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ROTJ is the best Star Wars film... discuss! — Page 16

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I like parts of ROTJ, but to call it the best of the three is crazy talk, man!

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At no point in ROTJ can I imagine this scene :

LUKE : Jabba! this is your last chance, free us or die!

ALIEN LAUGHTER FROM THE BARGE

JABBA : Ho ho ho Put Him In!

THE ALIENS PUSH LUKE INTO THE PIT... LUKE DIES.

I can't imagine old Ben bothering to grandstand like that.

He would do or do not, though I'd like to think he would say something like.

BEN : I'm going to do a bit of rescuing, it might be dangerous. I suggest you all stay out of the way and I'll try not to blow anyone up. Though I'm getting too old for this sort of thing.

He wouldn't even need to that.

The old Jedi mindtrick might not work on Jabba but if Luke had used the voice on everyone in the room it would have trimmed the numbers down a fair whack.

Ben seemed to be more about stealth and only pulling a weapon as a matter of last resort.

He sneaks around the Death Star with relative ease, only Vader stops him.

If Vader really wanted to capture Luke he would have put a spy in Jabba's palace (maybe someone he recently hired) and at the first sign of a Han rescue he'd have gone and claimed the prize.

Instead we get to see Luke waving a big green baseball bat and this : 

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Bingowings said:

To really feel sequences like that jeopardy has to be there.

You can't feel concern for something you have no emotional investment in.

 

I think that's the problem with the PT. Any emotional investment had to be supplied by the viewer because we already knew who the characters were.

We were supposed to care about how Vader came to be because of the OT, not because we actually gave a crap about the characters in the prequels. They didn't earn it. Lucas was so wrapped up all the stuff he couldn't put into the OT (which the films obviously didn't need) that he forgot to make a good film, with interesting characters and performances regardless of if someone likes Star Wars or not.

Another thing that hurts the prequels is that by making dumb story choices like Vader building C3-PO he makes the films smaller in scale. Jedi feels bigger than the PT. The opening of Star Wars feels more epic than the climax of Sith. You really do feel like this is a tiny planet in the middle of nowhere, and the scale of the Star Destroyer and how it's introduced really sells the power of the Empire.

On a more general note, the fact that a film is successful enough for there to be a prequel automatically means it doesn't need one.

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Bingowings said:

I not a wookipeediaphile :-P

Biggs Darklighter. And some of us have known that since 1977, without having to look it up. ;)

I suppose Porkins is nothing more than exploding bearded fat guy to the likes of you!

Where were you in '77?

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I've said it before the PT should have kept Anakin, Obi-Wan and Darth Vader as secondary characters had no Yoda and focused on other people who might still be alive in ANH.

That way you can tell the story of the fall of the Jedi and the Republic but care about the characters under the spotlight.

We probably would have to meet Luke and Leia's mother but it could be vague (until Leia says she died when she was old enough to remember her) which female character she is (Anakin/Vader could have had more than one romantic interlude).

It would also have kept ESB's reveals secret.

I know that's not important to some people but the PT weren't actually sold as 'prequels' but earlier episodes.

So in my book if Episode 1 spoils Episode 4 it fails.

Other Episodes should add to the existing episodes, not take away from them.

Anakin making a droid I can cope with (he doesn't really make one but constructs one using parts from other droids).

If he was a pod racing gladiator slave child he may be allowed certain perks that the other slave kids don't have and his owner might see it as good practice for repairing the pod or working in the shop.

I could almost buy him making one of THE droids to some extent but why Threepio?

Artoo has demonstrated difference, thinking out of the box that sort of thing.

He is more of a brother to Luke than Threepio.

You can even explain his fanatical devotion to Leia's mission as some sort of modchip glitch.

An astrodroid would be more useful for his mum and could help him maintain the pod.

Unless Shmoo has some binary load lifters that need a lesson in which fork to eat Spoo with, Threepio is just going to be a waste of energy.

He has to practically con Owen Lars into buying him in ANH.

