Return of the Jedi/YMMV

• Abandon Shipping: The outright confirmation that Leia is Luke's sister sank Luke/Leia pretty thoroughly.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: The scene where one of the Ewoks tries to get another Ewok to wake up before realizing that he in fact died.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Vader's Redemption Equals Death scene.
  • The Rancor's death is rendered unexpectedly moving by its handler weeping over its body.
• Badass Decay:
  • Boba Fett. Although strictly speaking he didn't do anything particularly badass in the previous movie, he at least looked cool and imposing. In this one, he's defeated fairly easily (by a blind man, no less) and in the Special Edition he's seeing flirting with some strippers, which annoyed some fans greatly for ruining his mystique.
  • The Stormtroopers' own is complete when they get defeated by the stone age Ewoks. From here on out, Star Wars media doesn't even try to paint them as competent.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: This entry in the Star Wars series consists of Leia in a metal bikini and... something else. Maybe something about teddy bears and a wrinkled old man.
• Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The band sequence in the special edition, which was really just an extension of the original sequence that was trimmed down to just the part where Jabba threw Oola into the Rancor pen (30 seconds vs about 2 minutes). In the Making Of featurette that preceded the movie, Lucas admitted that he just thought it would be funny to have a random musical number in an otherwise serious movie.
• Continuity Lock Out: This film assumes that everyone has watched A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.
• Director Displacement
• Ear Worm: Both "Lapti Nek" (the song which plays in Jabba's place in the original) and "Jedi Rocks" (in the remastered version.)
• Fight Scene Failure: A funny little mistake left in that fans affectionately call, "The Force Kick."
• Fourth Wall Myopia: A large factor in Obi-Wan's Ron the Death Eater/Unintentionally Unsympathetic reputation. The audience knows that Vader is having doubts about turning Luke over to the Emperor, the audience knows that Palpatine wants Luke to try and murder him as part of his Evil Plan but Obi-Wan doesn't, nor does he have any way of knowing this.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • All the celebrations on Coruscant in the epilogue. As revealed in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, when the citizens toppled the statue of Emperor Palpatine, Stormtroopers flooded the area and massacred everyone they could before the situation devolved into a full-scale planetary civil war.
  • And beyond that, The Force Awakens reveals that Rebels' actions in this film, despite the happy ending, was ultimately All for Nothing due to the ineffectiveness of the New Republic. To say nothing of Palpatine's survival in The Rise of Skywalker.
  • Vader spent his last breath asking Luke to please tell Leia that there was still good in him. Fast forward to The Princess and the Scoundrel and Leia refused to hear it, refusing to think of her biological father as anything but a monster.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Luke's anger at Obi-Wan for going the "That Man Is Dead" route. Obi-Wan Kenobi reveals that Obi-Wan had long thought of Anakin and Vader as the same entity before Vader himself invoked "That Man Is Dead". Obi-Wan was just respecting Vader's wishes.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks: Once again, the climax is the heroes destroying a Death Star.
• It Was His Sled: Leia is Luke's sister. Yoda gives the confirmation of the It Was His Sled from The Empire Strikes Back when he tells Luke (and the audience) that Vader is indeed Luke's father as he claimed.
• Magnificent Bastard: Palpatine not only managed to corrupt Vader, he almost succeeded with Luke and set up a pretty nifty trap for the Rebels to fall into. Then he got overconfident...
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "It's a trap!"
  • Jabba has become the patron saint of morbid obesity and disgusting eating.
  • After Donald Trump's loss in the US 2020 election resulted in spontaneous celebrations in several US cities and beyond, many drew comparisons between the And There Was Much Rejoicing across the galaxy when the Emperor died. That includes Mark Hamill.
• Misaimed Fandom: This isn't really the case with viewers as whole, but believe-it-or-not, there is a single instance where this happened to Emperor Palpatine, and by a public figure, no less. The Emperor was actually viewed as something of a personal role model by Real Life Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer because of the sheer power he was able to wield over others via his Force Lightning. Dahmer also admired the Gemini Killer from The Exorcist III movie for similar reasons.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The idea of the Sarlacc digesting you over a thousand years. Though The Book of Boba Fett provides some Nightmare Retardant when it shows how quickly Boba escaped.
  • Palpatine's Electric Torture of Luke, which is creepy both because our hero is crying out in pain and screaming for his father to help him, and because the old geezer seems to derive some sort of perverse enjoyment from doing it.
