[Rockingham]

Good picks. Blade Runner was an extraordinary movie that got a weak theater release due to a troubled production history and inadequate studio support. As a result, it took years before it was properly appreciated and attained its full influence. Along with Alien, Blade Runner and The Thing firmly established the future noir subgenre of science fiction, showing the future as not a bright and shiny place but as grubby, mean, and often dangerous in ways that we recognize as an extension of our own time.

The simple story line and now routine aerial stunts of Top Gun fare better in memory than in a new viewing. And The Return of the Jedi suffers not just from those damn Ewoks but from Lucas's detachment from the discipline of supervision by studio suits. Success can subvert talent in ways that struggle and hardship do not. The Star Wars films after the first two had bigger budgets, virtually guaranteed audiences, and massive revenue from toys and ancillary products but failed to offer much in the way of story-telling magic.

[oldvirginian]

“And The Return of the Jedi suffers not just from those damn Ewoks but from Lucas’s detachment from the discipline of supervision by studio suits.”

In the first two movies Lucas would bounce his ideas off of his wife, Marcia. She would read the script and either tell him it was good or he could do better. By the time he started writing ROTJ their marriage was breaking up and Marcia wasn’t reading the script’s anymore. When filming started their divorce was in court and Lucas had his mind elsewhere.
One can only imagine what would have been if the Lucas marriage had lasted.