I guess since I’m one of the few people on this website who doesn’t hate TROS, I should just shut up. But I recommend that a lot of the hardcore haters should try and watch it again. If you’ve already watched it twice or more, but still hate it, then I understand.
I loved TROS. It was a bizarre experience because I went in with scant expectations. I was happy to enjoy it simply for being Star Wars, but I certainly didn’t expect to feel how I felt.
I’ve said this here before (to uproarious chuckles I’m sure!) but this is/was the first SW film I’d genuinely enjoyed unreservedly since TESB. As the end credits rolled I was like “holy s**t - I really liked that!”. I went a couple more times expecting the spell to dissipate, but it didn’t.
I get why people hate it. As a piece of canon it’s absurd, and the lack of planning with the ST is painfully apparent. Plus it’s a rip-off of ROTJ, so of course most ROTJ fans are going to be rightly offended.
I don’t quite know why my canon-brain went this way, but I enjoyed TROS in complete isolation from post-TESB movies. It’s as if I’d been in exile since 1980, come back to civilisation, and watched TROS without having seen it’s post-1980 predecessors. The Emperor in TROS was, to me, the creepy dude with the monkey eyes in unaltered TESB. As an addendum to our ROTJ conversation a few days back, I have to say that TROS was the ‘Revenge Of the Jedi’ I was expecting/anticipating back in '83.