Why Star Wars Began to Suck

Here's some history: I saw the first three Star Wars movies in their original first runs. I saw the first one twice the first week that it was released.

Star Wars was fun. The Empire Strikes Back was seriously dark, and Return of the Jedi sucked. It felt all wrong, it was forced cheery and the whole "the cute little Stone-Age teddy bears defeat the Evil Empire" finale just seriously blew.

Now it turns out that there was a reason for it: George Lucas fucked with the story of the third movie in order to protect the merchandising of toys and other crap to sell to the fans.

In short, Mel Brooks had it right in his satire "Spaceballs", probably righter than he knew at the time:



(H/T)