It's because of the movie "Clerks":
Randal: Which did you like better? “Jedi” or “The Empire Strikes Back”?
Dante: “Empire”.
Randal: Blasphemy!
Dante: “Empire” had the better ending. Luke loses his hand and finds out Vader is his father. Han is frozen and captured by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. Just like in real life. All “Jedi” had was a bunch of Muppets.
Note that when Clerks was made (1994), ROTJ was still highly regarded, probably more so than TESB. Now, the idea that TESB is a masterpiece and ROTJ is garbage has become so entrenched as the "in the know" opinion, that it is considered to go without saying.
The early/mid 1990s is when the idea that "dark" is automatically better, really started to take hold among "edgy" teens and twenty-somethings. Note that "Dante" uses "It ends on such a down note" as his argument in favor of TESB being better than ROTJ. "Down note" endings aren't inherently better than "high note" endings, and at this point, the idea that they are is a tired cliche.
When I was a kid in the early 1980s, ROTJ was most people's favorite of the trilogy. TESB was commonly considered to be good, but a little boring. I didn't actually see TESB until the late 1980s. I rented SW and ROTJ many times throughout the '80s, and TESB was right there on the shelf next to them, but for some reason I was under the impression that I'd already seen it and didn't want to see it again. One day I decided to rent it just to see it "again", and as I was watching it I realized I'd never seen it before at all. I thought it was awesome, though not necessarily better than the other two movies.
All three of the movies have a lot going for them, as well as parts which aren't so great. For me, Star Wars doesn't have any parts that I don't like, but it also doesn't have as many awesome scenes as the other two. TESB has the awesome fight between Luke and Vader, but the Cloud City interior scenes leading up to it are boring (continued below...)
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Xenopharb (617)
6 years ago
I don't know a single person that thought Return of the Jedi was a better film than either Star Wars (A New Hope) or The Empire Strikes Back.
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MaximRecoil (4044)
6 years ago
So?
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Xenopharb (617)
6 years ago
Note that when Clerks was made (1994), ROTJ was still highly regarded, probably more so than TESB. Now, the idea that TESB is a masterpiece and ROTJ is garbage has become so entrenched as the "in the know" opinion, that it is considered to go without saying.
So ... I don't believe this to be an accurate representation of the facts. I thought Return of the Jedi was a bad movie from the get go. I don't recall anyone I knew liking it better than the previous two films.
I don't know why people like The Empire Strikes Back more than Star Wars (ANH). I never did.
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MaximRecoil (4044)
6 years ago
>So ... I don't believe this to be an accurate representation of the facts. I thought Return of the Jedi was a bad movie from the get go. I don't recall anyone I knew liking it better than the previous two films.
In the early 1980s when ROTJ was new, nearly all kids liked it the best out of the three.
And as I already said: when Clerks was made (1994), ROTJ was still highly regarded, probably more so than TESB. That scene in Clerks wouldn't have even made sense if TESB was widely considered a masterpiece and ROTJ was widely considered garbage at the time. Once again:
Randal: Which did you like better? “Jedi” or “The Empire Strikes Back”?
Dante: “Empire”.
Randal: Blasphemy!
Dante: “Empire” had the better ending. Luke loses his hand and finds out Vader is his father. Han is frozen and captured by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. Just like in real life. All “Jedi” had was a bunch of Muppets.
Why does Randal say "blasphemy"? Because he represents the prevailing opinion at the time that ROTJ was better than TESB. Dante is supposed to represent the minority, but "in the know" opinion, undoubtedly held by the author of the script. Clerks was a popular movie and people latched onto Dante's argument because that was the same time frame that "dark" material was really starting to take off with the "in the know" "cool" crowd. Look at the direction the Batman comics took around that time, for example.
That scene wouldn't make sense if the movie were made today, because pretty much no one today argues that ROTJ is better than TESB. It's accepted as a given that TESB is way better, so why would two Star Wars fans even be arguing about it?
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Xenopharb (617)
6 years ago
He says, "Blasphemy" because some non Star Wars fans liked Jedi. Non Star Wars fans liked the prequels too.
Kevin Smith is making a statement through Dante - not Randal. That was the prevailing view of hardcore Star Wars fans.
Saying "nearly all kids liked it best" has no evidence to back it up. NONE of my friends liked RotJ more than either of the first two films at that time. That is a small sample size, but it has more relevance than an unsupported blanket statement.
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MaximRecoil (4044)
6 years ago
>He says, "Blasphemy" because some non Star Wars fans liked Jedi. Non Star Wars fans liked the prequels too.
He's not supposed to be a "non Star Wars fan". Why would a non Star Wars fan even be asking the question, "Which did you like better? 'Jedi' or 'The Empire Strikes Back'?"? And why would a non Star Wars fan refer to "Return of the Jedi" by a nickname "Jedi"?
