RETURN OF THE JEDI You! Ewok! Stop humping Han's leg! It's funny how things change as people get older. When we were kids, everybody would try to prove how cool they were by demonstrating or just claiming how much they liked something. One kid was cool because he had this massive collection of Beetle Bailey clippings, for example. And a lot of us were cool (as cool as kids in grade four can be) because of our relationship with Star Wars - how many times we'd seen it, or read the book, how well we were doing at the arcade game, whatever. Before I got in the internet in 1995, I'd always assumed that everybody just no longer took much of an interest in trying to prove that their passions are stronger than everyone else's. Of course, I was wrong. Nowadays, I look around, and everybody's in a rush to demonstrate how much they HATE everything. "I hate the ewoks and Jar-Jar this much!" "Oh yeah? Well I hate the ewoks and Jar-Jar THIS much!" At least when we were kids, we didn't KNOW it was a cover for a dick-swinging contest. I'm not just talking about Star Wars; you see it everywhere. I hear it in the metal crowds too ("You think Metallica sold out? Well, I think Slayer sold out, that's how cool I am!" "Well, I think Dimmu Borgir sold out!" "Well, I think Emperor sold out!" "Well, I think Burzum sold out!"). I just find the whole thing silly; I might complain about how much I hate "psychic link" movies, but only when I have to deal with the awful things. Everybody has things that annoy them; why brag about it? I never thought I'd read angry (vein-bulging blinded-by-fury enraged!) rants about ewoks eighteen years after their homeworld gets rendered lifeless by the suffocating world-enshrouding cloud of burnt-up Death Star fragments, but the rants are sure out there. Maybe it isn't silly, maybe it's just sad. I think Jar-Jar blows too, but I fully expect to have picked up the shattered pieces of my life and moved on by 2017. (for that matter, it occurs to me that any movie that pisses off that many people like that probably isn't doing something wrong; more likely, it's doing something RIGHT...nah, Jar-Jar still blows) Regarded by casual and die-hard fans alike as the hands-down least of the original trilogy, Return Of The Jedi is fraught with problems. Lucas's script recycles itself frequently, the cinematography is dodgy, the acting wooden, and there are no shortage of "What were they thinking?" story decisions. That having been said, it does enough things right that I still love it, but of the three films, it's certainly held up the least well. Return Of The Jedi underwent a great number of changes from its initial conception to what we have today, starting with its title. I actually saw a Revenge Of The Jedi poster in a movie poster shop about twelve years ago, priced at three hundred bucks. (I wonder how much that The Living Daylights poster with Pierce Brosnan I once saw must be going for) This was probably a smart decision, concepts like revenge fitting in poorly with the ideals of the Jedi as outlined in The Empire Strikes Back, and George Lucas said as much. But there were a lot of less inspired decisions; planets to be set on, species to be featured prominently, and most of the story is not what it was originally intended to be, giving rise to any number of too-late "If only..."'s from the fans, and causing a split between Lucas and producer Gary Kurtz. The movie's first act comes across well enough, once a little hurdle is skipped past. Return Of The Jedi opens with the construction of the new Death Star, bigger and more powerful than the last one. Already, the script is recycling ideas from previous films; while the Emperor has a hidden motive for building this as revealed late in the film, it's still recycling, and surely there were any number of other things that would've done that job. (When I first saw this at age nine, I somehow got into my head that they were building this new Death Star out of scavenged pieces of the old one, which is why it wasn't finished - since the new one was bigger, they didn't have enough material!) This scene re-introduces Darth Vader and re-emphasizes that the Emperor is a much more feared individual than even he is, and then lets us know that the Emperor is finally going to show himself outside of a hologram in this series. Then we're back to Tattooine, home of Jabba the Hutt. This series of scenes is probably the best uninterrupted sequence in the film; it's grisly, it's amusingly grim, and it basically has all of our heroes digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole until it explodes. It starts with C-3P0 and R2-D2 going to Jabba's huge palace in an apparent effort to bargain with them. They are reluctantly admitted, and find the inside of the palace to be much like the cantina in Mos Eisley. In fact, Lucas has said that with these scenes, he wanted to essentially re-do the cantina scene with a bigger budget and without relying on stock masks. The results are rather mixed, in that many of the creatures in the crowd look like they're wearing stock masks as much as ever, but at least there are still a few enjoyably non-humanoid life forms (one thing Star Trek desperately needs to tap into more), not the least of which is Jabba himself. Jabba the Hutt is just such an interesting character. Physically, he's a giant slug with a HUGE mouth, whose sole interest is his own indulgence - whether it be in food, sex, or cruelty. He's like one of those super-fat people you've heard about who have to be removed from their houses by taking off the roof; he can't even move on his own, and instead, sits on a big floating dais. We'd heard his name a few times in the last few films, but remarkably, nothing