Spending a year in carbon freeze seems to have turned Han into more of a comic relief character than an edgy hero and scoundrel but that's probably what happens when the second and third acts focus so heavily on Luke and Leia and relegate Han to being basically a glorified third wheel.
TOS gets hate for similar reasons. Old, cheesier, hokier effects. "Not good enough for today's audiences who demand more." They're just as wrong as the people who decry ROTJ for the same or similar reasons.
I think I read this list in Mark Altman' "Sci-Fi Universe" magazine in the 90's? I hope this guy didn't just steal and hope nobody noticed. Jason
None of them are that great when you think about. It’s just a silly space fantasy with laser swords and magic.
The first two are great at being a silly space fantasty. Their are different ways to measure greatness. Jason
I think from the beginning Jedi was considered lesser than the others by most viewers, though still decent, and disdain for it, at least within fandom/geeks, was immortalized with Clerks. Ewoks certainly remain unavoidably pretty love-'em or hate-'em (although there is a big middle ground too, that they're bad but not too damaging to the movie), OTOH appreciation for the Emperor/throne room scenes, and thus the movie overall, has I think been increasing a lot over more recent time.
The thing about Jedi, is the highs of the film are actually at least as good if not better than anything in the trilogy (space battle and throne room) but the lows are easily the worst (ewoks, jedi rocks etc) I think it's still a really good film but it's clearly an uneven one in tone, lurching from some serious dark side shit to chewie doing a tarzan yell swinging with some Teddy bears.
Thankfully "Jedi Rocks" didn't exist in the original version of the film. We can chalk that up to some of George's unwarranted 1997 Special Edition alterations.
I only skimmed the article, but the headline is enough for me to know I disagree with it pretty strongly. ROTJ was actually the first Star Wars movie I saw as a kid, so I have a bit of a soft spot for. Even without that soft spot, I think I'd still rank it pretty highly. It's got some great action scenes, especially the Vader/Luke/Emperor stuff and the space battle. I honestly never really noticed how different Han was here, but thinking back over it now compared to A New Hope especially, I can see where that is a good point. It's probably number 3 or 4 for me in my rankings.
I love love love Return of the Jedi. It doesn’t hold up well when compared to the other OT films, how could it? But on its own it’s a lot of fun, with the best space battle of any SW film.
The first two films in the OT feel like an effort to create the best stories possible to entertain an audience. Jedi feels more like George realized by 1981 and 1982 how big Star Wars had become as a marketing brand and decided that the last film in his Trilogy would be just as much of a toy commercial as it would be a coherent and satisfying story to wrap up the journey of our heroes. Ewoks. The aliens in Jabba's palace. The sudden and wide variety of alien species in the ranks of the Rebel Alliance whereas almost all the Rebels we saw in the first two movies were human. It was big boost for toy sales and George's pockets. But can we blame him? He got to conclude his epic Trilogy as well as sell a lot of toys to people who loved both.
The aliens have always been one of my favorite parts of Star Wars, so I love all of the aliens in RoTJ.
ROTJ was the first SW film by Lucas where he began rehitting beats/scenes from his two earlier films, what he would call poetry when he did this for his prequel films. So creatively Lucas at a low, or trying to tap nostalgia.