. . . TFA

What's wrong with:

STAR WARS

The Force Awakens

Kid Rock rhymes the word "things" with the word "things" in his song "All Summer Long"; 

Adele includes among the lyrics in one of her mega-hit singles ("Send My Love") - "You couldn't handle the hot heat rising"; 

Less contemporary, America's 1971 song, "A Horse with No Name" includes these words- "the heat was hot". Also unfortunate is that Dewey Bunnell sounded like Neil Young. Young's voice is among the most haunting, disgusting, overrated, or disgustingly-overrated sounds in the history of rock and roll;

John Mellencamp's "Small Town", a song I will never get sick of, never, has some very regettable lyrics- "No, I cannot forget from where it is that I come from." He could have made that line about eleven words shorter. "No, I cannot forget from where I've come." Poetically, rhythmically, it just works better. Because it is a song, you can do almost whatever you want with pitch, tone, pausing, beat, extension, whatever, but that sentence is atrocious. I haven't recorded 20 #1 hits, but I don't have to have from done of from that in order to have from think that.

Joe Cocker's "You are so Beautiful" has, I think, 17 total words, and it is remarkably simplistic, raw, sensual and indelible.

The point is, all of these songs have gotten air time over the years because a whole lot of people liked them at one time or another, or radio stations played them so often we came to hate them- I don't really know which. I don't even care enough to research if all of the artists I mention above wrote the songs they are famous for performing, and I'll research almost anything. 

The point is, all of these singers decided to go with it. Bad calls, bad. Rebooting a franchise as popular as Star Wars after 11 years, whether J.J. Abrams had written the film he directed, he went with it, and that too was a bad call. Oh man, on Tatooine (a-friggin'-gain?); ok so not Tatooine, but Jakku, another desert planet (see #31). The hot heat was rising, the heat was hot (and still is considering justifiable criticism). And, just like Mellencamp sang, when you consider the comfortably-derivative, unfortunate, sludge Abrams, a declared Star Wars acolyte, put on film, Abrams "[could not] forget from where it is that [he] came from." 

The defects for TFA, with their severity, as uncovered by an experienced quality analyst and professed Star Wars fan, based on objectivity and in chronological order.

High

1) Was it Luke who left a clue to his whereabouts? If he didn't want to be found, why would he do that? Also, if Leia can sense Luke and Luke can sense Leia, I imagine that gives each of them an inkling into each other's location, kind of like, the find my iphone feature. If he really wanted to stay hidden from everyone excepting his General sister, there wouldn't have needed to be plans about his location to obtain, conceal, hide, brood over, or overrate the importance of.

Medium

2) Captain Phasma should never have been promoted beyond Private. She's a useless character and there is no reason for her to show up out of nowhere over Finn's right shoulder like she's Batman, Jason Bourne, or the X-Men's Nightcrawler. While force-ghosting has been a thing since ESB, and its recent impactful use in TLJ, could raise the stakes of the whole franchise, I wasn't aware that Captains could use teleportation as a means of travel. Morgan is still my favorite captain and truth be told- Phasma ranks below Captain Caveman on the overall list.

High

3) Rey parks way too far away from the junk dealer and has to strain in that heat to deliver a mass of objects to a scumbag. If she is intelligent enough to be afraid of others seeing that she has a functioning speeder bike, and she doesn't want to park too close because she is concerned someone would steal it, she's wise enough not to bring BB-8 the following day, even if she is unaware of what information he is carrying, as she knows the clientele of this junkyard.

Also, we're all over the place in this series with where people park their ships. Luke leaves the X-Wing and Millennium Falcon far from Jabba's palace when he probably didn't need to, because Jabba's security detail budget was light in ROTJ. Luke had no way of knowing Jabba spent all his capital on bounty hunters to spend more on guards. Han and Lando are allowed to park too close to the unrefined superfuel mine in Solo. Gah! That's my new, G-rated WTF. Characters exercising their free will, or writers who aren't considering the illogical nature of their character's choices, given the character's intelligence or experience?

High

4) One Storm Trooper (Finn) is able to tell another one that Ren wants to see Poe. Pathetically, this is allowed. Are this generation of Storm Troopers not well-versed in the lore of the horrible decision-making, horrendous marksmanship, and uselessness of the suits they're all wearing? At least in a half-dozen other scenes, some security code clearance is required.

