Unpopular Opinion Thread — Page 30

I’m incredibly disillusioned by Return of the Jedi. I feel like it should have been deeper and more complex than Empire, and darker still. There are elements of it there Luke wearing all black, being tempted to the dark side. But it is also way too light and silly. I feel like Lucas wanted to do the first film again but bigger, with another death star a bigger battle, way more monsters in Jabba’s little kingdom than in the Cantina. I have similar problems with Indiana Jones the Last Crusade, having a lighter more comedic style and derivative of Raiders. and the complete misuse of Sallah and Marcus, and the complete lack of verisimilitude. Some really very bad and obvious model shots.

Like in Return of the Jedi the matte painting standing in for a real set that looks fake even on laserdisc. The Millennium Falcon behind Lando is so atrocious, why didn’t they build it out as a physical model?

Fundamentally flawed though TROS may be, I do think it has a fantastic space opera vibe that’s been absent since the OT (other stuff like Rebels notwithstanding.) I also appreciate the sense of scale, with them visiting like 10 different planets. It may contribute to the rushed narrative, but it really feels like there’s an entire big galaxy out there.

JadedSkywalker said:

I’m incredibly disillusioned by Return of the Jedi. I feel like it should have been deeper and more complex than Empire, and darker still. There are elements of it there Luke wearing all black, being tempted to the dark side. But it is also way too light and silly. I feel like Lucas wanted to do the first film again but bigger, with another death star a bigger battle, way more monsters in Jabba’s little kingdom than in the Cantina. I have similar problems with Indiana Jones the Last Crusade, having a lighter more comedic style and derivative of Raiders. and the complete misuse of Sallah and Marcus, and the complete lack of verisimilitude. Some really very bad and obvious model shots.

Like in Return of the Jedi the matte painting standing in for a real set that looks fake even on laserdisc. The Millennium Falcon behind Lando is so atrocious, why didn’t they build it out as a physical model?

I feel like ROTJ and the Last Crusade have a similar special effects problem where they had to create a lot more sequences but without more time to perfect them, so there are bad blue screens, matte paintings etc.

JadedSkywalker said:

Like in Return of the Jedi the matte painting standing in for a real set that looks fake even on laserdisc. The Millennium Falcon behind Lando is so atrocious, why didn’t they build it out as a physical model?

And to think that they effectively built a physical full size model of the Millennium Falcon for Return of the Jedi, used it for only one scene (the infamous sand storm scene) and then they cut that scene from the final film!

It seems that ROTJ not being a very good movie is slowly becoming not an unpopular opinion?

Z6PO said:

It seems that ROTJ not being a very good movie is slowly becoming not an unpopular opinion?

It has inched closer and closer to that over the past decade. This realization was partly born out of the more analytical side of the prequel backlash, re-examining the “Ewok movie” and realizing it wasn’t as good as remembered. I’ve got no problem with the Ewoks, it’s more that I find the Jabba’s Palace set piece painfully slow and too isolated from the rest of the movie.

My awakening to ROTJ not being as good was watching 4K83. Divorced from all the Special Edition changes and subpar mastering, the cinematography looked bland (my biggest issue) and the pacing felt off. It doesn’t live up to ANH and ESB, but it’s still a more satisfying trilogy finale than many.

ROTJ is a rare case in that there are just so many things fundamentally wrong with it (the Jabba sequence is disconnected from the rest of the movie, the whole Endor sequence is bland and poorly-paced, the main characters are given arbitrary leadership roles that don’t suit their previous story-arcs), but at the same time there’s just so many things that are awesome about it: the space battle over Endor, the confrontation between Luke, Vader and the Emperor, and one of the most poignant and perfect endings in movie history.

Channel72 said:

the main characters are given arbitrary leadership roles that don’t suit their previous story-arcs

Lando being promoted to General in no time sticks out like a sore thumb.

fmalover said:

Channel72 said:

the main characters are given arbitrary leadership roles that don’t suit their previous story-arcs

Lando being promoted to General in no time sticks out like a sore thumb.

Just throw in a line about the “battle of Taneb” or whatever and I’m sure the audience will buy it.

Seriously though, it’s not just Lando. Why are Han and Leia specifically leading the Endor ground team? They’ve never been established as “Seal team 6” commando types, and really this is something that ANY high-ranking rebel leader could do. It doesn’t utilize Leia’s diplomacy skills or Han’s smuggling skills. Not to mention, from the perspective of the Rebellion leadership, Han was last seen trying to leave the Rebellion to go pay off Jabba, and then spent the next year MIA frozen in carbonite. And now they’re putting him in charge of this super-critical mission? The overall problem is that ROTJ is the first time in Star Wars where the main characters’ involvement in the main story (at least after Act 1) seems contrived and unnatural.

Mocata said:
I feel like ROTJ and the Last Crusade have a similar special effects problem where they had to create a lot more sequences but without more time to perfect them, so there are bad blue screens, matte paintings etc.

