TFA better than ROTJ?

Hard to tell. I think I will have to wait some years to rate them again. For now:

TESB
ANH
ROTJ
TFA

 

If they had dropped the second Death Star, replaced Endor with Kashyyyk as originally intended, and killed off Han, also as originally planed, there probably wouldn't be too much debate over which was better.

From a technical level however, I think JJ Abrams was a better pick for director than Richard Marquand... (then again, filmmaking has changed a lot in 30 years) the characters in TFA are also a bit better written.

 

Is TFA better than ROTJ? Ah . . . no, I don't think so. I thought it was an entertaining movie, but it is my least favorite for the entire saga. It's entertaining, but a rip-off of ANH. Well, for me.


If they had dropped the second Death Star, replaced Endor with Kashyyyk as originally intended, and killed off Han, also as originally planed, there probably wouldn't be too much debate over which was better.

I think Lucas was right not to kill off Han in ROTJ. His death would have dramatically taken away the momentum of Anakin's death.

 

TFA had too much of that Indiana JOnes and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull reunion special thing going one for it to be compared ROTJ, which is a lot better STAR WARS film than most give it credit for.

 

Ewoks.
Just kidding. But seriously though, Ewoks vs The Emperors best troops............ (Still love them though, cute bastards)
BTW. Boba Fett cemented as a legend??? Really. Yeh he's cool, but literally the most overrated/underused character EVER. You seem to like comparing things, so compare Boba to Captain Phasma. Both awesome characters, both did jack sh*t

Really though, with ROTJ and TFA, you can't compare it by the certain scenes it had. Very different movies
I agree with every single one of your points, except for these ones....
- Boba sucked
- Most of the beginning of the movie, up until the sail barge scene, was boring
- Luke finding out the truth was cool yes. Underwhelming amount of emotion in that scene though
- Finn + Rey vs Kylo Ren is as good as Vader vs Luke in my opinion (powerful, savage, emotional)
- Emperor chilling dialog < Luke's saber flying from the snow into Reys hands/Rey and Ren's talk at the edge of the cliff

Like i said, even though they're VERY different movies, and shouldn't be compared. Ill do it, for you.
What i think TFA did better
- Humor (so funny)
- Depth of the characters (Kylo Ren, Rey)
- Emotion of characters
- OMG moments (falcon reveal, Rey resisting Kylo, Reys first mind trick, Rey grabbing saber, Han dying (yes i saw it coming from a mile away too, but nothing could have prepared be for it))
- ETC ETC ETC
- Not to mention, the characters (not the characters themselves), but their performance, was better. Period.

Yes TFA has a lot of "flaws". I would bet though most of these "flaws" you are thinking of are unanswered questions. ROTJ didn't left us with barely any questions because it was the last in the OT.
Not to mention ROTJ had a couple of its own (*cough* f*cking Ewoks)

PERSONALLY, i loved TFA and would rank it second, behind ESB. TFA was also the first star wars movie i saw in a cinema + so much hype. This defiantly had an affect on my thoughts of the movie.

Nevertheless, BOTH are great movies.
porque no los dos?

 

Yeah, the feel/quality would naturally progress over time in terms of technical filmmaking.

 

RoTJ still wins because it carries the momentum of two other great Star Wars movies. If Ep 8 and 9 can manage to increase our appreciation of TFA, then it'll be a completely different conversation.

I think the real question should be that based on TFA, do we think that the new trilogy has a chance of being as good or better than the original trilogy.

 

Pehaps we should have even gone back one step further and killed off Han at the end of TESB.
Imagine if we didn't have to open, on Tatooine. That would have been amazing...
(realistically though, they never had to make Jabba a local to Tatooine. He could have been on an entirely different planet, which would have made Han's presence on Tatooine in ANH a bit more logical).

It certainly has potential. Rey & Finn are already more enjoyable characters than Anakin and Padme.

 

Whoa, we're not talking about prequel trilogy here. If that was the question then TFA alone is better than Ep 1-3 put together in my book.

 

Oh yeah... my mistake.
It's kind of apples and oranges.

Personally, I like some of the new characters a bit more than the original trilogy cast...

