Bingowings said:
I don't hate it.
It has some nice moments and Mark is perfect.
Some of the special effects are amazing even now (others are really awful).
It did play out as the contractual obligation episode of the OT and now it points to the direction that PT would later follow.
The plot frequently makes no sense (Luke's Han rescue plan makes as much sense as the Clone mystery in AOTC and succeeds largely because it had to succeed because it's in the beginning of the film rather than any part of the plan itself).
The problem with the Ewoks isn't the Ewoks themselves but the way they are portrayed.
They never come across as small, furry alien people and always seem like small humans in costume.
The Galactic Empire shrinks from a large hierarchically structured junta ruling thousands of star systems backed with thousands of heavily armed starships and trillions of troops to two old men and a few dozen ships hiding behind one superweapon idea. All it takes is one of them to throw the other down a convenient placed hole in the floor and the whole thing falls apart.
If with a bit of modification Return Of The Jedi was Episode IX and it showed the desperate last gasp of an already collapsing Empire it would make more sense.
Lucas just fell out of love with Star Wars and wanted it over and done with and it shows in the rather cheap looking recycled feel of ROTJ.
I don't think he fell back in love with it with the PT but he missed the money and technological advances meant he could make three more films to sell and keep on selling on a lower than the Hollywood norm budget.
That said, it is fascinating that there is much in ROTJ and the PT that is still enjoyable and visually interesting.
If there had been more love and attention paid to the core of those films (the story and the characters) they could have been as good as the first two and have cost just the same amount.
The only way that they can be made to work is to take them to pieces and reassemble them into largely brand new films.
I still want the theatrical presentations of all six Star Wars films officially restored and available because of their place in cinema history but in terms of enjoyment ROTJ:SE fails as much because of the changes it doesn't make (to make the story and performances make more sense and fix the broken tone) as much as the changes that bugger up the few things that did originally work.
Nice post. A bit depressing but hey, nearly everyone has to admit it has major problems even if they love it to death. The part of your post that I made bold made me remember something really embarrassing. Yes you are absolutely right: when they are on film/video at least. As a naive 8 year old I saw my first picture of an ewok:
You can't say this always looked like a small human to everyone because I was convinced it was a dog trained to stand, with some kind of godawful fur and latex enhancements! I was a bit freaked out to be honest. Chewie, naturally - big guy in a suit. But even though I had seen Wizard of Oz the thought of little humans never occurred to me until I saw them move :P