StormtroopersAreBetter said:1. Mon Mothma's speech about the Death Star II and the shield generator is pretty unconvincing. She looks like she's reading from giant cue cards off-screen and I don't think someone can be so emotionless when saying "Many Bothans died to bring us this information." :/ But that's just me.
2. I get a bit annoyed with the emperor's voice when he says: "Oh, I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive." (And I can't believe he underestimated the Rebels by that much. First, they managed to evade everyone on the first DS by taking back Leia and then they blew it up!)
3. How could Luke withstand all that electricity coarsing through his body, courtesy of Palpy? I don't get very annoyed with this one... maybe I can come up with some lame fanboy excuse?... Maybe Darth Vader used the Force to protect Luke from most of the emperor's Force lightning? :p
That's it... and no Ewoks in sight. I've always been one of those people who defend the Ewok vs. the Empire battle scene.
Now... do any of you have little annoyances with ROTJ or maybe any other OT film?
Huh, I do recongnize some of the many flaws in the film, but I don't make a huge deal about them. The Ewoks were a lame idea, and that is really my biggest issue. Not so much the idea of the Ewoks, but the fact that they are using rocks to kill trained soldiers wearing armor. A rock to the head from a sling could easily kill someone, no doubt about it, but through a hard helmet? That is most of what bugs me. I have nothing personally against the Ewoks themselves. In fact, I think they're some damn fine aliens.
Oddly, none of the things you mentioned ever bothered me in the slithest, or even crossed my mind as flaws. In reverse order, the Emperor's lightning isn't suppose to be high voltage, bolts of eletricity from the sky type lightning. It is a Force power, and doesn't necessarily do the same kind of damage as electricity, and if it does, it doesn't necessarily have to be a really high voltage, perhaps the Force user can even increase and decrease the intensity of it. Obviously the Emperor wanted to watch Luke squirm for a while, rather than kill him quickly.
Hubris. The obvious intent of the Emporer's lines about the deflector field was to show his hubris. It is just that much more fun to watch a movie villain meet his fate when he has show himself to be overconfident in his sure fire plan. Also, the idea was that the Emperor allowed fake information to be leaked to the Bothan spies, so the Rebels planned this thing thinking that the Deathstar was a sitting duck, when it was actually fully operational. In the first film, they stole the plans, discovered the one tiny weak spot, and went after it, if it hadn't been for Luke's force ability to help him make that shot, they would have failed. All of that was out of the Empire's hands, but in ROTJ, the whole thing was planned by the Empire as a trap to lure the Rebels in and finish them off.
As for Mon Mothma, they were only Bothans. Have you seen pictures of Bothans? They look kind of like a cross between a llama and a dog. Hard to feel sympathy for such ugly creatures... okay, so that probably wasn't the reason. I think it is just the way the actress played the part. Not to mention this is a war they are fighting, and it has been going on for sometime. We are talking about a handful of Bothans having died, that sucks, but there are plenty of other people who died in this war too. Any soldier knows that the time to mourn is after the battle, not during. You can't be overly emotional in such situations and still expect good results. You could toss the same "fault" on the first Star Wars movie with Luke not showing more distress at having just seen one of his lifelong friends (Biggs) blown to bits. Those Bothans died to bring the plans to the Rebels, and she was carrying out her duty to them. Their deaths would have been in vain if the Rebel's mission failed. And to me her voice does so kind of mournful.
EDIT: Davenes totally outdrew me, and managed to communicate the exact same thing in a fraction of the word count.