High

5) When Finn and Poe have stolen the Tie Fighter and are out of the Star Destroyer, Poe tells Finn they have to take out as many guns as possible. Why? With the speed and/or the maneuverability of the Tie Fighter, which Poe had already commented on, they would have been well out of range, or would have been well out of range considering the skillset of those firing at them. Poe waited so long to flee, that weapons that weren't prepared to fire at them initially were recharged, and now could. That is the reason they are hit, causing damage to the ship, which Finn assumes has cost Poe his life. Finn "steals" Finn's jacket according to BB-8, which later, the little droid communicates to Rey. So that one horrible scene/terrible decision that no one with that much at risk would make, sets the rest of the movie in motion all the way to at least Moz's bar.  And for what? All of the same things could have happened if Poe and Finn had just survived a firefight with ten Tie Fighters sent after the one that was stolen. And why weren't there any Tie Fighters immediately dispatched to chase them down?

I haven't watched Amazing Race for a reason. If Star Wars were The Amazing Race, the Empire and the First Order would always be eliminated in the first episode.

6) "I can do this," spoken by both Finn and Rey independently and successively in the Falcon. I was thinking that they were both hopeful of their abilities within the movie, and on another level, outside of it, as actors thinking of the big shoes they had to fill as the next generation of Star Wars characters. I watched this movie twice in the theater. The first time I was conscious of judging the believability of the actors in portraying people a long time ago in a galaxy far away. The second time I paid more attention to the story, which meant I thought enough of their performances to focus on something else. One step forward, two steps back. The story thievery from the original is a bigger problem than the good that comes out of actors who are capable of playing their roles.
     I think of Abrams, crafting the script, and by crafting, I mean, stealing the story, and I think about it never occurring to him that he should do this. Goldblum's Jurassic Park line is appropriate- "[he was] so preoccupied with whether or not [he] could that [he] didn't stop to think if [he] should."

Severe

7) Rey may be force sensitive, but how does that qualify her to fly a ship she'd never seen (the Millennium Falcon) so well that she could best the terrain, the tight confines, all the buttons and levers, defeating what had to have been 4 trained Tie Fighter pilots, or for what passes as a trained anything in the Empire/First Order. Here's an idea, have her crash the Falcon and have her use her resourcefulness and strength to evade the pilots until coming up with a more believable escape. She uses the shadow of something to trick the pilots, scares up a bunch of creatures with wings, something that makes us consider her worthy because of the talents of her pursuers, not because she capitalizes on their incompetence.

High

8) If the location of Luke Skywalker were such an important piece of information, why did it seem like the First Order only started re-looking for BB-8 after Poe and Finn crashed on Jakku, and why did the First Order only send fewer than 20 Tie Fighters, and no more than 20 ground troops to look for the droid said to be carrying the plans?

Critical- yeah, damnit!

9) Han, again has a bad feeling about something. Me too. I feel like a deranged, merciless, tentacled, rampaging, disgusting, slobbering creature you seem to have recently captured, loose in your ship should evoke a little more emotion than when a coat rack drop the raincoat it had been holding for a guest about to leave for the night. Tiresome. When Hitchcock did, or Stan Lee still does, show up in the movies they've directed or produced, it at least is inventive or subtle. This line is like the dog turd you step on in the morning after you forgot to pick it up the night before it rained.

Severe

10) The slobbering creatures, devour, impale, or dismember every other human en route to traveling all the hallways of Han and Chewie's cargo ship, until one of them gets to Finn. There, the thinking beast, holds him hostage, or otherwise cradles him nicely, allowing Rey to take the gamble of closing a door which separates the creatures body from some of its tentacles. Lucky. Where is C-3PO to tell us the odds? He would have been busy; see #s 20-25.

11) In the original trilogy, Chewie never would have been hit in a firefight. Kudos.

12) Han and Chewie bring in the humor and they make this movie worth seeing.

13) Shout out to CinemaSins- Finn's first battle is when he was 25-30 years old? The First Order waited for 25-30 years to engage a soldier in a battle where it might be necessary for him to fire his weapon? He doesn't hit anything, but still, that is what makes him a real Storm Trooper.

High

14) When Kylo Ren captures Rey, why wouldn't he just kill her? People would wonder what kind of a movie, or a trilogy, would there be without her. What kind of a movie do you have with her? Hundreds and hundreds of stories have been written and/or filmed where the two main characters chase each other for the whole movie (Les Miserables, The Bourne Identity, The Fugitive, Beverly Hills Cop, Silence of the Lambs) and either rarely meet or interact, or when they do, each character is adept at handling themselves so that the viewer would never need to ask this question.

Low

15) Finn was carrying a blaster running through the battlefield toward Ren's ship as Ren is loading Rey into it. He had already complained twice about there not being a blaster available; when he finally has one he tosses it aside.

