Vaderisnothayden said:
For a look at what the official interpretation of ROTJ's ending was back in 83, take a look at the last lines of the ROTJ novelization. It says "The Empire was dead. Long live the Alliance." There you have it.

The nature of the scenes at the end of ROTJ gives a clear emotional message that the war is over and the empire is done. If you get bogged down in the logic and try to think of Star Wars as if it was meant to be realistic then you'll blind yourself to that emotional message. Baronlando got it right -it's a fairytale ending. Star Wars is a fairytale, not realistic science fiction.

In the original film, the intention is that the empire is over and that's the real story as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not 100% sure I agree. They're celebrating, and really happy, but they celebrated and were happy at the end of 'Star Wars' also. Unless we're counting the novelizations as the same as the movie, which I don't. They're EU too, to me.

Endor was a major victory, a pivotal victory, but they never say in the movie it HAS to be the final victory. Mon Mothma doesn't say 'If we win this, it's over.' Alternatly, I see no reason to insist the Empire, or some form of it, would continue, but I also don't see any die hard reason in the movie to maintain that all the fighting is over.