ROTJ really drags in the middle and each time I watch it it seems to get worse. Last night I watched Harmy’s latest DeEd (AMAZING work, probably his best yet!) for the first time and the middle has gotten so slow that I was even finding the speeder bike chase a bit mundane. I still love the speeder bikes, and some of the best shots (like when they zoom around a turn, or Luke takes one out with his saber) are still really sweet and exciting. But the chase as a whole just felt kinda ho-hum. I think the complete lack of a score for the entire sequence really hampers it in this particular case. Some rip-roaring JW chase music might help add the emotional hook the action sometimes lacks.

Thankfully the third act still saves the film for me. The space battle is still mind blowing. The duel is still a gripping tug of war between light and dark; father and son. And the ground battle is schlocky fun.

Next up is TFA. I’ve been slowly working my way through all the films (the ones I count as SW anyway). After my last viewing of R1 in the theater I’ve watched SW SSE, ESB DeEd, and now ROTJ DeEd. I’ll watch the official blu of TFA sometime soon to finish it off. That might be it until TLJ but I’ve got a nice stretch of vacation in November and I’m debating about maybe marathoning them all in short order before seeing TLJ in December if I can get the better half on board…