High

16) Leia shows up helpless. The Leia the audience remembers would never have stayed back to let a man retrieve her son. She is too willful, adventurous and strong to stay back. I think its great that the young hero, Rey, is a woman. She's strong, smart and resourceful. Unfortunately, they turned Leia, (or Carrie Fisher did due to drug and alcohol abuse) into a zombie. The creatives behind this trilogy reboot decided to copy major story points from the movie that started it all (more on that below), but changed something very integral- a confident, powerful, emboldened woman as its base. Rey isn't that yet.

Say what you will, Princess Leia was the foundation of the original. Obi-Wan was a hermit, Luke a farmboy, Han, a selfish drifter. Leia was a princess in a militarized era, bred to lead, make decisions and take control. We see very little of that in TFA. While so much of TFA seemed too familiar, a fair criticism is to hold them accountable for one of the relatively few things they changed. I get it, she's over 60 and her soul seemed to be fueling her body with fumes (much like the plot of TLJ). I guess I would have wanted to know how much the person, of Carrie Fisher, had left to fuel the energy of Princess Leia.  

I made this observation way back in my review of TLJ- that the inclusion of women was, and still is, a needed improvement for the franchise. While Rey is a strong and resourceful woman who doesn't need to have her hand held while running in the desert, or be asked if she is ok, Leia is weak and docile. This reminded me of the criticism of the dichotomy between the two Indian tribes in Dances with Wolves. The Sioux, the protagonist tribe, are represented as reasonable, more tame and kind-hearted, while another tribe, the Pawnee, are shown to be a cliche-riden Indian nation- howling, threatening, bloodthirsty scalpers.

Severe (very close to making this a Critical defect)
17) Rey is guarded by one Storm Trooper. One. One. A prisoner that the leaders of the First Order have discussed as having force powers has one guard. Given Snoke's age, isn't it implied that experience comes with that? No one in a leadership position has ever heard about, discussed, or encountered, a Jedi's potential ability to influence or coerce the weak minded?

18) Haven't mentioned yet- BB-8 pretty cool. R2 the original, still the best, but at least with this new guy, he's seen rolling around the terrain and negotiating his way down the stairs. In theory, R2 beat Captain Phasma to the whole teleportation ability, he would have had to to get around some of the geography in the Star Wars universe.

High
19) There are a lot of humans, and very very few aliens, standing around making high level decisions. Another reminder- this is a defect because of how deliberate Disney thinks they have been about placing minorities into these movies. This is a chronic defect. I'm almost tired of it, which is maybe why it only gets a High. I'm like an NBA official in the 90s trying to referee a Knicks v. Heat game, they would have worn out their whistles if they had called every foul.

Low
20) There are five feet of separation between Rey and Ren during their dark snowy battle. What are the odds that the crack in the planet's surface separates them? Pretty steep, let's get back to this theme.

Low
21) Let's get back to it now- they happen to find Phasma in the StarKiller base . . .

Low
22) Characters are talking to each other in light speed. The difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound is quite vast. The speed of light is faster, by a wide margin. I think I first mentioned this in the review of Rogue One.

Low
23) The Falcon almost falls over the cliff and stops just short.

Low
24) Han and Finn happen to be in the right spot to see Rey climbing just when they're looking for her.

High
25) When Rey and Finn are scrambling around looking for a ship, the Tie Fighter pilots blow up a ship 1/3 the size of the Falcon, but the Falcon has kharma on its side so the pilots can't hit it? What else does it have on its side? Like every other ship in the universe it doesn't require keys or an ignition system that takes more than a finger to ignite. If something were mine, I'd build a fence, put a lock on something, have a guard. Perhaps people in this universe are too trusting.

CRITICAL!!!
I think of the beginning of a Tale of Two Cities- "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,  it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity."

We have a Star Wars movie, after eleven more years of waiting, we have the same Star Wars movie as we had 38 years ago, the director made some positive choices, and he made some horrible decisions, I am wired to enjoy this because of my Star Wars DNA, but I'm incredulous.

When one adds up all that crap from numbers 20-25, you just can't believe it.
(Imagine the reserved tones of Obi-Wan transporting you into the spirit world): Guys . . . guys, guys, you can make a good movie if you use your imagination; it is easier to control than the force. There is another . . . way to do this. You can make a good movie without copying everything you liked about the original, and without introducing story points that defy scientific or metaphysical laws, or the laws of reason, without distorting time, or turning living things into creatures without motivations, memories, or instincts.

High
25) Ren bests Finn in a lightsaber duel, but not by much. And when Ren prevails, any normal bad guy, considering the stakes, would have killed Finn. I'm not sure Abrams exhibited enough foresight for this to be explained away by Ren's supposed internal conflict.

