S_Matt said:

danny_boy said:

As for Jedi:

We had the Rancour eating a gamorean guard,Jabba being strangled by Leia, Implied murder of Botham spies,Ewoks being killed(Ok not on any grand scale),the death of Yoda which is as touching as anything seen in any of the 3 films and the bad guy ultimately dying (both Vader and Palpatine).

So there is stuff there.

I do have to agree with Anchorhead that the films did kind of shift in tone and that kind of does hurt the continuity of something intended to be a single story split into different chapters.

It is a tough question to address.

I saw Jedi when it opened in may 83'.

I then went to watch all 3 films in one evening in August 83'.

That was here in cambridge, UK. I understand that US audiences had to wait until 1985 before they showed all 3 films together .

Again , in terms of personal cinematic experiences,nothing else comes close.

Even then at the age of 9 I could detect those shifts in tone.

But in my opinion those shifts complement each other adding enough diversity ,both aesthetically and tonally to keep you interested.

In my opinion,The Lord Of The Rings or The Matrix trilogies have no where near as much variety(I like those trilogies too BTW!)--probably because they were filmed at the same time.

Filming the SW films separately actually helped.

Mark Hamill's performances as Luke are quite distinct from film to film reflecting the predicament and evolution of the character.

Does Elijah Wood's Frodo or Keanu Reeve's Neo have the same variety in their respective character's arc?

In my opinion no,but that is my opinion!

p.s

I thought it was quite cool seeing Neo get blinded and Frodo being intoxicated by the ring's power.

But Luke's journey is more engrossing.