ROTJ has always been my favourite since I watched the THX OT trilogy for the first time in 1995. I appreciate ESB more now, but when I first saw it it was so dark and dreary. ROTJ was a wonderful return to the light-hearted fun of the original Star Wars except done much better. And not that ESB wasn’t light-hearted. It certainly was. But the whole atmosphere was very dark (visually and figuratively) and oppressive.
Like I said, I appreciate it more now, and it’s not like I don’t like darker storytelling which ESB does very well, but I still enjoy ROTJ more. It’s just much more optimistic and…colourful and bright. I don’t know. And in the midst of it all there’s that VERY dark and oppressive throne room segment which is such an EPIC finale. I still get chills when I see it. But Luke in that scene took the optimism from ANH and the beginning of ROTJ and brought it into the depths of that darkness which was mirrored nicely by his bright green lightsaber shining in that dark and dreary place, trying to do the right thing, realizing what that would really take, and after giving in for a short moment, throws his saber away and gives himself to death for doing the right thing. And that’s when everything turns around.
I love ROTJ. I love that it has this mini-adventure rescue in the beginning with Jabba like a James Bond film or something (and something that didn’t involve the Empire for once, at that) and I like everyone having a reunion after the briefing scene (because they were all separated for pretty much all of ESB) and I even like the idea of the primitive natives taking out the technologically advanced Empire with their contrasting tactics. It’s quite similar to actual history and how some wars were won in the past via “primitive” engagement strategies going up against practised “civilized” tactics of massive battalions of soldiers so it’s not unheard of.