Well ILM was very busy in 1989 so busy they couldn’t do Star Trek V even though they wanted to. Busy with Indiana Jones 3, Ghostbusters 2, The Abyss, Back to the Future II.

The only problem i see on JEDI is Howard Kazanjian wanting to remain on budget per George Lucas and a time crunch. And them wanting to strike sets because they didn’t have enough space to build them all and keep them all up. There is also a more documentary approach to it, not trying multiple takes to get a shot perfect, a quick and dirty if you will mentality. I believe Marquand even said Empire was too sexy and stately and Shakepearean. And he was more in line with how George made Star Wars the original, get a shot down move on, fix it in post/editing or reshoots.

I think even the camera they bought and cinematography is second rate to the first two which were shot on Panavision. They had to rent them George wanted to buy a camera to keep costs down, they bought an Arriflex.

Some fans think the Had Addadon scenes and the Wookiee planet staying in would save it, and I too used to like that idea but Return of the Jedi’s problems are all in the screenplay story Lucas wrote, and all the ways he wanted to quickly tie everything up and close the book on Star Wars. Because he really had no intention at the time to make anymore Star Wars films, his marriage had broken up, he quit directing. He really consigned himself to being chairman of the board of Lucasfilm, sort of like Walt Disney corporate type rather than an artist.

I don’t generally agree with Larry Kasdan or Gary Kurtz on killing Han, or even on the idea of Gary’s about Leia becoming Queen of her people. Or his dislike for Raiders of the Lost Ark. But some of what he said had merit why revisit another Death Star, but i do agree on principle that ROTJ has no stakes and is listless. I feel like what was set up in Empire Vader tempting Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor was a plot line poorly used in JEDI, or was it dropped completely? Honestly that and Leia being the sister, the love triangle being dropped kind of piss me off.

JadedSkywalker said:

I feel like what was set up in Empire Vader tempting Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor was a plot line poorly used in JEDI, or was it dropped completely?

It feels like it was basically dropped completely. From a certain perspective, you can argue that Luke and Vader DID actually team up to defeat the Emperor - but that’s obviously missing the point. When Luke turns himself in on Endor, Vader and Luke have a brief discussion. The subject of overthrowing the Emperor is never brought up for some reason. Vader seems to feel at this point that he has no choice but to turn Luke over to his boss.

Vader’s potential disloyalty to his master is only briefly explored with a single line of dialogue, in the scene where Palpatine tells Vader that Luke will willingly turn himself in. Palpatine asks Vader “Are you sure your feelings on this matter are clear?” (meaning, are you sure you won’t fuck me over and side with your son?) But other than that, it’s never explored. The plot mechanics kind of set things up so that Vader is backed into a corner and has no choice to turn Luke over to the Emperor once Luke turns himself in. It’s really very unsatisfactory in light of what was set up in Empire Strikes Back.

It does seem like there’s a bit of a missed opportunity in “Return of the Jedi” when it comes to Vader’s loyalty and potential conflict with the Emperor. That scene on Endor where Luke turns himself in could’ve been a perfect moment to dive into Vader’s inner turmoil, but it feels like they kind of breeze over it, right?

And that line from Palpatine about Vader’s feelings? It’s like, okay, we get it, there’s some tension there, but then they just move on. It’s definitely one of those moments where you’re left wanting more depth and exploration, especially after the setup in “The Empire Strikes Back.”

SparkySywer said:

Vladius said:

The line “once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny” is also misinterpreted. Yoda isn’t saying literally any time you get angry or use the Force in anger, you’re beyond hope or redemption. … The consequences of your actions will still be there.

I don’t agree. The full line is “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will! As it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”

Specifically look at Yoda’s usage of the word “consume”. Your actions and your decision making will eventually be completely affected by the dark side. It isn’t just that your life is marred by the consequences of your actions, although it is that too, he’s saying that you can’t just dip your toes in the dark side. It’s something that’ll pull you further and further in.

After Return of the Jedi, there’s irony in referring to Darth Vader because he does return to the light. But Darth Vader is, at this point in the story, fully committed to evil. Yoda brings him up to emphasize that once you turn to the dark side, you inevitably become like Darth Vader.

I’ve ranted about this many times before, but Yoda and Obi Wan were not telling Luke to kill Vader.

Luke: “I can’t kill my own father.”

Obi-Wan: “Then the Emperor has already won.”

Yes, and Yoda was right.

I addressed that already. Obi Wan is saying that Luke has to be willing to kill Vader, but he’s not sending him to kill Vader, as that would be pointless. The word they use is confront. I already posted this somewhere else but there’s a quote from one of the Timothy Zahn books where Luke talks about this, he says that he assumed that when they told him to confront Vader that that meant he would have to kill him, but that was wrong and that wasn’t necessarily what they meant. Not that that is Disney canon or G canon, but it shows that before the prequels that was the normal interpretation.

