YOU DON'T FUCK WITH YODA
 

ANH: A New Hope
TEST: The Empire Strikes Back
ROTJ: Return of the Jedi

So, like in Clerks, this is a timetested argument. What should be the official order, from greatest to least, of quality for the three original Star Wars films? Comment and vote.

When I first got into the movies it was ROTJ, TESB, and ANH. Then it was TESB, ROTJ, and then ANH. Then I got the shit removed from my head and realized it was ANH, TESB, and ROTJ.

My choice: ROTJ, ANH, TESB.

I've had this feeling for a while, that TESB is being worshiped for similar reasons Matrix Reloaded is being bashed for. My point is, that Episode V can hardly stand on its own. The iconic revelation at the end brings up so many questions and we're left dying for the answers. It's that middle link in a chain and primarily serves the purpose of linking E-IV and E-VI together.
Of course, it does that more than well, it's an amazing motion picture. But if I have to compare the individual movies, my money will always be on those that leave you with a certain sense of closure.

Plus, I really liked the Ewoks. ;)

Empire
Jedi
Hope.

I could watch Empire endlessly. Over and over, never stopping. It's easily my favourite.

Jedi and ANH are close though. One day it's ROTJ, the next it's ANH. I'm going to say Jedi, simply because it has everything. The last battle, Vader redeeming himself, Death Star destruction, the best space battle in the trilogy, ewoks ruining the Empire's shit, speeder bikes, AT-ST's, and Yoda becoming one with the force.

ANH is good, don't get me wrong. But I think I like Jedi just a little more.

Jedi has the climactic battle, with 3 diverging storylines coming together in one grand explosion of sweet. Plus the father's redemption. I have to go with Jedi as my favorite.

Empire is good, but I guess I wasn't old enough to appreciate some of the subtleties about it when I first saw it (like age 4), and because it was practically a part of my life growing up, I can't have the same kind of fresh perspective on it.

Frankly A New Hope feels dated in a way the other two don't. I think part of it might be the limited budget Lucas had to work with, but it was also because I think Lucas was still operating off of the TV serials idea, and the whole thing felt a bit campy, almost like Flash Gordon.

Empire
A New Hope
Jedi

I like Empire best just because of how goddamn turbulent it is - one thing after another piling up on top of the good guys. I think the writing is stronger in Empire and Jedi than in ANH, but the whole Ewok sequence brings Jedi down for me a bit. Since I always love the beginning of an epic story, I'd put A New Hope in second place. New Hope is also pretty much a non-stop quotefest.

She's fast enough for you, old man.

Yeah, Flash Gordon was a major influence on Lucas.

I don´t know, it´s real close for me between Empire and Hope. I love the general feel all the way through Empire. Luke Training, The Battle at Hoth, Vader´s revelation, Leia and Han, etc. AND HOW YOU DOIN´CHEWBACCA? Hell, I´ll even look at a cute girl and say hello, what have we here? like Lando. Fucking geek.

A New Hope... Maybe it´s that campy feeling I like. The whole BOY THROWN INTO NEW AND EXCITING LIFE, the awesome fucking cantina, the intro to bad ass Vader.

Jedi has great battles, Luke as a blooming Jedi, the green saber! The great skiff battle which I love when Luke catches his saber R2 shoots out and starts stomping ass. It´s just the damned Ewoks that fucking piss me off and bring it down several notches for me. And those damn Special Edition Jaba´s Palace additions.

Double Post:
Oh, and Fett in Empire is awesome.

HE´S NO GOOD TO ME DEAD. Yeah, take that Vader.

GOD. Don't remind me. Worst fucking addition to anything in the history of the world. Even Anakin's ghost as angsty teenager pales in comparison to an honest-to-god alien funk music video.

I'd rather talk about the movies as if the special additions never happened. Soon enough we'll have our laserdisc rips and maybe that will be enough to tide us over until he decides to put them on blu-ray.

Since you seem to know about this shit, do you know if he´s released/going to release something with the MISSING FOOTAGE? Like our heroes looking for the Falcon after the skiff battle in ROTJ, or Luke and friends (Fixer, Cammie, Tank and maybe someone else) at Toshi station? Or Luke when he sees Biggs Darklighter in Tattooine?

Rumor has it that in 2007 we'll finally see a big 6 movie Ultimate Super Mega Boxed set with tons of never before seen special features. These deleted scenes are rumored to be part of that.

Oh god let it be so.

While we're on the subject of DVD releases, does anyone know if the re-rerelease of the original trilogy (next week I believe) is the ORIGINAL, or the Special Editions again? If it's the originals, I was thinking about picking it up, but after hearing news of that inevitable 6 piece box set, I may have to wait a while for that instead.