>Kevin Smith is making a statement through Dante - not Randal.
I already said that, "Dante is supposed to represent the minority, but 'in the know' opinion, undoubtedly held by the author of the script."
>That was the prevailing view of hardcore Star Wars fans.
No, it wasn't. It was the view of "edgy" teens and twenty-somethings who had jumped on the new "dark = cool" bandwagon. The prevailing opinion at the time was still that ROTJ was better, which is why the author of the script felt the need to argue against it, by proxy through the Dante character.
>Saying "nearly all kids liked it best" has no evidence to back it up. NONE of my friends liked RotJ more than either of the first two films at that time. That is a small sample size, but it has more relevance than an unsupported blanket statement.
I'm not convinced that you were around at the time. In another post you said (in reference to the high-speed flight through the Death Star):
"Once CGI gets so much like a cartoon that it no longer suspends disbelief, it becomes laughable."
No one who grew up in the '80s thinks that the special effects in the original trilogy were done with CGI, which was in its infancy at the time. I was around then, and my "small sample size" of friends/classmates/family/acquaintances cancels out yours, especially since yours are likely not even real.
ROTJ grossed almost $50 million more than TESB during their initial runs.
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Xenopharb (617)
6 years ago
I saw Star Wars twice on the opening week. Thanks to a helpful weekend manager at a local theater, I was able to see it in whole or in part many times more before one special edition theater viewing.
I was able to see The Empire Strikes back nine times prior to the one special edition viewing.
The Return of the Jedi? I saw it once in the theater upon initial release and once as a special edition. Both times, I came out shaking my head at how poorly Lucas had ended the trilogy.
Jedi was never the better film.
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MaximRecoil (4044)
6 years ago
Calling all special effects "CGI", including in movies which predated the prominent use of CGI, is something that kids commonly do. I don't believe for a second that you were around back then. The term "CGI" didn't even enter into common vernacular until the early 1990s, when movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park made "CGI" a household word.
>Jedi was never the better film.
It was generally considered to be on par with, or better than, TESB, until the movie Clerks came along. And among kids of the '80s, ROTJ was definitely the prevailing favorite, which is why that movie made so much more money than TESB.
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Xenopharb (617)
6 years ago
Most people have never seen Clerks. It is doubtful that swayed opinion.
I used CGI in place of SFX, which it used to be called, but the premise is the same. Stop nitpicking to avoid the obvious.
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MaximRecoil (4044)
6 years ago
>Most people have never seen Clerks. It is doubtful that swayed opinion.
There isn't a single movie in history that most people have seen, so no matter what movie you are talking about, it would be accurate to say that most people have never seen it.
Clerks has 193,130 votes on IMDb. That's more votes than, e.g., Rocky III (141,223) and Rocky IV (152,810), which were both huge movies. It's also more votes than Rambo: First Blood Part II (129,091), and countless other very famous movies.
And people don't need to see it in order to be swayed by it. Have you ever encountered a meme on the internet? Most people who use or see a meme on the internet never saw the original usage of the meme. Things spread via word of mouth just fine, especially when it's such a simple and easy to remember argument as "It's darker, man."
>I used CGI in place of SFX, which it used to be called, but the premise is the same. Stop nitpicking to avoid the obvious.
You're still being absurd. People who bag on CGI prefer practical effects; they would never conflate the two.
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Xenopharb (617)
6 years ago
You're grasping at straw men.
Your premise that most people thought Jedi was better than the first two films is unfounded.
Maybe you thought that, but no one I know ever did. You didn't see Star Wars in 1977 upon its initial release. You didn't see The Empire Strikes Back until after you saw Return of the Jedi, and those first films were on a television. Of course you would like the big screen film better, but that isn't the consensus of Star Wars fans.
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MaximRecoil (4044)
6 years ago
>You're grasping at straw men.
"Straw men" doesn't mean what you think it means. Consider your non sequitur dismissed out of hand.
>Your premise that most people thought Jedi was better than the first two films is unfounded.
No, it isn't. ROTJ made a lot more money than TESB did (and I didn't say they liked it "better than the first two films", I said better than TESB), and the dialog in Clerks wouldn't have made any sense if the prevailing opinion at the time was that TESB was better than ROTJ, i.e., it would have been a case of preaching to the choir. That you can't understand this indicates that you're not the fastest car on the lot. Also, I was around back then and remember all the people who loved ROTJ, especially kids. Consider your false "unfounded" assertion refuted.
>Maybe you thought that, but no one I know ever did. You didn't see Star Wars in 1977 upon its initial release. You didn't see The Empire Strikes Back until after you saw Return of the Jedi, and those first films were on a television. Of course you would like the big screen film better, but that isn't the consensus of Star Wars fans.
This argument has nothing to do with my opinions of the movies, so consider your non sequitur dismissed.
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