Otherwise, I firmly believe that Return of the Jedi (non-SE) is a classic film in my mind. True, you cannot say that it stands on its own in the same way that ESB did, since ESB left it with so many hanging threads that had to be picked up again and that's certainly not the fault of Jedi. Considering that fact, the movie has many great dramatic moments in my mind, great visuals, and it introduced many new imaginative and beautiful elements. All of those pieces considered together, in my mind, easily allow Jedi to stand as a classic, on its own, forgiving the fact that it carried a lot of baggage.
Sure, ESB is the crowning jewel of the series and SW is also a classic well beyond RotJ, but not all "classic" (a.k.a. enduring) films need to endure on the kind of level. None of the prequels were classics by any stretch, and it offends my sensibilities to see Jedi lumped in with them. Jedi is in a very different league in my opinion.
Again, if I had to guess, the problem a lot of SW/ESB fans have with Jedi is probably the fact that it had a focus to its story that was very different from the earlier two films. In fact, RotJ actually made the more important points of the earlier two films—the physical war itself—take a complete back seat, and I'm sure that pissed off a lot of fans, but for me that is actually the biggest draw when I watch Jedi. Destroying the Death Star and defeating the Empire were not so important in the film, and I liked that. Instead it focused on the internal nature of the characters and showed them maturing.
To make my briefest of comments about the prequels:
I liked Episode I a lot. It wasn't even close to great, nor was it a classic, but it was one very fun and fast paced film to sit and vegetate in front of. All of the weird stuff going on all over the place I found to be very enjoyable. And, to once again refute a point in the article linked above, the characters were no more "elite" than the original SW had elite characters.
Unfortunately, Episode II sucked in every way. The more I see of it, the more I come to dislike every scene in the film. Even the neat battle at the end is really beginning to piss me off. (Oh, and that pathetic CGI Yoda looks like a complete pile of shit. I don't give a damn if he can do more than a traditional puppet if his skin looks like liquid slime. ILM should have hired the guy's who made Gollum for Peter Jackson in his version of The Lord of the Rings. At least they have artistic talent and can make a realistic CGI character.)
And then there was Episode III. In its defense it seemed to try and avoid a number of the problems Episode II had, but a number of those attempts were not even close to successful. It had acting I could at least stomach by comparison (much like Episode I, but still not anything good), and quite a few of the dramatic scenes were very moving. Unfortunately, anything that was moving about Ep. III requires me to remember the OT, otherwise I could care less about what happens to that complete asshole Anakin. Unfortunately, the more I think about the prequels, the more it completely ruins the OT for me, so I decided to stop watching the prequels altogether.
My biggest problem with the prequels is how they focus on Anakin as a main character at all. Before the prequels were ever in production I always thought Obiwan would be the main focus for the first three episodes. He would have been a character in the style of Luke from the OT: young, inexperienced and making honest, yet tragic mistakes. Instead, we get crap for the first three episodes.
That reminds me, the worst back-story elements expanded in the prequels are the "Clone Wars" themselves. When Luke and Obiwan talked about the "wars" they sounded like a long succession of individual wars that involved many different everyday people from around the galaxy. Instead, we get a single war that took place between totally expendable robots and totally expendable clones. I'm now surprised Luke would have thought that anyone would have fought in the clone wars, much less ask if Obiwan ever did. Well, maybe he would have asked Chewbacca since expendable wookies fought in the Clone War (note not "wars"). So disappointing.