Original. Theatrical release that you would have seen in theaters in 1977. No updates, nothing.

Jedi is an incredibly badly paced film. It sticks out in the OT like a sore thumb or stupid step-brother. The simple recycling of the Death Star, the return to Tattooine (something that really irked me about the prequels, as well), the absolutely bored Harrison Ford acting and the "rabbit out of the hat" trick for Leia as Luke's sister.

ROTJ has one thing going for it - and thats the attack on the Death Star, which is spectacular.

Be very, very careful of fanscripts. There was an Episode III script floating around on the internet since the early 1990s that featured the Kaiburr Crystal and Fett serving Vader as some kind of offical right-hand man.

Chances are what you found was BS. However, if any of you are interested in SW history, T-Bone's website is really, really great. http://www.starwarz.com/

I have to go with Jedi, Hope, Empire. It's the order I saw them in. For a long time, maybe five or six years when I was a kid, I had only seen ROTJ, and I probably saw it a 150 times before I saw the other ones. So it's really more of a nostalgia thing, I suppose.

I watched these movies quite a long time ago....to me it was all one movie. But i chose it as the order I watched it. Jedi, Empire, Hope. I use to watch it over and over in beta-max. I don't think I can do the same thing with the newer ones (although the fighting scenes rock).

ANH
TESB
ROTJ

Retrospectively, A New Hope is the only movie of the series that remains *different*. It has an atmosphere and pace on it's own. It kind of remain unique.

The Empire Strikes Back is excellent, but loses some charm due to being so fucking effective, if you see what I mean.

Return of the Jedi is representative of what's wrong with the new trilogy. Chewbacca doing the Tarzan thing, the squeeking Ewoks, characters you liked turning into stupid asses ... The final battle do kinda make up for it, though.

ESB
ROTJ
ANH

But if we're going on which I think is the better films, then
ESB
ANH
ROTJ

I liked Jedi solely for the scenes between Luke, Vader and the Emperor.

Well, I did see various pictures. Not ABSOLUTELY sure about it being filmed. I read the books too and it´s mentioned in there. Cammie´s kind of a whore.

ROTJ & TESB are VERY close. They change places all the time. However, I'd honestly have to say ROTJ is my fav. I love how Luke's character has evolved, such as in Jabba's palace (and what guy can honestly say that Leia isn't HOT there :p), and ESPECIALLY the ending with the Father vs Son battle. The music is absolutely brilliant and I love all the emotions flying around.

ANH will always be good though. It's really hard to say what I like best. Maybe each is my favorite as I watch it, lol.

As far as which movies are better MADE, not which ones I enjoy watching the most -

TESB
ANH
ROTJ

ROTJ had a lot of slow points, and some stuff that is quite honestly embarassing. I've found myself popping in the DVD just to watch the ending FathervsSon battle.

regarding those scenes from ANH with Toshi station - I believe they are on the "Behind the magic" cd-rom, I know for sure I saw the scene where Luke talks to Biggs on Tatooine.

You sure you wanna critcize RotJ for that, man?

Return had the most action I can remember. It was non-stop just in your face with action, and you knew it was the last movie, so some shit was gonna go down. You can't top the Luke v.s. Vader battle.

A New Hope was just well... yeah. I mean, he was training the entire time, and there really wasn't much to it, but it served as a good filler.

Empire... now I didn't like that movie at all. I don't know why, but it always rubbed me the wrong way. From beginning to end.

The scene between Luke and Biggs is definitely filmed, although it's obviously not as polished as the rest of the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aziOgYTGNmU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWEuTY7VJQo

Judging from that, I think Luke seeing Biggs and Toshi station may be the same thing. Dunno about the falcon in ROTJ, though.

Shit, I`ve never seen that in my life. Just magazine pictures. Thanks man.

Looks like Empire is by far the favorite. I can live with that.

So did anyone else pick up the new DVDs today? They do indeed have the original theatrical versions on the 2nd discs, but if for whatever reason you want to watch the retarded Special Editions, they're in it as well. And you can get the comic book versions of the movies with them as well, which is pretty cool, but I think you have to go to Wal Mart for that.

My only gripe about it is that the original versions don't have a fullscreen option.

And so as not to go completely off topic:

ESB, ROTJ, ANH

Empire has that awesome Hoth battle that we see in just about every Star Wars game, and is usually the best part of it (I'm looking at you, Shadows of the Empire.), the shocking revelation with Luke and Vader, and the first appearance of Lando Calrissian, the pimp of the Star Wars universe.

Jedi has the best fight scenes (Particularly the end battle with Luke and Vader) but the Ewok crap is what puts it at #2 for me. Teddy bears should not be able to defeat an AT-ST. Period. The Empire knew what they were dealing with against the Rebels; they should have sent an AT-AT or two and everything would've been fine.