Indeed Owen's reluctance to buy the 'blue one' could be some vague subconscious recollection of that Anakin kid with his weird robot pal.

Threepio makes more sense being a royal possession.

Queens need butlers not scrap dealer's slaves.

 

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SilverWook said:

Bingowings said:

I not a wookipeediaphile :-P

Biggs Darklighter. And some of us have known that since 1977, without having to look it up. ;)

I suppose Porkins is nothing more than exploding bearded fat guy to the likes of you!

Biggs isn't in ROTJ... he died.

So did Porkins.

I'm talking the chap with the face fuzz who blows up mid-sneeze after going in the tube with the Falcon.

Bet you don't know his name smartypants.

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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.

VIZ TOP TIPS! - PARENTS. Impress your children by showing them a floppy disk and telling them it’s a 3D model of a save icon.

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The trench run is more dramatic than the tube run because we rapidly get to know almost all the pilots through the clever character ticks I keep mentioning.

Who can forget the "Stay On Target" guy?

They should have put "There's too many of them!" guy down the tube instead of the exploding moustache man.

That way when he is 'hiiiiiiitttt!'  i would care more about the conclusive battle.

Another reason it works better is graphics.

The trench has a direction leading to the target so simple kids like me could draw it.

The genius of Star Wars is in it's instantly recognisable design.

Bad guys fly H shapes where as good guys fly X or Y shapes.

Good pilots wear red... baddies wear black.

The trench is single point perspective at speed.

In Jedi there are too many ship types, too many uniform types, it's just a bit of a jumble.

Exciting but not as iconic as

The tubes have three levels but they are too complicated for the eye to instantly make out. 

We have already had the good guys blowing up reactors two times in Jedi before we get to the Death Star one.

It would have made a refreshing change if Piett had rammed the Death Star with the Executor to save his fleet from the Emperor blowing up Endor.

A giant city sized dart cutting into the exposed (and now unshielded) unfinished side of the station would have been more unexpected than the Rebels blowing up shit again.

It would have looked good too and paved the way to peace talks.

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Bingowings said:

SilverWook said:

Bingowings said:

I not a wookipeediaphile :-P

Biggs Darklighter. And some of us have known that since 1977, without having to look it up. ;)

I suppose Porkins is nothing more than exploding bearded fat guy to the likes of you!

Biggs isn't in ROTJ... he died.

So did Porkins.

I'm talking the chap with the face fuzz who blows up mid-sneeze after going in the tube with the Falcon.

Bet you don't know his name smartypants.

I should know better than to post stuff when I have a migraine. My bad.

Where were you in '77?

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Bingowings said:

 

It would also have kept ESB's reveals secret.

I know that's not important to some people but the PT weren't actually sold as 'prequels' but earlier episodes.

 

I've been vocal about my disagreement with this line of thinking. I've been ignoring these types of comments because, honestly, people aren't going to change their minds. But I just don't see how that statement is true.

Granted, I was born only a few years before TPM was released, so I'm not aware of what sort of things were being said about the prequels during that 16 year gap. What I do know is that each PT film was advertised using as much Vader imagery as possible, i.e. they were sold as prequels. I remember that awesome poster of Anakin with Vader as his shadow; and I'm sure you all do too, it's probably the thing that got your excitement up most. What that ad promised was a prequel. A prequel trilogy was promised to us. Call me crazy, but I thought the whole reason we wanted to see those movies was to find out what happened before. I don't know about you guys, but the prospect of finding out how Anakin became Darth Vader was the single most exciting aspect of those upcoming prequels. People have said on here that ROTS was a fan wank because they showed Anakin turn to the dark side and don the suit. In my mind, it would have been a fan wank if we didn't see that happen.

But I digress. Where are we? "ROTJ is the best Star Wars film"? What? You guys are crazy, I'm out of here. 

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There's too few exploding moustache guys in films nowadays.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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DominicCobb said:

Bingowings said:

 

It would also have kept ESB's reveals secret.

I know that's not important to some people but the PT weren't actually sold as 'prequels' but earlier episodes.

