I watched it in the theater as a teenager on initial release, and the Ewoks made me cringe. But at the start, seeing Luke as a mature badass was satisfying and exciting.
It feels weird to reply to myself but I keep thinking about Luke’s development. When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I saw this guy that was like a cool older brother go off and do exciting adventures but then some jackbooted thug killed his older buddy who lived down the road. Then in Empire , when I was about 10 or 11 years old, I saw him train hard but still get totally wrecked in the end. Then finally when I was about 13 years old, I saw him come into his own.
It really felt deeply satisfying after waiting like one third of my life to see this guy not get kicked around. I had forgotten how good that felt. And what a long wait.
Some dude a couple doors down was obsessed with Star Wars, and this was before Return. He rewatched Empire so many times. Even I didn’t like it that much. Imagine how he must have felt.
You mean the one with the four armed cyborg with a silly name that made parents think it was a kids move which resulted in children watching a movie where a guy murders a bunch of children because his teachers didn't give him enough respect?
Sure it wouldn't be bad if it was just a kid's movie about silly cyborgs.
It also wouldn't be bad to portray a massacre if it were a dark movie for adults.
It's bad because both of these are in the same movie. Who is this for? Is it a children's movie with a school massacre, or is it an adult's movie with silly robots? You gotta pick a lane!
Also "I have the high ground" is one of the dumbest things in any movie. Good thing it was just a nothing scene that didn't matter, right? Oh it was the most important scene in the entire trilogy? Well that's unfortunate. At least we got a lot of memes from it, and that's what the prequels were really all about weren't they?
You have silly robots bantering with each other while you have scenes in the first Star Wars movie where 2 eldery people are completely charred to the death or an entire planet obliterated but in both cases, as in the prequels, the real violence is not shown. The whole debate about the target audience is ridiculous, Batman The Dark Knight is PG13, there's a lot of problems in the prequels to die on that hill.
Also “I have the high ground” is one of the dumbest things in any movie.
That's a more valid point.
Edit: I completely forgot about Ewoks winning against the empire while you have a slavery scene with Jabba in episode 6.
Destroying a planet is a comic book kind of evil. Massacring some school children is real life evil.
Luke's aunt and uncle were killed by Stormtroopers... guys you're not supposed to sympathize with. Are we not supposed to be sympathetic towards Anakin? Is he supposed to be a generic bad guy with very little depth like a Stormtrooper or Jabba?
Well the Jedi were kinda evil. They indoctrinate children to fight in their holy wars. Basically the same thing the First Order was up to and they were the bad guys.
And the reason for this is because Anakin in Episode I was the biggest Mary Sue in all of fiction. Lucas felt like a child leaving his mother was more impactful than a young man leaving his mother so therefore Jedi now take children and train them. Also they couldn't go back and check on Anakin's mother later, because there needed to be a scene where she dies to start Anakin's turn to the dark side. So apparently the Jedi don't allow the children they're indoctrinating to ever see their families?
The Mary Sue nature of Anakin resulted in the PT having terrible world building. Things are the way they are only because everything was warped to suit a single character.
He became a villain at a drop of a hat because it was lazy writing. It's just a movie so whatever, but what bothers me is the fact that he jammed Columbine (a real life human tragedy) into a movie obviously meant to sell toys to children. It's really fucked up.