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I think it goes back even further than that.

I seem to recall that even around the time of The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas was mentioning it in interviews.

I saw ROTJ in the theater and loved it at the time because it was a new Star Wars movie, and that was good enough for me.

But it wasn't quite as important to me as SW and ESB. I was just old enough to be developing an interest in other things besides Star Wars. Dungeons & Dragons, for instance. But I digress.

Now, as an adult, I can say that ROTJ has a few of my favorite moments of the entire OT. For example, I love the moment just after Luke chops off Vader's hand, then looks at his own robotic hand and tosses away his lightsaber. That's about as close to literary foreshadowing as Star Wars gets. Love the whole scene with Luke taking off Vader's mask. Powerful stuff.

But I always thought that Vader got off a little too easy after his decades of oppression and evil. It would be like Hitler getting into heaven just for saying, in his last breath, that Jewish people were OK after all.

Always thought Leia being Luke's sister was a bit much, and inconsistent with the first two. I guess I was really surprised by this turn of events at the time, though, just as I was to get confirmation that Vader really was their father.

I can't say I ever hated the Ewoks, because when I first saw ROTJ, I was still young enough not to mind them. Nowadays, it's pretty easy to see they were part of Lucas's slippery slope into TPM. I didn't even mind the Ewoks made-for-TV movies at the time, but I haven't seen them since and am pretty sure I wouldn't like them now. The Ewoks Saturday-morning cartoon flat-out sucked, though.

I didn't mind any of the Jabba's palace scenes at the time. But these days I hate Salacious Crumb (now described in the EU as a "Kowakian monkey-lizard"...DUMB! ). Dumb character, dumb name, annoying as shit. I still love the camera/mic thing that greets Threepio and Artoo at the palace gate, though.

Thought Boba Fett fell into the Sarlaac Pit way too easily. Who didn't?

Always hated the fact that they were constructing a second Death Star. That suggested a dearth of new ideas. Why was this considered the ultimate weapon, when the first one was destroyed so easily? I couldn't really bring myself to care about the Rebels blowing up the second one. Seems even more completely incidental to me nowadays.

I don't know, in some ways ROTJ is the strongest for me, in lots of ways the weakest.

I'm not bothered by one or two small, stray inconsistencies. Anyone can find them in any movie.

I am bothered by dozens of glaring inconsistencies.

I think that pretty well sums up us nitpickers' stance with the PT.

As I always say, it is George Lucas's job to impress me, not the other way around. Not just GL, of course, but anyone who creates anything and makes it available for critique.

Georgie Boy would probably counter this with some lame argument about how he's NOT putting it out there for critique. He probably would say that he's putting it out there only for the people who will enjoy it. In other words, only positive opinions register in his mind. Lord knows he is defensive enough in interviews.

The thing is, I don't feel that I, as part of the audience, should have to put a lot of effort into making the plot coherent. A good storyteller/director would make that happen without a hitch. If the plot is supposed to be vague or mysterious or subsidiary to the ambience, a good storyteller/director would convey that as well. It is pretty clear that a Star Wars movie is not the latter kind of movie.

I have increasingly little patience for fanboy mentality. Some people take criticism of George Lucas as some sort of personal affront. I don't get it. I don't think anyone should be immune from being called on their shit.

Yeah, I tend to agree that ANH stands on its own (although I hate calling it that; to me it will always be plain old Star Wars). At the time, it was anyone's guess whether the movie would flop, so the story had to be self-contained. One of the few things that hinted at the possibility of a sequel in the original SW was the shot of Vader's TIE hurtling off into space.

When it was first released, I considered ESB to be a separate adventure in the SW universe which happened to feature familiar characters and some new ones. Of course, to my 8-year-old self, any new Star Wars was welcome, but since Star Wars didn't end with a cliffhanger, The Empire Strikes Back seemed like a brand new story to me.

Of course, by the end of Empire, it was pretty clear that the story was going to be continued, and by that time everyone knew Lucas was making a trilogy.

But I tend to think of the original Star Wars as its own movie, followed by the duology of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.