I think some of you puppet lovers are seeing them through nostalgia glasses.
Yoda was brilliant. But compare him to some of those ROTJ puppets…it’s not even close.
Even the bad puppets have a charm to them that’s hard to ignore, but suddenly becomes easy to undervalue when you’re trying to “fix” things to make everything “perfect.” It’s like looking back on photos of the Halloween costumes my mom made for us in the 80s. They weren’t perfect, but they’re still fascinating to look at in a way that my friends’ storebought plastic costumes never were. Maybe you’re right and it is nostalgia, but I have a soft spot for the bad ROTJ puppets because there’s something endearing about the handmade craft quality to them that shiny CGI just doesn’t have.