ANH is great, being the original and all, but except for the Death Star assault in the end, it's just so boring.

TESB is still my favourite of the three.

This would normally then be followed by ROTJ... until Lucas decided to "modify" it in the same way the Michael Jackson decided to "modify" his nose (overboard fiddling = bad :mad: ... I still don't quite see why Anakin's ghost was the young annoying version... stupid stupid stupid :( ... and just how much longer do the celebrations need to be... and I LIKED the old Ewok song :( ... At least he still left in "It's a trap!" :p )

Yeah, that sinister grin is so out of place compared to the warm smile of older Anakin, and I actually prefer the original Ewok music myself to the generic forest celebration music.

Anyways, ESB sits atop the mountain for me as not just a great Star Wars movie, but a great movie period. After that I think I'll go with the order of ESB, ANH, ROTJ. Even though ROTJ does have the great throne room scenes (possibly my favorite stuff out of the entire trilogy), as well as the awesome space battle, I have mixed feelings on everything else. The Jabba stuff feels a bit dragged out to me, the idea of Ewoks being able to defeat an entire legion of the Emperor's "best troops" is a bit farfetched, and the revelation of Leia being Luke's sister didn't quite create the reaction I was expecting (but it still works thanks to John Williams, of course). In any case, it's still a movie I enjoy quite a bit, and I think it was a good end to the original trilogy, so I'm not with the group of people who would suggest that it's worse than the prequels.

There was actually an AT-AT on Endor. You see it outside the base at night just before Luke surrenders to Vader. Of course, it seems to conveniently disappear by morning. Maybe they only had it there for the purpose of guarding Vader or something.

WAIT WAIT WAIT

Lucas went back to Return of the Jedi, took out the Blue Anakin spirit bastard, the old man, and brought in Hayden whatever his name is from the more recent Star Wars movies? WTF!?

My God no. What else did he do on that level?

Instead of just seeing the rebels and Ewoks celebrating at the end of ROTJ, you also see shots of Corusant and Naboo celebrating, despite the fact that those places were never referenced or seen in the OT.

I didn't mind so much that they changed his eye/eyebrow color to match Hayden's, I actually thought it was kinda cool. But that ghost version of him was just stupid. If I were Luke I'd be like "Who the hell is that, and why is he smiling at me."

If I were Obi Wan or Yoda, I would've wondered why the hell Anakin gets to look young in the afterlife while I look old.

I've heard that the reasoning behind the young Anakin ghost is that that was his appearance when he "died" as Anakin and became Vader.

There's any number of ways to justify it. It was still better as it was, though. Old Anakin looked like a benevolent ghost, whereas Hayden's ghost just makes me feel the same "note furrowed brows for anger" vibe I got from every moment of the prequel trilogy.

I`m assuming there`s no SW discussion thread, so...

Is there any official explanation as to why some Jedis (Obi Wan, Yoda) vanish at death and others, like Vader and Qui Gon, leave behind their body?

Yoda knew a technique of death that involved fading into the force, which he promised at the end of Episode III to teach Obi-Wan. Therefore, Obi-wan knew the technique during his death as well.

I picked ROTJ, ANH, ESB...pretty much against what everyone I know thinks, as well as what the IMDB ratings think. I'd pick this just about the same way for soundtrack-wise,...and I tend to rate films this way. I don't know why it is, but that's the order in which I like them...

As part to Vader which wasn't addressed above, I don't think there's an official explanation, but it wouldn't be odd to me to think that only vader's suit was burned...as he became one with the force sometime before the funeral pyre...

I actually believed this for a minute... Mainly because I haven`t seen Episode III.

Well, I doubt his body faded a while after he died, Golden. Yoda and Obi Wan sure didn`t stick around long. And Qui Gon for sure got roasted. Maybe Lucas just didn`t care. Fucker.

Yoda, and Obi-wan, were both at peace when they died, whereas the other jedis were in the heat of battle. Yeah, I know that Obi-wan was fighting Vader, but he completely stopped, put away his lightsaber, and accepted his fate. In EPIV-VI the only remaining Jedi were Yoda and Obi-wan, so we could assume they were extremely powerful Jedi to have survived the Clone Wars and everything. (Before EPI, I used to think they were saying 'Cologne' wars, like Cologne was a location lol!) It makes sense from that standpoint.

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My favorites are ROJT, ANH, ESB. RotJ was definitely the most efficient movie. Since they didn't need to spend time on "set-up," there was no wasted film. Scenes either moved the story forward, contained action, revealed important plot points, etc. ANH was obviously all about set-up, so any "dead space" could be forgiven. In ESB, I felt like the Hoth scenes before the battle were somewhat just dead space, plot-wise. Also, much of the Cloud City sequences felt like empty space (comparatively). By comparison, RotJ seemed much tighter.

