You know what I do when I meet someone who says RotJ or ANH are the best Star Wars movies? I tell them ESB is my favorite and then we move on to talking about what we love so much about the movies. My favorite character is Luke Skywalker but I'm not going to begrudge a Han fan. Han is cool!
I totally get people loving ESB the most! For me, a good SW conversation centers around talking about why we love our favorites, not crapping on the things we don't like in our not-favorites.
I mean, we're adults. I don't even rag on jar-jar anymore.
But Jedi is, thematically and in the context of the saga as a whole without being meta about what was planned when, has inarguably the single most important moment in the entire franchise, and that's hard to beat.
If we disregard the rescue, which i enjoy rewatching more than the hoth sequence, though both are rad, and the ultimate victory (not when the emporer dies, but when Luke throws away his weapon), then I'd have to go with Star Wars. ESB is great. I love it. But ANH and RoTJ are just two of the best action adventure films ever made, IMO.
I mean, I'd put ESB just below them. Like, it's close.
But Luke in RoTJ is just so satisfying and excellent. The framing of his look next to Vader, the second battle between father and son, where all cards are on the table and Luke isn't an apprentice anymore, Han finally actually showing the change in character from the other two films, rather than starting the movie back to where he was before the end of the film before, and yes, the Ewoks. I think some folks are too stuck on the meta wrt Ewoks to just watch the movie as it is and enjoy it, which is a bummer.
The empire doesn't look incompetent in RoTJ, the space battle is a narrow victory, and the ewoks just come out looking clever and determined. I don't think anyone would make the same arguments about the ewoks if they looked different.