High
26) Rey closes her eyes for way too long to cull the latent force she uses to contend with Ren. Again, I have to say, we would respect the heroes accomplishments even more, if the villains they fight were worthy. I think Ren is quite worthy, but I don't like the treatment here of a character closing her eyes for that long without losing her position, or her wherewithal. This isn't Daniel Laruso in the crane position before kicking Johnny in the face. Johnny is a bully, but Ren is an assassin with a weapon that cuts people in half. The guy stopped a laser blast in mid air in the first five minutes of the film. I'll grant, there is a difference between the metaphysical ability to stop a bullet in flight and having the agility to defeat a foe in hand to hand combat, but I don't get the impression the writer/director/creatives/producers think enough about these character's mental and physical machinations to reconcile this type of defect. Obviously, I do.

Medium
27) Chewie happened to know where Rey was? Did he put a homing beacon on her before they parted? Is he using the find my iphone function? Are Rey and Chewie sister and brother? See #1.

High
28) Leia and Chewie walk right by each other. Leia just lost the love of her life and Chewie lost his best friend. Both had been fighting for the same cause, not just then, but for 30 years previously. Seems like some writer or director is going to have to clean this up by filming a flashback scene where Leia and Chewie quarreled about who got to spend more time with Han. Abrams actually admitted this was a mistake, which is rare because defiance and stubbornness in the face of fair criticism have been the director's normal approach. Having Leia and Rey, two women who had never met, embrace when someone who barely links them (Han, who Rey had met earlier that day) has been killed by his own son, the son of the woman Rey embraces, who I'm guessing, has met Chewie a few times.

High (I can't bring myself to re-watch the movie to determine if the First Order knew of the general location by having seen the rest of the map. Luke's location is evident because of the missing piece, not secret because the overall map is incomplete.)
29) The map is completed. Did the First Order see the bulk of the map? Once the map is completed, which is the crux of the whole movie, I'm alarmed that the First Order doesn't have enough ships, scouts, troopers to search in the narrow plotted galaxy BB-8 slides into place. Ren could have spent a couple weeks looking for him in that part of the galaxy and had just as good an opportunity of finding Luke's location without the missing map piece.

30) Mr. Harrison Ford- happy now. They killed you off so you don't need to be in any more of these; you ungrateful ass! Now, go make another Indiana Jones movie so you can survive a nuclear blast inside of a refrigerator.

Critical
31) Really, Really- secret plans hidden inside of a droid who travels to a desert planet and finds a Jedi, or Jedi to be, who in turn finds a drifter and an emaciated grizzly bear with opposable thumbs, who then go to an intergalactic watering hole and you all wind up destroying a gigantic super weapon that can blow planets into a zillion pieces. At the end you find a Jedi master, Luke, who like Ben (who you found at the beginning of the original), is hiding from the troubles he could not prevent.

Abrams, you had carte blanche, according to you, to deliver a movie and you chose to do the same exact thing that had been done almost 40 years earlier. Not so beautiful, closed circuit to Joe Cocker.

Songwriters can have a difficult time: rhyming words unless those words are rhymed with themselves, avoiding the use of too many useless words (this blog is proof of the critical equivalent), or using words that don't really make any sense when combined. If you're writing a song or the script to a movie, hold onto the good ideas until you can come up with more good ideas to link them together, without stealing someone else's material or being completely redundant- a definite no-no if you're a stand-up comedian, but less frowned upon, say, if you're Vanilla Ice, or Kid Rock (who used the beats of both "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Werewolves of London") in "All Summer Long".

There are dead animals with more music knowledge and more music talent than I have, but in a movie, overusing the hook is a problem. I'd wager that overusing the hook in music is a problem which 90% of the songs recorded these days have, but the public are too entranced by the beat to break free. We're definitely not looking for wholesale repetition in our movies.

That's it, for now.  . . .  my next topic, two months after the World Cup of soccer ended will be a little more timely than reviewing all the iterations of a movie franchise going on year 42.

That's a lot of defects this QA has found during functional testing, regression testing, in requirements, etc. Seriously, Rian Johnson is to direct another trilogy and Abrams has another coming out to complete this trilogy. If I'm Disney, I put a hiring freeze on the creative group, hope there is an out on contracts they've signed with those writer-directors. Like NFL contracts, perhaps a certain percentage of the money isn't guaranteed; if we continue on this path the one thing I can guarantee is more of the same types of defects.

I'm available for hire. I have bled Star Wars; let me infuse the franchise with the creative and reasonable force of a practical idealist who wants people to continue to take these movies seriously.