 

I've been vocal about my disagreement with this line of thinking. I've been ignoring these types of comments because, honestly, people aren't going to change their minds. But I just don't see how that statement is true.

Granted, I was born only a few years before TPM was released, so I'm not aware of what sort of things were being said about the prequels during that 16 year gap. What I do know is that each PT film was advertised using as much Vader imagery as possible, i.e. they were sold as prequels. I remember that awesome poster of Anakin with Vader as his shadow; and I'm sure you all do too, it's probably the thing that got your excitement up most. What that ad promised was a prequel. A prequel trilogy was promised to us. Call me crazy, but I thought the whole reason we wanted to see those movies was to find out what happened before. I don't know about you guys, but the prospect of finding out how Anakin became Darth Vader was the single most exciting aspect of those upcoming prequels. People have said on here that ROTS was a fan wank because they showed Anakin turn to the dark side and don the suit. In my mind, it would have been a fan wank if we didn't see that happen.

But I digress. Where are we? "ROTJ is the best Star Wars film"? What? You guys are crazy, I'm out of here. 

I didn't care about story when I first saw Episode 1. It was simply a new Star Wars movie, and an expansion of the Star Wars universe. That was the draw for me as a young teen, not the story of Darth Vader. I already knew that he began as Anakin Skywalker, a hero and the greatest pilot in the galaxy. I didn't need to be shown that stuff or his turn to the Dark Side to be interested in the movies. The reason I lost interest after Episode 2 was because the universe and story seemed so poorly constructed that it couldn't exist alongside the originals, or even Episode 1. If they had just told an original non-Anakin story and made the movie with the same effort that Episode 1 was created with, I would have been happy. I think you only do damage when you tread on people's imaginations.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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CatBus said:

ROTJ had some good moments and I actually enjoy it, but Han and Leia were not the best parts.

Well we can easily say that Han and Liea were pretty much one of the main focus of ESB (if not the main). Whether there is nothing for them in ROTJ is opinion dependant. But anyway, the point is that they certainly became secondary in terms of focus in ROTJ. Partially because Lucas depleted their (romance) potential in ESB and mainly because this film put focus on Luke, Vader and Emperor. That doesn't in any way undermine the film.

Still if you compare Han/Liea roles between ESB and ROTJ from storyline perspective, in ESB they basically had nothing to do. They were just running from the imperial navy for majority of the film, and in the end they served as a bait for Luke. Not a very prominent role (story-wise) I would say. While in ROTJ they at least had some decent role, story-wise of course.

真実

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^Note: NOT Star Wars : The Early Years or Star Wars : The Beginning (rejected placeholder title that it was) BUT Episode I.

In fact throughout the marketing plan of all the PT movies the episode number takes precedence over the title (they didn't appear on any of the OT promotional material until the 2004 DVDs came out).

So this has been the promise to fans since 1980.

The earlier chapters of the book uncle George started reading at Episode IV, yes I know he didn't intend it to call it Episode IV in 1977 but that still leaves 19yrs of anticipation aggravated after being told in 1983 that the show is over (another reason I associate Jedi with bad things... It was almost as bad as finding out Doctor Who wasn't coming back and the last story was Survival).

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imperialscum said:

CatBus said:

ROTJ had some good moments and I actually enjoy it, but Han and Leia were not the best parts.

Well we can easily say that Han and Liea were pretty much one of the main focus of ESB (if not the main).

No it's Luke.

Luke in the Wampa cave, Luke in the Bacta Tank, Luke in the Snowspeeder, Luke being trained, Luke fighting Vader and losing, Luke needing to be rescued by the friends he is meant to be saving.

Everything that happens to the others happens because of Luke or to propel Luke's story.

Vader chases the Falcon because he is convinced Luke is onboard.

Leia, Han etc are tortured because Vader knows Luke will feel it.

The scenes of Leia in distress are because of Luke (and Han rescuing Luke). We fear for Luke from the eyes of his friends.