  • Not seen in the film itself, but some of the methods that the Ewoks disposed of the Imperial Stormtroopers, according to Hume Tarl in The Essential Guide to Warfare, during the battle of Endor reeked of this, including using arrows to shoot out several Stormtroopers throats, or worse, firing the arrows into other parts of the body that causes them unbearable suffering due to them using a neurotoxin, and even utilized punji stake pits for the Imperials to end up being impaled in. All of a sudden, you may view the Ewoks' significantly differently than you have before.
• Ron the Death Eater: If there's one scene that Obi-Wan's detractors use to drag his name down, it's the "From a Certain Point of View" scene to the point of framing Obi-Wan as an emotionally abusive manipulator who was setting up Luke to murder his own father. While pulling the "That Man Is Dead" card was morally grey, Obi-Wan had no proof that there was any goodness left in Vader; a man who dramatically betrayed and burnt down the Galactic Republic, choked his own wife, brutalized dozens of planets at Palpatine's whim, killed scores of people for minor failings and/or inconveniences, and mutilated his own son. And given Luke's reaction in Empire, it's unlikely Luke would have taken the truth any better when he was still an innocent farmboy.
• Ruined FOREVER:
  • George Lucas adding Vader's "No. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" to the scene where Vader kills the Emperor in the 2011 Blu-ray release has provoked this reaction from the fans. Doesn't help that it paints Palpatine as stunningly oblivious to the inevitable betrayal.
  • For many people, Hayden Christiansen being inserted (very poorly) already ruined the film in 2004, which would make this of very little consequence.
  • A possible case of the creator making Memetic Mutation backfire and getting revenge? Think about it...
• The Scrappy: The Ewoks were obviously an attempt to introduce "cute" aliens into the film, but many fans ended up hating them or at least finding them annoying for their ridiculous Rock Beats Laser victory. It was made worse in some circles thanks to Lucas revealing that he had based them off the Vietcong. Though their lack of major presence in Star Wars media since this film has led to some fans softening their opinion on the Ewoks, even if they're still largely disliked.
• Special Effects Failure: The Max Rebo band in both versions, especially with Sy Snoodles. In the original, she was a very static puppet. In the SE, she became a more detailed and mobile (albeit cartoonish) CG model that didn't blend properly.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Approach the argument any way you want, but Yoda and Obi-Wan, even if Luke sees them as callous towards their old friend Anakin, are right. The Emperor and Vader are dangerous threats to the galaxy that have to be destroyed. The Emperor took over the galaxy through wits alone and Vader is The Starscream who wants the throne. And the Happy Ending Override of the Sequel Trilogy proves how the Sith are, as Mace Windu aptly said, too dangerous to be kept alive.
  • Is Obi-Wan wrong to say that the truths we cling to depend on our point of view? Favorite foods, favorite movies, even the political ideologies that one thinks will save the world all depend on a point of view about the world.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Not in the film itself, but the 2012 guidebook The Essential Guide to Warfare has a section about the Battle of Endor from an Imperial soldier's perspective, and the way he described the Ewoks and their actions during the battle reeked of Nightmare Fuel, almost painting them as being similar to a bunch of Complete Monsters.
• Tear Jerker: Vader's death and funeral.
• Theiss Titillation Theory: Was there any more to Leia's slave girl costume beneath the panels of cloth hanging from front and back of the waistline? According to Carrie Fisher on the commentary, there wasn't, and at times, the cast and crew standing behind her could see "all the way to Florida", as it were. Oola suffers a wardrobe malfunction as she is being dragged towards Jabba the Hutt, and again as she falls through the trap door. You can still see a short bit of the first malfunction in the current special edition. Older editions have longer scenes.
• Unfortunate Implications: In an interview later on, George Lucas insinuated that the Ewoks were supposed to be based on the Vietcong (aka, the Communist backed guerrilla group within South Vietnam during the Vietnam War), which causes a lot of negative implications about Lucas' views on America when the Ewoks were fighting and basically slaughtering the Imperial Stormtroopers.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Obi-Wan, and to a lesser extent Yoda, come across as this a bit thanks largely to the reveal that they knew all along that Vader was in fact Luke's father instead of his father's murderer and telling him that he must face Vader. Namely the fact that they don't seem to appreciate the intense emotions that the whole situation is causing Luke to feel.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Of course this applies to all the films, but this one stands out for the Sarlacc Pit fight, the speeder bike chase, and the battle royale at the end, capped off with the Falcon outrunning a massive fireball, Raiders of the Lost Ark style.
  • The crew involved with the speeder bike chase said in particular that the script just said "They jump on the bikes and take off at 100 miles an hour." They had to make it happen.
• The Woobie / Unintentionally Sympathetic: The Rancor keeper crying over his dead pet.
• Woobie Species: The Ewoks, considering they gladly agree to fight with the Rebels, only to lose badly.

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