specific was ever said about him. Here, we find out ALL about him, from his pets to his pastimes to his taste in music. It's arguable that Jabba the Hutt is the most "realistic" character in this series, since we scarcely ever see anybody else doing anything other than their jobs. R2-D2 projects a hologram of Luke for Jabba, and Luke claims to be a Jedi (a little prematurely, don't you think?) and asks to bargain for Han Solo's life. Solo is still frozen in that big chunk of carbonite, and how he's hanging on Jabba's wall. Luke offers the droids to Jabba as a gift and token of good will, much to 3P0's horror. The droids are taken down past some slimy prison cells to a robot torture chamber where droids get dismembered and have their feet burned, and they're both assigned to their respective posts in Jabba's robot employee roster. Later on, it becomes clear that Luke's entire plan is based on the assumption that Jabba will refuse any offer to give up Solo for money; whether that really is true of Jabba (hell if I know) is impossible to say, so it's impossible to say if Luke had a clever plan or was just taking an insane risk. They're only droids, but they're not "only" droids to Luke; Luke either knows Jabba better than we do, or he's lapsing back into the recklessness that Yoda once chastised him for. 3P0 is assigned to be Jabba's new interpreter (since Jabba speaks in [natch] a deep rumbling gurgle), and R2-D2 is made into a drink server on his sail barge. Just where you sail to on a planet without any surface water, is a question answered in good time. Once they're all set up, Jabba holds a big party (every night's a party at Jabba's place). He's got a band playing and dancing girls jumping around and everything, something rather disturbing happens. Jabba starts pulling hard on the chain which binds one dancing girl to him, licking his huge lips with this gigantic, disgusting tongue. The girl pulls back in protest and defiance. Just what is going on here, I couldn't tell you; does Jabba want to eat her? Does Jabba want sexual favors from her? Either possibility is pretty disgusting, and I'd be pulling away too. Running out of patience, Jabba drops out the floor beneath her feet, sending her tumbling into a big pit. We hear some inhuman roars, some screams, and it's a good bet that there's something nasty down there. Then a mysterious masked bounty hunter shows up with Chewbacca in chains. After some haggling (additionally motivated by a thermal detonator) Jabba decides he likes this bounty hunter and offers a fair price for the Wookie. The deal is sealed, and we note that Boba Fett is still hanging around Jabba's palace, doing whatever it is Fett does when he keeps taking orders from his clients long after the job is done, and we see that Lando has somehow gotten a job as a palace guard. Chewbacca is led off to one of those slimy cells, and the bounty hunter just kinda hangs out with the alien crowd. When everyone's asleep, the bounty hunter quietly sneaks over to the block of carbonite and VERY LOUDLY manages to free Han from it. Han's okay, but temporarily blind. The bounty hunter unmasks himself to reveal that he's a she, Princess Leia. They get a tender little moment, but momentarily they're apprehended by Jabba and his entourage, who were hiding behind a curtain the whole time. (How do you get this many loud, obnoxious aliens to stay quiet like that?) Despite further offers and protestations, Solo is dragged off to Chewbacca's cell, where he gets one of his two only really good lines, and Jabba starts disgustingly hitting on Leia ("We have powerful friends," she protests, bwa ha ha). Whether he's thinking of eating her or having sex with her, again, is hard to say. How a human-sized woman would have sex with a bloated Hutt, I just don't want to know. Now pretty much ALL of the major heroes of this series are captured by Jabba, except for Luke. A fitting reminder of this comes with a shot from outside the palace, where a toad-like Tattooine creature slurps up a mouse-like creature from several meters away - gotcha! It's just another day here. I like how each scene makes things more and more hopeless until finally, Luke himself shows up. Again, it's hard to say if he's flirting with the Dark Side or if the script (Lucas writing with Lawrence Kasdan) just didn't think that through enough, but he does choke two guards on his way in, just enough to get them out of his way. He manages to mind-trick his way to Jabba's presence, and Jabba ain't happy to see him. It's interesting to note here that Jabba seems to know more about the Jedi than anybody who isn't actually one of them. The prequel made it obvious that he'd been around for some time, but it's neat to see that there's only one character in this series who isn't in the least bit impressed by the Jedi even after they've proven their skills. Neither the Jedi, the old Republic, nor the Empire much concern Jabba; the criminal element will flourish regardless of what form the government takes. Standing before Jabba, Luke notes that Leia has been made into his new dancing girl, and has been fitted with a skimpy gold bikini. WOOHOO!!! BIG THUMBS UP TO THE SKIMPY GOLD BIKINI!!! Many have complained about the skimpy gold bikini and how it turns Princess Leia's feministish icon into a pleasure slave for some guy's id, but she gets to open up a can of whup-ass in good time. Luke's Jedi mind tricks don't work on Jabba, since it's been mentioned a couple of times before that they work the best on the weak-minded. Jabba may be a hedon, but he's not an addle-brained one. When Luke starts getting more forceful, Jabba loses his patience and drops him into the pit, along with one unlucky guard. Down in