50 Reasons Why Jedi Sucks

For a change of pace, let’s go back a few years and pick on a Star Wars film from the old trilogy ….
On its own, Return of the Jedi has a lot of problems. But compared with Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, it’s just plain bad. Search your feelings — you know it to be true. Like most of you out there, we love Star Wars more than words can say and will always respect and thank George Lucas for providing a generation of moviegoers with the most significant mythos of the last twenty-five years.
But also, like most of you out there, whenever we watch the trilogy, the awed reverence with which we watch Wars and Empire is replaced during Jedi by laughing, moaning, and shouted insults that make MST3K look tame by comparison. Fifteen years after its release, it’s become sadly evident that Jedi hasn’t aged well at all, while Wars and Empire increasingly gain acceptance as cinema classics. (We could just as easily have made a list of one hundred reasons Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back are two of the greatest films ever made, but where’s the fun in that?)
It would be easy to put the blame for Jedi’s failure squarely on the shoulders of its director, the late Richard Marquand. But while few would argue that Marquand was the greatest choice to inherit the franchise, the fact remains that it was executive producer George Lucas who hired him, who told him how to handle the material, and who always had the final say. So we’ll let Marquand rest in peace; chances are he did the best he could.
50 Reasons Why Jedi Sucks