2. Yoda
Yodas reveal subverted Lukes and the audiences expectation for what a warrior could be. Through Yodas teachings, Luke learned that physical strength only gets you so far, and that true power comes from within. Some of the best moments in Empire come from Luke being schooled by the littlest Jedi, such as the famous scene where Yoda easily lifts Lukes X-Wing out of the swamp using the Force. He was an entertaining character all around, and gets bonus points for having the great Frank Oz as the man behind the puppet, providing a distinct voice with an occasional backward speaking pattern. And remember, I did say occasional. Its too bad that his infrequent habit of mixing his sentence structures up was the only element of the original character remaining in the prequel version of Yoda. In the new films, Yoda says almost every one of his lines backwards, and it really starts to grate the ears after a while. Because George Lucas didnt have much to do with the success of ESB, he didnt understand what made Yoda so special. So he translated the character in the most superficial way possible: by making him talk funny. Seriously, can you imagine some of Yodas best lines from Empire if Lucas wrote them? Do or do not. No try, there is. Why you fail, that is. No thanks. And like everything in the prequels, Yoda had to be an awful-looking CGI character now. At least in The Phantom Menace, they attempted to use a puppet again, even if it was somehow less convincing than the one from two decades prior. But for Episodes II and III, Lucas thought that audiences wanted to see Yoda make a fool of himself and jump around with a lightsaber, and there was no way a puppet was going to do that. The moment that Yoda pulled out his embarrassing fun-size lightsaber was also the moment the character lost everything that made him special. On a side note: Frank Oz wouldnt reprise his role as Miss Piggy for 2011s The Muppets, a wonderful movie, because he didnt think the script respected the characters." This is after he voiced prequel Yoda, a digitised husk of the original character.