Quoted:
For me, Star Wars is the best of all the films. The Empire Strikes Back is VERY good, but is much darker, and lacks the innocence of the original. Jedi was a harbinger of things to come and is considerably worse than the first two.
Lucas has completely lost his mind. At least I can enjoy the deSpecialized editions and pretend nothing else exists.
I think that change in tone was essential to keeping the story arc on track. If it was literally "Star Wars 2" it would have been extremely campy and cheesy. We probably would have gotten effectively The Phantom Menace 20 years ahead of schedule. The Empire Strikes Back saved Star Wars and allowed it to spawn a pretty damn good expanded universe for two decades before George got his hands on it again. Had it gone the other way, we'd be talking about Star Wars as that really good 70's movie with shitty sequels rather than an epic trilogy that developed a life of it's own through books, video games, and fanboys.
Don't get me wrong, Star Wars (IV), was exactly what it should have been and merits being nominated for best of series. Just pointing out how important it was for Empire to be very much unlike a traditional sequel where you put the same characters in similar situations with about the same result by the end of the movie. (Die Hard for example...)