NeverarGreat said:
Ryan McAvoy said:
Okay here are some unarguable facts about ROTJ...
- It has the best freaky alien creatures: Jabba, Bib, Ackbar, Salicious, Nunb etc. Nothing in the Cantina comes close and the Wampa was so bad it couldn't even be shown. The best ESB could muster is a blatant sock puppet in a hole.
- It's got the best use of the Falcon. Without the Falcon kickin' ass as the Rebel lead fighter in the battle of Endor it wouldn't be half as iconic. The camera work on the Falcon in ESB pales next to Jedi and the Falcon in ANH barely moves.
- It's got the most 'scale' of the three. Epic locations, epic battles and a huge cast of diverse background characters.
There are other points I'd be tempted to make, such as it has the best pacing but I'll admit that that could be argued against. F*ck it! It does! The opening to ANH is painfully slow and ESB is very static in the middle (Asteroid interlude while Luke is jogging round a swamp). Jedi's pace never lets up! xD
As I said (Apart from the last one) the above points are unarguable facts but let the argueing commence anyway...
I'll argue with these points...
-ESB has Yoda. This is one of the best characters in Star Wars, and he's a freaky alien creature. This is far better than the "blatant sock puppet in a hole".
-The Falcon flies around in ROTJ quite a bit, but we never see the interior like we did before, and when we do it looks more lifeless than it did in ESB. I remember hearing somewhere (perhaps here!) that the scene where the Falcon escapes from Hoth makes this ship into a real character, and this scene has two of my favorite aspects of this ship in it: the hidden machine gun, and its propensity to power failure unless given a well-aimed punch. In ROTJ it's relegated to merely a spaceship again instead of a character.
-It's been addressed, but ROTJ doesn't have the best locations. It just doesn't. Battles and characters perhaps, but not new locations.
-Yeah, not going to get into this one.
I didn't mention Yoda as he's not unique to ESB, but yes he's a great character, the best non-human in the saga. My general point about it having the best creatures overall still stands.
Good point about the character of the Falcon. I'd argue that it's the mixture of the "Piece of junk" and the "Fastest ship in the fleet" aspects that make it what it is. We love it because it is both the rust bucket that keeps breaking down in ESB and it's the awesome weapon we see in ROTJ.
You could say that Bespin and Dagobah are the only distinct locations (Various grey Imperial facilities aside) that we ever see in the OT. Tatooine is just a desert, Hoth is just snow and Endor is just a forest. That's what gives it the realism that the PT lacks. But in ROTJ Tatooine looks so much grander than it does in ANH and the huge Sequoias on Endor give it scale.
I didn't actually say ROTJ had the best locations (ESB does for the two reasons I just said) but they do look epic in scale. Scale is a difficult one to argue, you either feel it or you don't I guess. But I'd point to equivelant scenes like: the Dianoga from ANH versus the Rancor from ROTJ or the thermal-exhaust-port from ANH versus the giant DS2 reactor chamber.