. . . ROTJ

What's wrong with:

STAR WARS

The Return of the Jedi

1) Shocking. 4 bad white guys fly Vader's shuttle to the Death Star conducted into the landing spot by 4 other bad white guys checking a clearance code. Bad guys could only be white, in 1983 and 2017. Not giving this a defect for retroactive legacy use of white guys to be evil just because 34 years later, those running the "Disney years" of this franchise still haven't figured it out.

Severe
2) A little short-staffed at Jabba's palace. 2 droids feel the resistance of a security guard the size of a light bulb attached to a rod the length of a cane and get 40 yards into the dirt hallway before they're greeted by Bib Fortuna who probably deserved a promotion to General Hux's position years ago.
     Similar to the "Falcon parking so closely to the super-fuel" argument from Solo . . . if I'm Jabba the Hutt and Han Solo cost me that much money, both initially for dropping his cargo at the first sight of the Empire, and I've had to pay multiple bounty hunters, including Greedo and Boba Fett to name just a couple . . . why, once I have finally obtained Solo in carbonite, would I retain a skeleton crew security detail? This would be like Captain Ahab splitting one harpoon amongst two whalers on a sea voyage to kill the white whale Moby Dick.
     And, and, aaaaaand, why, once I have seen that two droids, and Princess Leia, dressed as a bounty hunter, traipse right into within feet of me, as overlord of that part of the universe, or at least the planet, wouldn't I employ more security to guard such a valuable possession? Plus, R2 played the hologram message of Luke, advertising himself as a Jedi, and claiming friendship with Captain Solo; why would I ignore the warning given me by an adversary? Why wouldn't I make it 1/10th more difficult for a Jedi to rescue his friend as it was for 8 guys to save Private Ryan?
     When Luke tried the mind control, Jabba claimed bullshit. Huh. It seems like that should have worked.

3) Once we see Jabba for the first time after 2 films of waiting, it was well worth the wait. This further accentuates how horrible a decision it was to videoshop him into a pre-escape Mos Eisley scene and treat him like a child who has asked for a PS4 the last two years without result. FYI- not aware of a droid in the Star Wars cannon named PS-4. But, that ain't a bad cross-marketing opportunity.

4) Salacious Crumb is a fitting sidekick. That laughing little gremlin would be a Porg's worst nightmare.

Low
5) The special edition lengthened version of the song is a little much.

6) Boba Fett is working, on at least a menage, with a couple of ladies. This was his last chance to get some alien booty before his coming death. #sad. Also, I'm surprised Lando, the supposedly closet pansexual (thinking of the Solo criticism) isn't jealous . . . of the ladies. Boba Fett, in Mandalorian armor, is quite a catch.

7) The negotiation between Leia dressed as a bounty hunter and Jabba over the price she's willing to accept for turning over the Wookie, is more in line with how someone as notorious as Jabba would handle things. Leia gets $15k more by threatening to use a thermal detonator; Han used charm in Star Wars, to buy time from Jabba in the Star Wars special edition. Maybe this pansexual thing is a pandemic and Jabba was bitten by it, maybe actually bitten by it, maybe by one of his slave girls. Dude is into some kinky stuff- slave costumes and chains. Just sayin'.

8) Hey, where did Luke and crew park their ships? Right next to Jabba's palace. Hell no, they made it slightly less difficult to get to Jabba's palace as it is to find a spot within hiking distance of the Home Depot. If Luke were a handicapped, pregnant veteran, he could get mighty lucky and not have to haul paint and weed killer back to his X-Wing. Instead, he has to listen to 3PO bitch about his chores.
     Note: This one is a complement. The creatives thought it might make more sense to have the heroes park at a distance from their objective that would not arouse suspicion. Never mind that there isn't anyone on Jabba's payroll around to be suspicious- see #2.

Medium

9) Again with putting Han and Chewie in the same cell? Is there some gene in this a long time ago galaxy far far away that precludes the characters from constructing multiple cells, that aren't right next to each other? Is the metal, rock or stucco used to construct them too rare, or cost too much money? Are contractors in such short supply? Are contractors harder to deal with than they are in our world? That is hard to believe.
     Han and Chewie were united in a cell in ESB and the crew from Rogue One were held in adjoining cells. I bring up the latter one because of convenience. The Rogue One crew wasn't a thing yet, so the captors had no reason for thinking those outlaws were connected (thinking of the pilot and the three who are in one cell). Still, the three were put into one cell after being captured together. All this is to say, it is a plot convenience. It is a too fortunate event, and just one among many in the series. I do not enjoy the happy accidents of limited confinement options, because it is creative laziness and only serves to advance the story.

