granddaughter idea, I'd cut that movie quite a bit more slack.

Not directly related to the movies, but Disney is reportedly not paying royalties to Alan Dean Foster for Star Wars-related novels:

#DisneyMustPay Alan Dean Foster - SFWA

More info here: Lit - Disney reported to be refusing to pay royalties to Alan Dean Foster | Jedi Council Forums (theforce.net)