[Standback]

Gatac -

* I'd suggest that your disdain of Luke and Leia is not exactly the norm. Certainly I've never heard general opinion of the two to be anywhere near as terrible as Anakin and Padme. Secondly, L&L weren't written with their core attributes being negative and annoying ones - namely "sulky" and "dishrag."

* Vader was a good enough villian to carry the film. Cliche's abounded indeed, but were done with a minimum amount of competence, and all in all added to the movie. And Jabba is memorable.

* C3PO and R2D2 were certainly comic relief and plot devices - but fairly well implemented ones. They were characters, with presence, and weren't hauled in for a few minutes a movie ("Look, look! It's ANOTHER character from the original films! Because we can't think up any new ones! Except for Jar-Jar!")

* The "new" Yoda is "kick-ass" - which is nice, and cool, but not very interesting beyond "look, another muppet battle scene." And the only reason it works well is because of the stark contrast to the wise-mentor character established in the originals.

I suppose I can give you suspense, but honestly, I think that's more because of the fact that all three prequels were put under the microscope and dissected for months before they ever hit the screen. Nothing beyond the broadest plot points of the prequels is actually spoiled in the original trilogy.

I heard nothing about the prequels prior to watching them. Nothing. Going into RotS, I know from the original trilogy and the previous prequels as follows:
A. Anakin will be turned to the Dark Side.
B. He will fight Obi-Wan, and be left scarred, thus turning him into Darth Vader.
C. The Republic will be turned into the Empire.
D. All the Jedi will be killed.
E. Palpatine is the Sith Lord, and behind pretty much everything bad.
F. Padme will give birth to Luke and Leia, and die.

Within the first ten-fifteen minutes of the movie, we know that the only character depth established in Anakin is:
G. Anakin has premonitions of Padme's death, and wants to stop it.

Drawing the lines here is pretty simple. E will take advantage of G to achieve A. If absolutely nothing happens unexpectedly, C and D will follow. A leads to B, F happens. End of movie.
So what suspense? How Anakin will be turned to the Dark Side? We know who's trying for it and we can see how it's going to happen. Can Anakin save his wife? We know he can't. Can the Jedi bring an end to the war? Nope. Who will live and who will die? We know that already. How will the war end, and how will the Jedi die? Well, this is tricky, but one might venture to guess that they'll be killed in CGI battle scenes. Or in CGI battle scenes with Anakin. Who's the evil mastermind behind all this? The only suspense even hinted at, but no, gave that away earlier to be nice and ominous.

More memorable scenes because it was new back then. The dialogue may have lost some innocence, but I don't think it got much worse. Lucas can't write dialogue, period.

"It was new back then" carries a lot of weight. If RotS had something that was new in it back now, I'd like it a lot more. As for the original dialogue - you may be correct on this point, as I don't remember. I hope to g-d that you're not. If I rewatch the originals and the dialog's as bad as RotS, I'm going to disrespect myself of five years back to no end, as well as fandom at large.

I submit that many younger fans have seen the Special Edition, which has had some of the worse original SFX redone.

Firstly, teens loved Star Wars in the years between 1977 and 1997. And IIRC, the 1997 effects were nowhere near as revolutionary for their time as the originals were - or, I believe, as the prequels are. And secondly, the SFX weren't the only claim-to-fame of the entire movie.

Good god, does anyone remember the ewoks? They got a freaking cartoon and two made-for-TV movies!

I'm not arguing for the cartoon and the TV movies. I'm arguing for the original trilogy, and completely ignoring any spinoffs. Return of the Jedi was a solid film, in which the Ewoks might not have been the most brilliant idea in the world, but certainly were nowhere near as irritating and idiotic as JarJar.