10) It was wise to not show the Rancor the first time someone was dispatched into its clutches. Thankfully, Lucas didn't go back into the special edition ESB and show them roaming free on Dagobah making friends with the creature that tried to swallow R2 whole after the X-Wing landed. Visually, this many years later, Jabba still holds up. However, the Rancor looks like one step beyond the special effects from the 1933 King Kong movie.

11) Carrie Fischer's abs. Personally, I prefer both the catholic school girl outfit and the librarian look to the slave girl outfit, but I have nothing against smoldering tight hot princesses on a chain.

12) Enhanced Sarlaac with the Venus flytrap head is an improvement. Makes it less impersonal. I mean that.

High
13) Boba Fett got only another 25 minutes of screen presence in this movie and his only line was a yelp as he fell hopelessly into the pit.

Medium
14) "Pass on what you have learned." "There is another Skywalker." Is Yoda telling him to teach the other Skywalker? And if so, why doesn't he do it? And if Yoda knew that Luke was not their only hope, why wouldn't Obi-Wan, Luke or Yoda have sought out Leia to increase the chances of toppling the Empire? I think Lucas read Joseph Campbell a few too many times.

High (at least)
15) Did they build a Death Star with about the same flaw as the first one? That a small fighter plane can penetrate the outer defenses to strike a fatal blow into a small window to set off a chain reaction sending the Death Star into a few million pieces is foolish. Here again is the giant evil the heroes must overcome. Man, the empire is compensating for something. After the first one exploded, years prior, maybe touch up on the defense system a bit.

Medium
16) So 1 ship with an old clearance code gets permission to land on Endor and dozens of rebel soldiers are already there? On the far side of the planet you say? The Empire has no shortage of Stormtroopers who can't shoot straight, as long as they can operate a phone they could warn the Emperor et al that Storm troopers who aren't knocked down by a pebble, or who passed sharpshooting school, should be sent. There are Stormtroopers that passed some kind of weapons training, right?

17) The speeder bike scene is 1/7th the length of the pod race. Enough said.

Critical

18) Ewoks! I've been told that boys at a certain age when the movie came out either loved or hated the Ewoks. That cut-off was probably about 10 years old. I was 12 when ROTJ came out. I hate those little sonsa bitches.

High
19) The Empire puts maybe 500 troopers of one kind or another on Endor, the planet they used to house the shield generator, and didn't reinforce it after the Emperor learned the rebellion had a plan of how to disable it. Given the noteworthy and comparable decision-making incompetence, Jabba would have made a good slug soldier in the Empire.

Critical- yeah, I already gave it a critical. I'm giving it another one.
20) In retrospect, half the time the Ewoks are on screen, isn't the worst thing I've seen in the history of movies. But the scenes where that little bastard is riding the bike, and where they're tossing rocks and poking sticks at what are supposed to be trained soldiers, its, its . . .  unforgivable. Plus, they stole the chant from the wicked witch's guards near the end of The Wizard of Oz.
     To this point in the franchise, Lucas had delivered an A- (Star Wars) and an A (The Empire Strikes Back). Until the Ewoks are besting the Stormtroopers, ROTJ was probably at least an A-. I've got only 7 total defects through half the movie before the first midget in a bear costume shows up.

Holy lord (not really a severity type- I just don't know what to do with this one anymore)
21) Han: "I've got a bad feeling about this" as he's bound hands and feet to a tree limb about to be placed over an open fire. If you don't have a bad feeling, you're still under the effects of carbonite. Maybe Lucas was under the effects of carbonite when he thought this line was something he should include in every film. This line is more overused than "Oh my god, they killed Kenny." from every episode of South Park. At least, I think that line is in every episode of South Park. I wouldn't know, I stopped watching that show in the 90s. Still, Cartman would also make a good Stormtrooper.

Low
22) Leia tells Luke that somehow she's always known he was her brother. Sophocles would be proud.

Severe
23) The Emperor learned nothing from Tarkin, who, when given the chance to leave the first Death Star, abstained and was obliterated for it. Luke was right, the Emperor's overconfidence was his weakness. When Luke and Vader first enter the throne room, the Emperor commands his guards to leave him. What is it with these bad guys? Never surrounding themselves with enough support, even when it is available, they dismiss it.
     Emperor: "An entire legion of my best troops awaits [Luke's pitiful band of friends]."
     Seriously? It's as if the Stormtroopers have been shooting blanks since the Clone Wars ended, or the Emperor has never had one meeting with a general who could have told him who to send to Endor, or life in the Empire is a perpetual Halloween where the guys inside those suits have been dressing up every day instead of once a year. I could make a gun right now out of cardboard I can't reach and do more damage than the Emperor's best troops.
     Finally, the Empire has enough soldiers per rebel prisoner and the professional soldiers lose to a flock of well-groomed pudgy schnauzers who wear all kinds of things on their heads but have the fashion sense of your average claymation sheep.

