Vader needs Luke to overthrow Palpatine. The Emperor wants a younger, stronger apprentice. tRoS suggests that maybe he wants Luke for the purpose of rejuvenation, maybe because Vader’s broken body was an insufficient vessel.
Ewoks are awesome.
Agreed that ROTJ, outside of the final battle/Vader redemption which is chef’s kiss, is definitely a step down, although I don’t think it’s a huge one. All your criticisms are valid, I think it’s largely a personal thing as far as what flaws one can overlook for the sake of good drama, etc.
Like the Han rescue in the first act is clearly poorly thought out, but even some iconic scenes make no sense if we hold them to that standard. (“So Red Leader, we all saw what happened to Gold team, you want us to get behind you guys and cover you right?” “Nah fuck that Red Five, you and the other kids hang way back while I get my ass kicked by these TIEs, especially that funky looking one in the middle. That way you can have your own dramatic moment where like the same exact thing happens.”)
The ewok stuff I think almost works in the sense that they were so adorable that we underestimated them and there’s some genuine surprise when they save the day, but I think the problem is that when they do start fighting, it’s mostly in a sort of quirky, cutesy way also, increasing the cheese factor. It almost would have been better if they had done some brutal shit, overwhelming troopers with pure numbers and putting spears through their heads or something.
Overall I’ll take ROTJ over any of the prequels any day, even ROTS. The prequels to me just have very little rewatchability factor, even though I do appreciate their having a cohesive plot compared to the dismal sequel trilogy. And I’ve never been a fan of the whole “oh you’ll appreciate it so much more if you watch/read this other thing that was released afterward!”. It feels like homework (especially if it’s a medium I’m not a fan of anyway, sorry just not a cartoon guy), and it shouldn’t be necessary. If a movie doesn’t hold up on its own then it’s a bad movie, period.
My rankings, for what it’s worth: 5>4>>6>>3>>>>>>>>>>1>>2
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I agree with all that.
I guess my main point is that we were so quick to pounce on any of those inconsistencies or plot holes if they occurred in the prequels/sequels, but overlook a lot of them for the OT.
After having rewatched 1-6, I’d say I’m already itching to rewatch 3 and then 4, and don’t have any interest to see 6 or 2 again anytime soon, but that’s just personal preference.
I always loved Star Wars, but was never a cartoon person either. I’d watched every second of live action stuff and maybe an hour total of the cartoons, but I finally got around to most of the cartoon stuff and would say it’s definitely worth it. It added immensely to my experience of re-watching 1 and 3. Of course, if it feels like homework, don’t do it. I’m just a massive fan of the lore, so it’s all been interesting for me.
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People are way too hard on RotJ, that movie was awesome. The speeder bike chase scenes looked amazing at the time, all the Jabba the Hutt scenes are iconic.
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Yeah I get it if you already dig the prequels (at least somewhat) and want more from that era anyway, it’s totally valid to say that the other media enhances your experience.
For me it was like I watched eps 1-3 and was like “yeah I’m good, I don’t care about this enough to want to dig deeper.”
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Who the frick hates on the Ewoks? They are pure Star Wars.
Sorry they don’t hold up to the soulless, technical proficiency demanded by fans of the machine that spits out 30 plastic creations a year.
Ewoks are fine. They’re silly and cute and it’s a kids movie. Also it’s rad that Lucas threw in a subtle anti-Vietnam message into Star Wars and basically no one noticed. These little teddy bear dudes beating the crap out of the technological superpower is great fun, who doesn’t love that.
People who don’t have RotJ solidly at #3 are completely wrong, but I can at least understand the Ewoks hate. I absolutely loved Ewoks as a kid but I started watching the Star Wars movies at a very early age, still had stuffed animals at the time, and probably didn’t even fully understand the concept of fiction. If you’re older and are coming off watching Empire where your conception of Star Wars is Darth Vader in a smoky industrial facility patiently waiting with a glowing lightsaber, yeah maybe you’re annoyed when the new thing is feisty teddy bears.
I think Taika Waititi’s Star Wars movie is supposed to be set after the sequels… If it happens.
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Random thought popped in my head about episode 1 and anakin’s hobbies.
