The Cinematography of “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”
http://billsfilms.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-cinematography-of-empire-strikes.html
I can’t say that I agree with every comparison made in the article, he ignored the context of the individual scenes a few times, and I personally think the Palpatine scenes in ROTJ are pretty well shot over all. However, he does make some great points overall, and ESB is definitely a more dynamic and interestingly shot film than both ANH, and especially ROTJ. Though much of that I think simply boils down to the script being better and more exciting than ROTJ.
All in all, I feel that ROTJ is kind of a mixed bag, though it never reaches ESB quality levels, it has several really good and solid moments, but then suddenly you get some really bland and boring moments like the Luke/Leia scene in the tree-village.
ROTJ is the film that I know the least about in therm of what happened behind the scenes, but Marquand’s abilities as a directors seems to dip in and out of of being either somewhat lazy or quite competent depending on the scenes. My guess is that he was just too unfamiliar with working on a film with such a big budget, as I’ve seen similar inconsistent cinematography from other blockbuster films made by directors that previously had only done smaller films.