Low

24) When Luke turns the second time and force calls his light saber into his hands, he doesn't time it right. He turns, then a second passes; he extends his arms, which seem damn near close enough just to grab the thing from the Emperor's arm rest, another second passes, and then the light saber jumps to Luke's hands. I thought the same thing when the timing of R2 shooting Luke's light saber to him on the skiff above the Sarlaac was a little off; right when he does his flip, and lands, that weapon has to be in his hand. Whether this defect is due to choreography, film editing, the idea that the Emperor would delay the saber from being obtained by Luke, or R2 miscalculates the trajectory of a metal weapon in desert air, both instances seem clunky.

Severe
25) One Ewok is shown to have probably died in the battle for Endor. Can we see one limping around, one that maybe got the sun in its eyes, something, anything? A sliver? I get that Lucas wanted to sell toys and appeal to kids, but he jumped the god-damned shark here. This was the beginning of the end of his credibility. The first two prequel trilogy movies, TPM and AOTC are campy in the same way that all the Batman movies in the 90s are hard to take seriously. Keaton and Nicholson are great and Michelle Pfeifer's butt-cheeks inside of the leather Cat Woman outfit are nothing to hiss at, but other than that . . . So anyway, seeing more Ewoks die would have been the least you could do for us Lucas.
     "Why . . . why" think Nancy Kerrigan's cry after Harding's boyfriend took her out at the knees, couldn't Lucas have gone with having the battle for the Endor shield generator be fought between Wookies and something resembling the guys from Hogan's Heroes.

Severe
26) Looks like I have some kind of theme going here. But the manner in which the Stormtroopers are defeated, by bear midgets beating them with tree limbs, and throwing medium sized boulders at them is even more embarrassing than the troopers in Star Wars that couldn't hit a 7 foot Wookie in a 6 foot hallway with several hundred attempts. The troopers on Endor should try to get onto some kind of world cup soccer team because they are good at looking like they were shot by an elephant gun when they were poked in the shoulder by a twig. Yellow Card!

High
27) So, we went from one of the best villains (Darth Vader) in the history of film (in ESB) because of his menacing strength and omnipresence to a veritable cripple. Luke and Vader fight for maybe two minutes in front of the Emperor. Vader is overwhelmed, falls down and has his hand cut off. ROTJ is only a few months, in real time, after ESB. Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie weren't looking for Han for years. And the passage of time from the beginning of the movie and the end is, again, maybe a couple days- remember, because Lucas can only tell a story in 2 day intervals every 3 years. How did the most feared villain (along with Hannibal Lecter and Heath Ledger's Joker) in movie history turn into a Cylon (ala Battlestar Galactica) statuesque in the agility department?
     This is typical also- a highly anticipated fight scene, cut short. I've referenced a half-dozen battles, at least, in the course of this set of movie reviews that ended very prematurely- Grievous and Kenobi (AOTC), Dooku and Kenobi and Anakin (AOTC), Windu et al v. the Emperor (ROTS), Boba Fett into the Sarlac pit and on and on.

28) Adding young Anakin as a force ghost back in at the end of the movie isn't the end of the world. We saw that version of Anakin in two movies and his predecessor in another one. We saw the older version of Anakin for three on screen minutes and we had it burned into our memories from 1983 to whenever Lucas re-edited ROTJ. I don't even care to research when that was, given the iterative meddling Lucas has done. Like Neil Page (Steve Martin) complained in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, you people need to "pick and choose." He was referring to Dell Griffith's (John Candy's) anecdotes. I'm referring to fanboy, elitist protectionists of the original versions of the films, especially when the changes are improvements. Nope, I'm not an elitist protectionist, as I've called out as many good things as bad, in 8 other posts on the overall What's Wrong With topic.

29) Addition of cities and planets enjoying the demise of the Empire with fireworks and celebrations also not a bad inclusion.

Medium
30) Lame Ewok dancing. He made the end of the trilogy seem like the last minute of a news cast where the two anchors, the sports guy and weather lady are all the best of friends about to open a bottle of merlot after reporting on violence, incompetence and degradation of private citizens and elected officials for 22 minutes.