Ep 1 has been spared the brutal lens of hindsight thanks to the atrocities released since, it looks way less bad and far more watchable than it actually is. These days I will actually watch it now and then. It’s sad how bad artistic standards have fallen that this is actually a decent watch nowadays.
Anyway I just realized anakin building C-3PO as a slave kid is absolutely idiotic. Anakin is like a full blown chattel slave working for scumbag watto - who I’m sure was not horribly abusive but we don’t actually know a lot other than it didn’t seem pleasant and he probably worked long hours. I think there’s even evidence in the film he did.
How does he build something crazy complex like a protocol droid from “spare parts” he randomly found? Where did he get the software? did he write it? Protocol droid software would presumably be the most complex around, because their only purpose is to understand and communicate with sentient non-mechanical beings.
Ok so we can suspend our disbelief there a bit and just pretend the space software is on some random chip he found in the junkyard. That’s even a little plausible and answers my next q - why a protocol droid? what possible use could he have for one? Well, if he just found the random parts for it, ok that makes sense.
But really my big issue is WHERE DID HE FIND THE TIME? He’s only like, 8 or 9 years old. Something like that would take at least a couple of years of a lot of effort. If that was his only hobby, ok, I get it - but he also rebuilt a fucking podracer and spends quite a bit of time doing that too. It’s just not possible guys, and I think lucas threw in 3p0 because he needed a convenient way in the plot to bring together him and R2.
My last little nitpick here is this - Anakin is described as a lot of things, and has a lot of powerful attributes, but he’s never really known as particularly smart. He’s clever and often cunning, but like, he’s not an uber geek or some tech nerd that can build a complex droid like that from scratch EVER again in his story. Not a single time. Even when R2 fries multiple times throughout the series, you’d think he’d be like “oh I can fix that.” nope. And I gotta assume astromechs are considerably less complicated than a full blown protocol droid.
Fucking lucas.
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mostly grunching but yea people give the original movies way too big of a pass on stuff. For instance, here’s a fun one -
In Empire Strikes Back, how did Vader know Luke was his son?
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The Force ldo
If it was the force, why did he not pick up that Leia was his daughter until the very last scene of the movie when Luke’s thoughts betrayed him?
The Force works in mysterious ways
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Between episodes 4 and 5, he found out Luke’s name. Knowing that there was a young Skywalker who had ties to Obi-Wan and feeling his power in the Force rivaling Vader’s own, it was easy to deduce, based on being the appropriate age, that Luke was the son Vader thought he had lost. The Force probably confirmed his suspicions when dueling his son in Cloud City, as he presumably felt some sort of connection with Luke.
When Vader tortured Leia over the Death Star plans, he had no suspicions that she was his daughter and she was untrained, so the Force did not guide him to recognize her. Though she might be strong in the Force, she had no opportunity nor skill to demonstrate just how strong in a way that would pique his interest in her.
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I’m cheating a bit because I know the answer to this Q already and it’s absolutely infuriating, but I don’t think so - Vader never saw Luke and Obiwan together and would have no way of knowing they had any association unless he read obiwans mind before he killed him.
Vader saw Luke briefly on the Death Star after killing Obi-Wan. Remember that Obi-Wan allows himself to be killed after seeing Luke and Leia in the hanger. Luke shouts “no”. Don’t tell me that Vader didn’t notice the kid. And it’s not hard to conclude that Luke and Obi-Wan were part of the same mission.
I mean ok it’s just a lot of work to get there for something that could’ve been quite easily explained if Lucas didn’t have a penchant for deus ex machina and convenient plot devices to cover up his bad writing.
you see it all over his stuff, when asking why something is a certain way, often the answer was it was convenient to the plot.
however the official canon answer lies in a single panel of some obscure comic that I had to actually confirm was still canon. Vader learns it from boba fett:
This is dumb to me because I have to assume since Sme was a Skywalker that there had to have been more than just the two of them with that name.
But, this is what we got.
It’s interesting when you think about how the EU novels got popular in the first place - much, if not most of the early stuff was just filling in gaps like this the films neglected or forgot about.
After a little bit more research, I found this. I had forgotten that the Emperor directly orders Vader to go after the young Rebel who he is certain is “the offspring of Anakin Skywalker”.
You may still ask whether Vader already knew and that’s why he talks Palpatine into trying to turn the boy instead of killing him.