Star Wars: 10 Reasons Return Of The Jedi Isn't As Perfect As You Remember

7. It’s Another Death Star!

The Force Awakens was rightly criticised for outright copying A New Hope, but in a film that served as a reboot to a franchise after lukewarm reception to the questionable Prequel Trilogy, Abrams’ decision to imitate old story beats was almost understandable.

But what a lot of Original Trilogy die-hards who lambast anything released after 1983 fail to realise is that Return of the Jedi was doing the exact same thing thirty years earlier.

Not content with focusing on the more interesting intimate family drama of the Skywalkers and refusing to take the deep-dive into Star Wars politics the Prequels would explore, Return of the Jedi needed a tangible threat to ramp up the tension.

Lucas could have introduced a large and menacing Imperial fleet, paid more attention to devastating ground assaults, made the Emperor more of a threat by giving him ‘UNLIMITED POWEERRRRR!’ or even given Boba Fett and other bounty hunters briefly introduced in Empire a more active role. Instead, Return of the Jedi’s big threat in the sky was the imaginatively named Second Death Star, whose creation was a completely logical step for the Empire to make.

Because, you know, the first one worked so well.