Vaderisnothayden said: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.
The celebration at the end of Star Wars was of a different kind with a different tone. The ROTJ celebration was an end-of-the-war it's-all-over we-don't-have-to-worry-about-the-future kind of celebration.
In other words, it was just like an Obama supporter's "Yes We Did!" victory party. The next day they wake up, take a look around, down a few pills for their hang over, and say, "What the fu... the stock market is still down? I don't get it? What went wrong?" Only in this case, they wake up next morning, down a few pills for there hang over, and realize, "My goodness, seems the Empire is still around! What do ya have to do to get rid of a damn Empire around here?"
Either way, this argument is going on for a humorously long period of time. Since nobody Vaderisnohayden knew back in the eighties felt that there was a slim possibility of the Empire surviving such a loss, the rest of us who were around in the eighties are obviously wrong. Besides, Marvel comics and the guy they commissioned to write the novel say so too.
Essentially, Star Wars had the same, "good guys win, bad guys lose, and they all live happily ever after kind of ending to it. At the time it was filmed, a sequel was uncertain, had that been the first and last Star Wars film, we very well could be having the exact same argument now. They threw all their forces into it, a do or die last ditch effort, had they lost the Rebellion would have been finished and the Empire unstoppable. They destroy the Death Star along with the great Grand Moff Tarkin, the Empire is no doubt in a great deal of trouble, in the supposedly illogical and overly simplistic universe of Star Wars, it is very likely that it couldn't possibly go on after such a defeat...
I am not saying the end of ROTJ was beyond a doubt not the end of the Empire, I am just saying it was left open enough where it could have gone either way, it never felt like it was written in stone. Obviously, with the SE, George indicates that he intended it to be the immediate end of the Empire, but George intended a lot of faggy things. He also approved and made lots money off of many books that contradicted his intentions of a magical spontaniously ending Empire.
Personally, I'd prefer to go with the more reasonable idea that it didn't end there, just as I personally like to remember a Sarlacc that looked like a giant snatch rather than a Venus fly trap, a Luke who falls to his presumed death without screaming like a pansy, a Threepio that was part of an assembly line rathet than build by a nine year old, and a wise old sage-like Yoda who doesn't spaz out and do crazy acrobatics and fight with a half length lightsaber.