skyjedi2005 said:
He knows kids don't want to see the hero die.

And that is why Return feels, to me, out of place in the trilogy (and why I wanted to walk out of the theater in 83). It's a full-on children's film. Star Wars was a serious science fiction\outer space adventure. Return isn't even remotely serious. It's comedy & cute stuffed animal marketing tie-ins.

In Star Wars, Luke's aunt & uncle are killed (complete with close up of the burned bodies), his mentor is killed, the princess is tortured & her family killed, and Luke's best friend is killed. Star Wars isn't a children's film. Lucas moved away from the seriousness almost as soon as the franchise got going. Even Empire shows signs of the comedy\cute feel that was fully realized in Return.

Deckard2 said:
ROTJ feels like all of the main actors are winking at the camera and not really taking the movie seriously.

It definitely feels that way to me, and it's not at all surprising. If the story is no longer serious, why would the actors have even bothered with trying to continue playing the characters seriously?

For me - if a science fiction story starts out like this;

...then there's no way it can successfully morph into this:

As a 15-year-old who sat in the theater in 1977 (at least once a week) and was very moved by Star Wars, the series' transition to children's bed time story was a transition I wasn't able to make.