This is probably an unpopular opinion now. Return of the Jedi is way better than people think it is and most of their complaints are illegitimate. The Jabba sequence introduces Luke as an almost-complete Jedi, redeems Lando, and rescues Han, simultaneously resolving things that happened during the previous two movies and setting up the rest of this movie. The “pacing issues” of Endor are not really issues at all. No one complains about the early scenes of C3PO and R2D2 wandering around in the desert and getting captured by jawas in the original Star Wars, even though those scenes are even slower, because it just isn’t a problem unless you’re used to the cracked out modern editing of current movies.
The ewoks are fine and also not that different from jawas or ugnaughts. They show the Empire’s hubris, overlooking things they consider small or insignificant. They serve mainly as a distraction to pull the imperial troops into the forest away from the bunker, and the battle is only won because Han, Leia, and Chewie are crack shots and they have elite rebel troops to hold the bunker. If there’s one change I would make, it would be to just add more shots of the rebel soldiers doing more of the fighting.
The second death star is fine and the insanely good space battle and throne room scenes (both still never topped after 40 years of trying) wouldn’t be the same without it.
Leia being Luke’s sister is awkward but… so what? It’s funny and it’s a meme, but that’s it.
I understand that people love to complain because I also love to complain, but every time it comes up the Return of the Jedi criticisms are just unnecessarily cynical for no reason.

NFBisms said:

Vladius said:

Unpopular opinion - I don’t like their depiction, but as depicted in the movies, the prequel Jedi that people call “dogmatic,” “flawed,” “political,” “cold,” etc. were right about a lot of things.

They can be right and still be all of those things.

I’m saying that the things that they’re getting criticized for and called those things for, are things they were right about. Not in a realpolitik sense or whatever you’re thinking of, but just in terms of common sense and what is actually depicted in the movies.

New unpopular opinion - Rise of Skywalker is the best of the sequels and it’s not even close.

Vladius said:

New unpopular opinion - Rise of Skywalker is the best of the sequels and it’s not even close.

Agreed. The general vibe is great, it comes the closest by far to capturing the feel of SW.

Vladius said:

The second death star is fine and the insanely good space battle and throne room scenes (both still never topped after 40 years of trying) wouldn’t be the same without it.

Agreed. The battle of Endor still hasn’t really been topped.

ROTJ has some amazing stuff in it, especially the throne room and Endor space battle. I don’t mind the Death Star 2 either.

Still I think ROTJ has more flaws than the other OT movies. I don’t like how the Jabba sequence is disconnected from the rest of the film, in the sense that nothing in Act I directly causes or leads into the events of Act II (apart from the very broad fact that Han is now around). This is a subjective complaint; most people probably don’t mind. For most of my life I didn’t mind either. But after I started to appreciate how tightly written both ANH and ESB are in terms of Event A leading to Event B, the script for ROTJ seems structurally flawed to me.

The middle act in the Endor forest also really stalls the film, particularly after they meet the Ewoks. For me, the scenes in ANH where C3PO and R2D2 slowly wander across the desert are actually very interesting because Tatooine seems like this mysterious, alien place, and the Jawas as alien tech scavengers are an interesting and creative concept. But Endor is just so mundane - the California redwood forest, while theoretically beautiful, comes off as aggressively bland and often feels like a fan-fiction location. Way too much time is devoted to the Ewoks capturing our heroes, the gimmick with C3PO as their deity, etc. I think the whole Endor sequence really needed to be streamlined and made a bit more visually interesting - perhaps a better cinematographer would have helped. And yeah, the Rebel commandos really needed more screen-time and involvement in the battle.

I hate Star Wars becoming the Saga of Darth Vader rather than the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, I hate Luke being supplanted and replaced by Vader becoming the lead character. We are supposed to root for a wife killer and child murderer is that it?

Lucas totally lost his sense on the prequel, virgin birth, chosen one prophecy, rules on attachment, midichlorians, Whills, how can people take any of that at face value.

He destroyed Star Wars there was nothing left for Disney to destroy.

I do like Qui-Gon, I like the living force and cosmic force, I have long defended enjoying Phantom Menace as a guilty pleasure, but I still don’t get the trade federation what Sidious plan even was, and midichlorians.

I guess I am dumb because other than really liking the podrace and duel of the fates, or Padme undercover as a handmaiden, the Gungan’s underwater city it doesn’t really make sense. I haven’t really sat down and watched II AND III yet in a long while so I can’t really comment on them except from memory.

I actually like aspects of the prequels but I’m just super critical of them. Because I feel like with more natural dialog and better acting they would be better. I’ve softened on them a great deal I don’t hate II AND III like I did, those old threads of prequel hate are cringy as hell, I can only apologize and say I was just a stupid kid. I won’t take back attacking Lucas over suppressing the original though, I think despite overly done vitriol he deserves to be called out.

I would like to actually read George Lucas pre Phantom Menace outline because based on what he said story wise it sounded better. Anakin secretly being Vader and the assassin working for Palpatine taking out the Jedi, that sounds absolutely brilliant.