The one film where Leia is more central is ANH where she is the captured royal ambassador who knows the location of the Rebel base and the station plans and has to be rescued by the farmboy and the pirate.

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TV's Frink said:

I want to see an exploding mustache.

 

Sorry, Frink. It was all I could find.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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Bingowings said:


It would have made a refreshing change if Piett had rammed the Death Star with the Executor to save his fleet from the Emperor blowing up Endor.

A giant city sized dart cutting into the exposed (and now unshielded) unfinished side of the station would have been more unexpected than the Rebels blowing up shit again.

It would have looked good too and paved the way to peace talks.

Really? You prefer the simplicity of the first movie but then you want to break out of the clear black/white/bad/good scheme and introduce a twist like this? C'mon...

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Laserschwert said:

Bingowings said:


It would have made a refreshing change if Piett had rammed the Death Star with the Executor to save his fleet from the Emperor blowing up Endor.

A giant city sized dart cutting into the exposed (and now unshielded) unfinished side of the station would have been more unexpected than the Rebels blowing up shit again.

It would have looked good too and paved the way to peace talks.

Really? You prefer the simplicity of the first movie but then you want to break out of the clear black/white/bad/good scheme and introduce a twist like this? C'mon...

There is a difference between visual simplicity and intellectual simplicity.

The thrust of the piece is about redemptive acts, (bad people being made bad by life not born bad) so such an ending would be keeping up with the ideas of that episode and visually simple (an arrow plunging into a rotten apple).

The series has never been about black hat/white hat simplistic notions of good and evil.

Han is a criminal, the Rebels are violent insurgents (Vader believes them to be traitors).

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Bingowings said:

imperialscum said:

CatBus said:

ROTJ had some good moments and I actually enjoy it, but Han and Leia were not the best parts.

Well we can easily say that Han and Liea were pretty much one of the main focus of ESB (if not the main).

No it's Luke.

Luke in the Wampa cave, Luke in the Bacta Tank, Luke in the Snowspeeder, Luke being trained, Luke fighting Vader and losing, Luke needing to be rescued by the friends he is meant to be saving.

Everything that happens to the others happens because of Luke or to propel Luke's story.

Vader chases the Falcon because he is convinced Luke is onboard.

Leia, Han etc are tortured because Vader knows Luke will feel it.

The scenes of Leia in distress are because of Luke (and Han rescuing Luke). We fear for Luke from the eyes of his friends.

The one film where Leia is more central is ANH where she is the captured royal ambassador who knows the location of the Rebel base and the station plans and has to be rescued by the farmboy and the pirate.

That is just a confirmation of what I said in the second paragraph. Han and Liea had (story-wise) no real role in ESB. At least in ROTJ they had some purpose/role in the alliance plans. So the argument that some people bring up (that is that Han and Leia had nothing to do in ROTJ, but they had in ESB) is just dumb.

What I wanted to say in my first paragraph was that Han and Leia character development had a considerable focus in ESB (but not story-wise focus). Probably as much as Luke's character development.

真実

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msycamore said:

TV's Frink said:

I want to see an exploding mustache.

 

Sorry, Frink. It was all I could find.

Ooh, I can't wait for that fuse to burn down...

 

...

 

...

 

*rubs hands together*

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imperialscum said:That is just a confirmation of what I said in the second paragraph. Han and Liea had (story-wise) no real role in ESB. At least in ROTJ they had some purpose/role in the alliance plans. So the argument that some people bring up (that is that Han and Leia had nothing to do in ROTJ, but they had in ESB) is just dumb.

What I wanted to say in my first paragraph was that Han and Leia character development had a considerable focus in ESB (but not story-wise focus). Probably as much as Luke's character development.

No it proves they have a vital role in ESB that is missing in ROTJ.

Framing the hero's quest, giving it context.

As I said earlier Mark does everything right in ROTJ his performance is every bit as good as it is in the other films.

It's wasted because his performance is divorced from the context of the other characters.

It only really takes off in the presence of Ian who seems to actually care about what he is doing even in the PT.