I think a lot of people see the greatness achieved by Empire and forget that it stood on the shoulders of Star Wars.
I don’t disagree at all. As Kershner said, Star Wars is the breakthrough and therefore can’t be outdone.
But ESB takes all of it and pushes it to the next level in a much more mature film. That’s something Star Wars has never gotten again.
I don’t see it that way. I know of the interview you mentioned, but IIRC they were talking mostly about SW’s original success, not necessarily about SW being potentially better than TESB as a movie.
In the end, I think they were able to make TESB stand on its own, in fact I’d say it’s a very different movie than SW, it doesn’t just rely on building on top of the previous movie. They are both good movies, mind you, but in my opinion TESB is better than SW because it has much more depth, much more care for the characters and its world. It is also so well crafted I’d often take a random scene and start analyzing it just to learn how the hell were they able to to make it so good. Few movies are so well made (especially in recent years), it’s just that good 😃