One of the main problems of The Force Awakens is that it undermines Return of the Jedi by undoing the happy ending of the latter and the accomplishments of Luke, Leia, and Han, by bringing back the Empire and confirming that they were never defeated at all. The Empire Strikes Back did the exact same thing to the original movie, by bringing back the Empire and confirming that they were never defeated at all.

The original movie ends on a triumphant note, as the Rebels destroyed the Death Star, and celebrated at the end of the movie. We don’t see the Empire anywhere else besides in the Star Destroyer, the Death Star, and we also see some stormtroopers on Tatooine, implying that the Empire has been destroyed once and for all. However, that happy ending has been undone, as their victories were short-lived and the Empire struck back against the Rebels in the next film.

What’s even worse is that the film was intended to be a stand-alone movie with no continuation at all, meaning that a sequel for Star Wars would be really hard to make. Basically, it shat on anyone (yes, this includes George Lucas himself) trying to make a continuation of that happy ending in the future.

You can’t have a story without conflict and chaos, and therefore you can’t have a sequel set in a world that we last saw happy and peaceful without dropping a new horrible menace in the thick of things and letting them run amok. This is the exact same reason why Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, cancelled a sequel to the latter, as he was worried that he would’ve undone the happy ending of his own work.

I’m not being a troll, I’m just pointing out a problem with The Empire Strikes Back that nobody seemingly talks about.