 

i dont think the 2 are even in the same conversation. ROTJ gave Han nothing to do, and ewoks, but it still had a coherent emotionally driven story. TFA just felt like a bunch of action beats with fun dialogue and half assed plot stuffed in between.

 

It certainly has potential. Rey & Finn are already more enjoyable characters than Anakin and Padme.


Well, let me put it this way. I liked Finn just as much as I liked Anakin and Padme. All three are interesting and complex characters to me. I don't dislike Rey. But I don't find her that interesting. Frankly, she struck me as a Mary Sue character, who needs interaction with other characters to make her somewhat interesting.

 

Totally agree. Loved TFA bit I think people are rating it higher because it's new and they've seen ROTJ 100s of times. Also the first thing everyone says about Jedi now a days is the Ewoks were stupid and forget about the rest of an awesome movie.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 25, 2015, Original Post Date: Dec 25, 2015 ---

Padme was a real one dimensional Mary Sue. Elected as world leader at 14, Elected to Galactic Senate at 24. Shoots droids with a blaster and liberates her planet, flies up zip lines along side soldiers, pilots spaceships. Gives birth to the chosen one. Picks handcuff locks, whips monsters with chains. What did see ever do wrong? Other than lose the will to live?

 

ROTJ is a great film TFA is not.

 

I like TFA more than ROTJ, but not because they are in contest. I don't have to pick which movie is the better story (which; honestly, neither. They are both written by Kasdan and are equally the same caliber of quality story as a result).

I like TFA more, minorly in part, because it is more adventurous feeling than ROTJ, and I enjoyed the fast-pace setting of TFA that is lacking in ROTJ.
To me, TFA (sense-wise) is like a fast-pace ESB (not meaning the story; it is not a mirror of ESB, of course not, as TFA is 1 of 3, not 2 of 3 so it wouldn't draw its lines to ESB, but to ANH and TPM - which it does well).
What I mean is that TFA is like the Battle Hoth pacing all the way through, and to me that was wonderful.

Prior to TFA, my favorite was a toss-up between ANH and ESB (I never really liked the ending of ESB because it wasn't really an "end", but I don't hold that against it because it wasn't supposed to be an "end").

So for me, it's not hard for TFA to top ROTJ since ROTJ wasn't in my top 2 to begin with.
I love ROTJ for many things, but I never was immersed by it like ANH or ESB (and mostly immersed by ANH than ESB).

So why do I like TFA over ROTJ? Because THIS is Kasdan's version of ANH/TPM, which he has never gotten to do before. While Kasdan wrote 2/3rds of the original trilogy and notably the integral components of the force and major plot lines of ESB and ROTJ, he never got to do the opening act of introduction to the adventure in either the original trilogy or the prequels (which Lucas wrote alone, unlike the OT), so this was brilliant and an easy win for me since I LOVE Kasdan's Star Wars! (yes, ANH may have been my favorite before, but only because I like opening acts where things are wide-open and just getting started, so I've always wanted to see what ANH would have been in Kasdan's hand...now I know! ).

 

I definitely prefer TFA to RotJ. Jedi is okay, it wraps up the story fine, but there are too many things that bother me. Even as a kid I knew Luke's plan to rescue Han made no sense. The Ewoks beating stormtroopers with rocks. Vader's super easy redemption where he's washed clean of countless cold blooded murders when he saves his own son from a man that seconds earlier had been rooting for Vader's to die and be replaced. Leia's character totally changing (she went from feisty to completely boring). Serious, where did the Princess Leia from the first two movies go? They gave Han almost nothing to do. Endor was the least interesting location of the entire saga (it's essentially the just a regular Earth forest with Ewoks in it). The direction was by the numbers, and lacking style. The Jabba section of the film had nothing at all to do with the rest of the movie. The movie just doesn't hold up as well as the first two.

 

There's nothing easy about getting electrocuted and then dying.

Right now you feel that way.

Lets see what happens in ten years.

If you still feel the same way in 2025, then you'll know your conviction was genuine.

 

TFA has so many more ignorant plot decisions that it makes RoTJ look like a Best Picture winner.

 

For now, I'm calling it a draw.