At least nobody's defending the prequels. :) Jedi has about 20 minutes of
nice story that is done very well. The original story was not to be set on
Chewbacca's Wookie homeworld. Lucas somehow claimed they couldn't afford
to do this?! Or perhaps they couldn't afford to miss the opportunity to
market Star Wars teddy bears. Lets see. They hear a nice bedtime story and
then about a 100 decide to go out and throw rocks at battalions of elite
Empire troops and armor that apparently run on nitroglycerine, 'cuz one tap
and kablooie. I also hated the cheezy burning wires when speeder bikes hit
trees.

I was lucky enough to see Empire at a film festival with Kirshner who
talked about the film and did a Q&A. Empire was written by an actual
sci-fi writer that understood sci-fi and fantasy. She died with 90% of the
script complete, Kasdan gets equal billing but just finished it as a favor
to Lucas -- he detests sci-fi. The director also understood fantasy and
deliberately insured several themes were preserved. In fantasy symbolism,
the losing of a hand means the loss of feeling, and in particular the right
hand signifies the fall from grace and inability to feel goodness and the
taint of evil. Luke is deliberately shown to feel pain with his artificial
hand at the end, giving hope of his ability to return to the good side.

I think age has a lot to do with it. I work with and am amazed at people
who saw and liked the original Battlestar Galactica series as children. Oh
wait, that's another off-topic topic.

DanP
I'm sorry, this is a no-smoking execution facility. Altoid?