I find the anti-Ewok-Emo-angst interesting. In ANH, we experience a mainly human world, except for the Cantina. (Think about it - the Cantina is the most memorable local from ANH by far.) Then, in ESB, we also experience a mostly human world. When Luke goes to Dagobah he experiences an alien land. However, the only "alien" he meets is Yoda. It isn't until RotJ, where our first major sequence deals with the alien culture of the Hutts, and ends immersed in the alien culture of the Ewoks, that a SW film truly deals with the idea that there whole civilizations out there besides humans. This is hinted at through shortcuts, such as the Cantina scene, where aliens are "seen but not heard," but RotJ is the first SW movie where aliens are truly "heard." Chewbacca is an "alien," true. Also, C3PO and R2D2 are also aliens. But I'm talking about portrayal on a large scale: portrayal of a civilization, a culture.

I find it interesting that the Star Wars fan culture had such a negative reaction to EP1 in light of this. EP1 was all about alien cultures. The Naboo, the Gungans, the Droids, the culmination of the Galactic civilization in the form of the Empirial Senate... It's almost like SW fans don't like aliens. Which is weird, since SW is set, obviously, in outer-space where there are supposed to be aliens.

That's the first I had really thought of things in that light, so these ideas aren't fleshed-out yet...

Because what you're talking about doesn't make the movie. The core characters do. People don't like Jake Lloyd as young Anakin and they don't like the exaggerated antics of Jar Jar Binks. I personally don't like the stilted performances from Qui-Gon (though it works okay for Liam Neeson, seeing as how he's always like that), Ben, and almost everyone else. It seemed like you had two extremes. The silly Gungans and the stuffy Jedi order. Speaking of the Jedi order, you don't get the warm feeling from Ben and Yoda in the PT like you did in the OT. Instead you get some sort of overly rigid hierarchical command structure with the Jedi council, which only serves to ruin any potential attachment to the characters. That's something I felt was improved in Episode II (and Episode III), though it seems like most folks consider it the worst of the PT. I actually enjoyed it more than Episode I because the characters seemed to emote better. Even if Hayden did go overboard during the love scenes, at least it was something compared to the dry well that was Episode I. And C3PO as well as R2-D2 only seemed to be present in the PT as pure fan service. I didn't feel like they were part of the group like they were in the old movies. Especially C3PO, who just doesn't seem to work without someone like Han Solo counteracting his constant worrying. Finally, Episode I tries to create a multiple front conflict like ROTJ, but it doesn't work as well, because we don't know the characters or places as well. So like everything else in that movie, you get the impression that they were trying too hard. Still, even if Episode III might be the best of the PT, it doesn't quite find that balance between campy and dramatic than the OT consistently had. The Emperor was actually pretty creepy in ROTJ, but he often feels more like comic relief in ROTS (making it fun to root for the Emperor, heh heh; especially when you have Padme on the other end idioticallly "losing the will to live" and Samuel L. Jackson acting like the Jedi version of Shaft), what with his more flamboyant attitude.

Oh, and fancy costumes aside, the Naboo are pretty much human. :p

I think the Ewok hate can be explained in my post above.

I don't think it's so much the fact that they're aliens that people don't like them. It's that they're stupid as hell aliens, some of which could actually be offensive.

The Ewoks are a group of Care Bears who use sticks and rocks as weapons, who somehow are able to defeat ARMYS OF STORMTROOPERS WITH BLASTERS AND MECHA.

Don't the people of Naboo sound an awful lot like the Japanese to you? (Nothing against the Japanese. I can just see how they might be offended.) Also, they're a useless race. Lightsaber fodder, as we saw in Ep III.

And I know at least a few Jamaicans were pissed off about the Gungans. Those floppy ears are basically dreadlocks, they have that accent, I'm surprised there wasn't some sort of banquet scene where they all smoke space pot and play those metal bowl drum things. Besides, one Jar Jar Binks is bad enough. Do we really need a whole planet of him?

As for the force spirit thing, none of what was said explains how Anakin was able to get a force ghost. Qui Gon apparently knew about it and told Yoda, who then told Obi Wan in Ep III, but no one told Anakin.

Well, Ewoks didn't kill all that many Stormtroopers...

Remember when that one Ewok cradles his fallen comrade? That touched me deep. Real deep... Really.

REALLY I SAID.

When I saw parts of those Star Wars TV movies with that ugly little blond kid and that faggot Ewok... I think his name was something Warwick, it made ROTJ even worse for me. Even if it wasn`t the same movie. I vaguely remember something about a river that magically trapped some punk undernearth. UNTIL THEY USED THE MAGIC LASSO.