Since when did ROTJ become less highly regarded than even Episodes II or III? — Page 5

1990osu said:

Jaitea said:

At the closing of Empire Luke agrees to meet Lando on Tatooine, it seems to be knowledge to them & the audience that Fett is taking Solo to Jabba....so a year looking for Solo doesn't sound right.

About Jabba...people who complain about ROTJ talk badly about the Jabba part, saying the Jabba rescue takes up half the movie. 

 

That maybe true, but it is GOOD so it's worth it.  Jabba the Hutt is a GOOD character. 

 

"Ho ho ho ho".  He's like an evil Santa Claus!  This is why ROTJ is a genius movie.

I don't mind it taking up about a third of the movie.

I do mind the escape plan making no sense, the cartoonish characters (which were there long before George got his CGI scribble pen out) and the comedy torture scene, and the Sarlacc just being a toothy hole in the ground, the SE should have made it a chained up sandworm off Dune (it's too late to back off now we all know it's a Dune rip-off/loving homage in the same period as the Lynch film).

And air swim

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

and the emperor's plan to turn Luke makes little sense (particularly since he is telling Luke his plan).

^Exactly.  I can understand the dissatisfaction with the infiltration of Jabba's palace, but the Emperor's plan was executed precisely as it should have been.  The movie is imperfect, but that was among its best aspects IMO.

To me it did seem like a bit of a stretch that the Emperor's plan would have been close to working, I couldn't say that it was because he was telling Luke the plan or what.  For what it's worth, Luke looking at his mechanical hand then Vader's stump was a cool bit that helped sell the whole scene and I don't have a huge problem with how they played Luke's struggle.  But yeah it could have been better for sure.  At least it was way more convincing than Ep III.

But it does make it seem like the plan wasn't really perfectly orchestrated when the thing that almost brought Luke over was anger over the potential of them turning Leia.  Which neither Vader nor the Emperor knew anything about her being his sister until just then.

I probably like RotJ equally as much as Star Wars and ESB, and nostalgia does play a bit in that.  Like someone earlier said, there are lots of "goosebump" moments for me, probably more than the other 2.  Funeral pyre, Vader saving Luke, the Falcon coming out of the central Death Star core with the explosion in the background, the fleet going to light speed, Luke taking down the speeder with a lightsaber.  Those stand out to me more than the poor effects stick out.

Still, I do wish the tone overall was a bit darker and less campy.  More scenes of rebel commandos getting it done and a bit less ewoks.  And there could have been more of a sense of desperation in the end battles if some rebels died who got to say more than one line.  Like the space battle was an awesome spectacle but it felt like you're along for the ride, but not on the edge of your seat.  Even though hundreds or thousands of rebels died you didn't really feel for them.  Compared to the trench run in Star Wars, you got to know the pilots a little bit and it felt more and more hopeless when each one died.  Maybe they should have made it Wedge who was hit and crashed into the super star destroyer.  That would have had an impact.

They already knew from Cloud City that Luke's attachment to his friends was his small thermal exhaust port.

Finding out about Leia was a bonus for them.

I doubt if either Vader or Palpatine would plan to target the moon if they knew that Sith Apprentice Plan B was walking around down there.  

As I've argued elsewhere George seems to be a fan of all early talkie tropes, including travelogue film series like Tarzan (Chewie's fourth wall breaking yodel is illustrative).

The Ewoks are the Star Wars version of the cannibal African tribesman that nobody would be able to get away with now in much the same way that Jar-Jar is Stepin Fetchit but at least the Ewoks are so obscured by their appearance and their language that they almost get away with it.

I personally would have played against their cute appearance.

Maybe another in another reworking those teddy bears will have shark teeth.

Forgive me for tooting my own horn, and I can't really take credit for it either, but the very rough ROTJ edit found in my links includes slightly tougher Ewoks, including implications that they had taken out stormtroopers.  Now the footage I used comes from SSWR's ideas (and my understanding is that he has vanished), but I think it is quite effective and could be pulled off in an edit fairly easily.

The word you are trying to use is addictive (what's the emoticon for smug autocratic pedant look like again?).

Bingowings said:

(what's the emoticon for smug autocratic pedant look like again?).

I'm pretty sure it's similar to Tranny Surprise.

tuxmanv said:

but to base an entire movie based on one thing is pathetic. Alot of people who complain about PM base most of the hate off of Jar Jar, even though theres much more to complain about. Episode VI is a masterpiece and II and III are just popcorn flicks.

So you would base an entire movie based on several things?

Also...

Also, I know many people like ROTJ, and I'm kind of a fan myself...but a masterpiece?  *eye roll*

O-8<p≈;

msycamore said:

Yes, I guess it makes sense as there's no temptation and no seduction, the force seems to operate on a light switch. Just get him angry and he has joined the dark side. I expected more than this simplification of the force after ESB. To me, even the little foreshadowing scene in the cave sequence in ESB had more depth than all these throne room scenes together.

This had all worked much, much better if we had actually seen any traces of conflict within Luke, but as it stands he enters the picture as the white knight already and is dead set against killing Vader, he only senses good within his father, instead Vader/Anakin is the one that is conflicted. I did enjoy these scenes but I do think they seem much better to some than they actually are because everything else we are shown is quite mediocre. The space battle is pretty, I give you that.