from a story telling point of view, which is how I usually view these movies anyways, Empire takes the cake. Empire fleshed out the characters and made them seem very much like people we could come in contact with minus all the costumes and lightsabers and breathing masks. The personallities seemed as such that I could know someone like that. Irvan did an awesome job giving the story a real depth and graininess. The original follows very closely. Yes, it did introduce the characters, I'll give you that, but something about them was a little unrealistic personality-wise. Overall, I like the OT because the acting and the stories flow alot better than they did in the prequels. Also, something you don't see in the prequels are moments that I call "breathers" these are breif moments where the film rests a bit to allow the audience some peace and so they can digest everything thus far. ROTS was close on this count but not close enough.