Return of the King vs Return of the Jedi

[IcaroRibeiro]

NightDragon83 said:

JackHandy said:

I loved The Lord of the Rings movies but thought the third was the weakest. With Star Wars however, Jedi is my favorite, so that gets my vote. I can remember back when I first found out via the internet that a lot of people online didn't like Jedi. It completely dumbfounded me, despite hearing all of their reasons.

I'm still dumfounded.

Same, I loved Jedi as a kid and its still my personal fav, although I will agree that Empire is the superior film in many ways.

But I only discovered years later that the general "consensus" among SW fans is that Empire is the best (unless you were old enough to have seen the original in theaters, then its ok to say its the best to brandish your OG fan cred), and Jedi is the worst (or least best) of the bunch.

I think it all stems from the fact that since there was an over 15 year gap between Jedi the next film in the series, hardcore SW fans had to have something to argue and bicker about to fill the void all those years lol.

I agree SW Fandom is the worst Fandom in existence, but Return of the Jedi being the weakest entry is the consensus of both critics, academics and general public (non SW fans). There is very few value on it when we compare for the first two. When your idea for a climax is to recycle the climax of the first movie of a trilogy is because you are already in a mid of a early creative crisis. Not to say the movie suffers from a very episodic narrative, we clear have sub-episodes with very well delimited start and finish, kinda feels like a mini series that was cut, edited and released as a movie. While that's not block one's enjoyment, it also reveals how fragile is George Lucas as storyeller, he wasn't able to create a story that last over 2 hours with their own without abrupt transactions and that's generally something good unless you are doing it purposefully like let's say Kill Bill 

But overall my feelings watching Return of Jedi was always "this concluded the trilogy really  well and the same time added nothing?", really closer to nothing in therm of more world building (the only new Planet has nothing but a forest), lore, politics or politics subtext. I think the reason behind it was George was more worried about just closing stories rather than creating more things,  so it maybe was a conscious decision but for a franchise where creativity and setting was always the strongest point I found Jedi just the most uninspired of the bunch. An OK 7/10 movie, but that's it 

Last edited by IcaroRibeiro - on 28 June 2021