That scene gets me every time, especially since someone seems to start dusting right then...what? I'm not crying, you are!
Return of the Jedi would've been helped a lot had Mark Hamill not chosen to arbitrarily play Luke as being so effeminate, all of a sudden. Especially now that he considers himself a "Jedi," finally ... it was an odd acting choice, I must say.
Blast from the past: Spoiler: Beware of three things: 1. big 80s hair (you can still smell the hairspray 35 years later) 2. Movie tickets are skyrocketing from $4.50 to $5.00 - oh noez, the world ees doomed! 3.Really, 9 chapters?
Tickets were $4.50/$5 in 1983? I find that awfully hard to believe. That's how much they were in 1993. My Dad bought a brand new Mazda RX7 in 1982 for like $7,000. BTW, RotJ was awesome! The best Star Wars since Empire!
The price of entertainment seems to have stayed relatively stable across the board for the last few decades, regardless of inflation. Not just movie tickets, but home video in it's various formats, books, video games etc. Not sure why exactly, but at least in the case of movie tickets I'm sure at least one factor is that theatres have enough trouble getting bums on seats as it is. Keeping the ticket price down and raking as much back as they can with food and drink seems to be the only way they can stay afloat. As for RotJ: pretty sure it was the first Star Wars movie I ever saw. Or at least the one I saw when I was old enough to remember seeing, so despite being the weaker of the OT in a number of ways, I'll always have a soft spot for it. And no, I never minded the Ewoks. The grumpy old fans can shove it; Lucas knew his audience was primarily young kids and he never made them feel bored or engaged.
Yeup, at my hometown theater where I watched something like 20 movies a year growing up in the 90s, candy/snacks/drinks have doubled or tripled while tickets have gone up less than 50%. 2 tickets to see Star Wars for 20 bucks seems plenty reasonable when you're buying the tickets, and once you've sunk that cost and their snackbar is the only place you can get a drink, a lot of people will begrudgingly pay the $7 for a large soda, and then the next time they think about going to the movies most will still only consider the price of the tickets when budgeting it against other options. .
I agree! The SSD's crash into the Death Star looks so phoney it always makes me cringe when I watch it now! Of all the things they tinkered with effects-wise in the Special Editions, why didn't they give this a more "realistic" makeover? That crash should have been a big WOW!!! moment with the ship crashing into it, exploding and breaking apart -- something along the lines of the great visual of seeing the Star Destroyer crash into the shield gate in Rogue One. I also wish they'd remove Vader's jarring "No... NOOOOO!" just before he grabs the Emperor. I think the scene worked perfectly well without it. And I'm not a fan of young Anakin's Force ghost at the end, but I guess he's there to stay. But apart from those things, I'm okay with ROTJ. While it's not the best movie in the OT, it is my favourite, if that makes any sense. I was too young to remember being a fan of SW & ESB back in the day, but I remember fondly being a fan when ROTJ was released, so it holds a lot of nostalgic feels for me, furry teddy bears and all.
I just don't get it. Maybe they ran out of money or something. The saucer dish explosion still looks pretty spectacular, but they dropped the ball with the SSD crash. Maybe it was too ambitious a shot for them to do.
Honestly, I think that slow-motion footage of the LEGO Executor being dropped looks more impressive than the shot in the film (check out that shallow focus on the Death Star surface!).
That would have been soo much better. It's the only real problem I've got with the FX in ROTJ, as the rest of it is generally excellent, and way ahead of it's time.
The theatrical release of ROTJ had a number of dicey VFX shots besides the SSD crash. The shuttle platform on Endor never looked bigger than a model in the daytime. The first shot of Jabba's sail barge was awful, with an over-sized figure walking across the deck via terrible, jumpy stop-motion. Composite shots in the rancor cave looked really bad. The color timing of the skiffs following Jabba's sail barge was generally way off; again, broad daylight is unforgiving. The explosion of the sail barge looked miniature. It's hard to notice that the rope that the Ewoks are trying to trip a walker with doesn't line up with itself at all. That's all just off the top of my head.
I've always been able to partially excuse those you've mentioned, in that they were noticeable, but never really jarred for me (I still quite like the sail barge explosion - the first part of it you can see it's a miniature but the main explosion still looks great to my eyes), but obviously this is all a subjective opinion. I think they just bit off more than they could chew with the SSD crash - it would have been an extremely ambitious and complex shot to do today, let alone in 1982/3. I do think overall though ROTJ's visuals were really, really good for the time, and maintained the franchise's very high, often groundbreaking standards. For every iffy shot there's some seriously epic stuff here - the end space battle I still regard as the gold standard when it comes to this kind of scene (Rogue one runs it very close though and only beats it from a technical standpoint due to the film's newness) which for the age of the film, I regard as an amazing feat.
It's still yet to be topped within the franchise IMO. Episode 9 needs to up the sequel trilogy's game in this respect (though the opening battle in TLJ was very good still). Hopefully if the film take place a number of years after TLJ we can see a balls-out massive scale fleet battle.
They still could have used some bombers that weren't the slowest ships we've ever seen in the franchise.
Let's see. Things that annoyed me, but could've been improved with a tighter and sharper script. 1. The "stupid elaborate" infiltration plan into Jabba's palace. One by one, the main cast trickles in. They end up killing all of Jabba's muppet crew, so why the charade? 2. The muppet and puppet part of the film lasts more than half an hour. Too long, mate. 3. Luke joining Han, Leia and co on the Endor mission. Not only does Vader sense Luke, which alerts the Empire to Rebel insurgency. But Luke turns himself into the Imperials when he's on the planet. Luke denies there are others, but the Imperial officials and Vader aren't convinced. This is was a Trojan Horse gambit, ruined by Skywalker. And Luke is surprised when the Emperor tells him that that he knows about the fleet and has set a trap for them. "LUKE YOU IDIOT! YOU GAVE THE GAME AWAY!" 4. Things slow to a crawl after the speed chase on Endor. Talk about second act sag. I think it's some 40-45 minutes before things start moving again. 5. Luke and Vader being supporting characters in their own movie. Sure, both Luke and Vader's arcs are wrapped up nicely. But that seems so far away from what the rest of the movie is about. The shield generator on Endor and the battle in the skies above the planet. Luke not turning to the dark side and defiantly facing the emperor and Vader, has nothing to do with the regime being toppled. That regime, which was once again propped up by having a second planet killing death laser. 6. The Planet Killing Death Laser 2.0. Why would they build another of these things? I guess we'll find out when Disney decides to make a sequel to Rogue One. They'll call it Rogue Two. After all, according to Mon Mothma, "many Bothans died to bring us this (plans for the 2nd Death Star) information". Good thing the Empire learned their lesson twice and wouldn't think to build a 3rd planet killer with the same exploitable weakness as the first two... TFA happened. Shit 7. Besides recycling the threat from ANH, ROTJ recycles the twist from TESB. Leia is also a daughter of Vader. But seemingly, no one cares and it lacks the emotional impact of hearing it a second time. I do wonder why they was done. Why make Luke and Leia related? 8. The Storm Troopers incompetence reaches new levels, when they are overwhelmed by 3 foot Care Bears. I mean, Christ. It's a running joke that Storm Troopers can't hit the broadside of a barn, if they were standing in it. But they could give Vogon marksmen a run for their money. Rogue One hammered their feebleness into the ground. Looking at the PT and how effective the Clone Troopers were. One wonders how the Empire ever managed to conquer the galaxy. Troopers enslaved the Wookies, but lost to the Ewoks. Sure, why not.