Deleted scenes:

Vader attempts to communicate with Luke through the galaxy and the latter is in a cave activating his lightsaber, seemingly receiving Vader's interstellar communication and then Luke dispatches 3P0 and R2 to Jabba's lair. They should have left that in. This scene does 2 things:
     a) it reveals an attempted communication between a father and son and an initial plotting of Vader to bring Luke in to fight with him against the Emperor, which aligns with what happens at the end of the movie.
     b) it shows a Jedi, virtually alone with his thoughts, his father in his head, spending quality time with his weapon, hermited in a cave about to attempt to rescue his friends. What this isn't is a spaceship landing next to a valuable superfuel resource (as in Solo) where attention is drawn, or should be drawn, to a ship given its proximity to what should be a protected area, Jabba's home.

Scene after Jabba's barge is destroyed and Boba Fett is fed to the Sarlaac, where the heroes have to struggle to get back to their ships amid a sandstorm. The only part of that scene that could have been included, unless there were something else to overcome, besides the storm, was Han and Luke connecting after the successful rescue.

I had mentioned the whole Battle for Endor was pretty ridiculous, so anything prolonging it would have been foolish. This creative crew seemed ill-equipped to make it more interesting. A skirmish for control of the control room on Endor could have worked, but none of what I saw should have been included in the movie. The Stormtroopers piled up on top of each other as the rebels shot them at will. In the agility department, the troopers reminded me of the mincing steps of the sleestack from Land of the Lost. In fact the sleestack were more menacing with their hissing and alien goonishness, than were the Stormtroopers with loaded blasters and seemingly unlimited ammunition.

The last deleted scene I saw was about some empire commander's inner turmoil, but the sound was bad and I don't know if he's supposed to be conflicted about blowing up Endor or constipated because he hasn't had enough water.


CinemaSins:
Not sure having to read a prelude, or that Jabba smoking green swamp heroin is a sin. Droids having feeling in their feet is legitimate.

C-3PO rhetorically asking "what has come over master Luke?" doesn't mean he is too smart not to understand, but he's subordinate to Luke. Underlings can question all kinds of things their superiors decide, in inter-galactic prisoner re-acquisition and how to distribute resources on a project. 3PO can comply and complain at the same time.

All kinds of appropriate sins with Luke not having his lightsaber, trying to mind trick Jabba in a different language, Luke couldn't possibly know . . .

The "sin" about Luke not having the inclination to attempt to mind control the Rancor doesn't count. George wasn't able to keep Lennie (from Steinbeck's classic novella "Of Mice and Men") from squeezing the life out of rabbits, puppies or the boss' wife. You can't reason with those without minds or minds that emotionally or morally underdeveloped. It's like trying to plug a USB into a coaxial cable outlet; and that is being kind.

Reasonable sin- Han just got out of carbon freeze and doesn't object when Luke proposes a plan which involves Lando on their side. The last interaction between Lando and Han is when the latter is double-crossed by the former and frozen in carbonite. Han showing no negative reaction to Lando's name being brought up is a bit of a problem.

There are all kinds of legitimate issues to be found in the continued reluctant disclosure to Luke, by Obi-Wan and Yoda, about Luke's genesis. Other than to say that subtopic has been a mess dating back to Star Wars when Obi-Wan first brings it up, I'm not interested in enumerating them, but my guess is there are 8-10 things that don't make sense, from phrasing, to timing, to keeping secrets.

Calls out that the cuteness of Ewoks is the reason Jar Jar exists. I think we covered that topic.

I missed, but CinemaSins catches that 3PO's programming is inconsistent- that he vacillates between George Washington's "I cannot tell a lie" and Tommy Flanagan-style lying his ass off about being a god.

Luke is powerful, per Vader and talented with potential, according to the Emperor. We've seen very little evidence of that. The Matrix's Neo, teased us with that kind of untapped potential but he eventually was able to deliver. We don't see Luke's potential/power until shortly before he force-ghosts himself to death in TLJ 34 years after he's given credit for it.

Many more legitimate CinemaSins for this movie than there were for ESB. The last of which is this Catch-22. Luke must face and defeat or turn Vader, but he might have to be aggressive and violent to do so. Hugging it out won't work. If he gets violent and aggressive, this might insight Vader to defend the Emperor, but he can't beat Vader and the Emperor without "giving in" and being violent enough. So, he either has to stand there and die, or fight and be turned. Somehow though, Luke plays victim enough to force Vader into defending him and killing the Emperor.
     I'm still contending that the logic of the final showdown is flawed- Luke's execution is remarkable. And in this way, he kind of achieves what Kirk did in the first Star Trek movie reboot from a few years ago.
     Luke takes an impossible situation that his elders on both sides, Vader and the Emperor, as well as Obi-Wan and Yoda, have devised for him. That is the potential and power that all four of his elders have been fostering, concealing and beckoning. Unfortunately, something tells me that I just gave more thought to the enigma I've just described than the franchise's creator did.