Sign of things to come

Rating: Null/10 (29 November 2015)

The final installation in the original Star Wars trilogy and a culmination of an epic story about galaxy in peril, about the battle between two ancient factions, about the battle between good and evil, control and passion.
Personally, I think it's a significant step backwards from the previous two movies. The story doesn't flow as smoothly, the ending climax isn't as exciting as the two previous ones (we have to blow the Death Star again?), the characters are not as good as they used to be and the new stuff, which there is still a lot of, to the film's credit, is not as good as in the previous one. In this film we see for the first time the signs and phenomena that would come to haunt us in the prequel trilogy.
To go over a few of the highlights, we have the ewoks. Now, apparently they were supposed to be wookies, which would have been amazing. Chewbacca is a fan favourite, and we would have gotten to see his people, his culture, more laser crossbows, all that good stuff. Instead we have the elite troops of the Galactic Empire being beaten back by an army of teddy bears. I'm not the only one seeing the problem here, right?
Plus, the characters. Luke, Han and Vader are still very good and especially Vader has some his best moments in this film, especially near the end. But Leia, for example, has been relocated to a complete support role, to the point that she really has no point in being in this film. She's a far cry from the nail hard, snarky, blaster-toting space princess she was in the first film. Not quite on the Padmé-level of chickification, but heading in the same direction. Ian McDiarmid also has his screen debut as the Emperor in this film, and while he is amazing and will pretty much carry the prequel films alone with his charisma, here his over the topness is a bit unsettling because you're already wary and looking for flaws because of the ewoks.
Then again, the effects are still amazing, the battle scenes are exciting, the final confrontation with Luke, Vader and the Emperor is one of cinema's finest for a reason, the space battle of Endor is a good one and the story is by no means bad one. It just isn't as good as the two previous ones, which are two of the best adventure stories ever put on film. So go ahead and see the film if you've liked the trilogy so far. It's not as good, if you ask me, but it's still a fitting conclusion to the saga.