the pit, Luke and the guard encounter the Rancor, a giant two-legged beast with huge grasping arms that eats its prey whole, after chewing it a few times. Around this point in the movie, it seems like a gimme that it's going to maintain a similarly downbeat tone as The Empire Strikes Back; the Rancor snaps up that guard and snacks it down (crunch, snap) and then focuses in on Luke. Luke actually manages to defeat the Rancor, using his wits and a well-aimed throw of a skull, though not after some questionable blue-screen effects which didn't even get much fixed for the Special Edition in 1997. Jabba is none too pleased, and orders Solo and Chewbacca to be brought to him with Luke. Downstairs, the Rancor's keeper weeps over the carcass of his beloved pet; it seems like a joke scene, but I always thought it was kind of sad, and a nice reminder that even ugly pets have people who love them, and love and affection exists even in the most repellent criminal environments. There are even people out there who like their pit bulls, and hairless cats, and guinea pigs. Thank you, but I'll take my cute lil' fuzzy bunny rabbit. In a scene heavily marred by worse-than-usual cinematography (looks like it's shot on video!) and worse-than-usual acting (awful timing/deliveries from everybody, except for Solo's second great line, "Good, I hate long waits."), Return Of The Jedi makes its first serious misstep. Jabba sentences them all to death. They are to be thrown into the Pit of Carkoon where they will be eaten by the "all-powerful Sarlaac" and be digested for a thousand years. Ouch! Anyway, the big problem here is another example of the script recycling the other two films...and in this case, itself! I mean, Jabba just tried to kill Luke by throwing into a pit with a big monster. Now he wants to correct on that by throwing him into a bigger pit with a bigger monster? This is not a well-thought-out course of action, even for a guy whose idea of exercise is to tug on his dancing girl's chain once in a while. But, everybody gets on the sail barge (where R2's serving drinks) and a couple of smaller floating ships on which the prisoners are held (they're gonna have to Walk The Plank! How many movies are made these days where people have to Walk The Plank?), and off they go to the Pit of Carkoon. The Sarlaac is basically this big, gaping, almost vaginal hole at the bottom, with teeth all around the side (which don't chew anything) and a number of tentacles poking out, to pull down anybody within reach. I like the Sarlaac just as much as the next guy, but I don't know how a sessile organism can be reasonably described as "all-powerful". Despite the shaky setup, this turns into a great action scene, as R2-D2, on Luke's command, launches some sort of projectile out at Luke, which he catches in midair. We get about a half second to note that it's not only a lightsaber, but a NEW lightsaber, with a green blade and a different shape as his previous one. After that half second's over, a lengthy and well-staged action sequence blasts out of the starting gates at about a zillion miles an hour and doesn't let up until it's all over; Jabba and his entourage dead (Roger Ebert's description of a missed opportunity here is hilarious), and all of our heroes away in one piece. The action's great, but there's one rather annoying problem; Boba Fett, who's been hanging around all this time, is killed, and he's not just killed, but killed by a slapsticky accident. The sum total of Fett's bad-assed factor in this movie is when he demonstrates his "wrapping cable" weapon - other than that, one is left to wonder how he managed to gather the affection of Star Wars fans that he has. Meanwhile, out on the new Death Star, the Emperor has arrived. A pale, bent, withered old man, he nevertheless exudes a sense of mysterious power, much of that vibe coming from the fact that one as demonstrably powerful as Vader is enslaved to him. He actually doesn't seem like such a bad guy yet, actually calling Vader "my friend" twice. But the scene finishes off with an evil laugh, reminding us that he's not exactly the guy you'd call to babysit the kids. With Han finally freed from Jabba, Luke is now free to complete his Jedi training on Dagobah. Yoda's still there, but in failing health, and one gets the impression that he's only letting himself hang around long enough to see Luke again. Yoda is unable to complete Luke's training, saying that he doesn't need any more, but he is not yet a Jedi, and for that, he must face Vader again. Luke finally asks the question fans had been wracked with for three years, of whether or not Vader is really his father. Of course, he is. Of all the problems in this movie, one problem it DIDN'T have (and reportedly almost did!) is that it didn't putz out on Vader being Luke's father. I'm not sure why Yoda thought it "unexpected" that Vader would bring up Luke's parentage, though. Yoda then dies (needlessly reminding Luke of Jedi lessons that would be about the equivalent of Jedi kindergarten), leaving Luke alone with the droid, until the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi returns, and tells Luke the whole truth about Vader and Anakin Skywalker. Kenobi makes some sort of half-assed excuse about how what he said was true from a certain point of view, and while this does hold up, I would rather have had Kenobi flatly ask Luke if he'd rather have been told the truth as a teenager. Then we get the most bogus revelation, that Leia is Luke's twin sister that not even Vader knows about. Now, the only reason I can think of for this happening (since it certainly doesn't go anywhere, plot-wise) is to knock out one corner from the Han/Leia/Luke love triangle without alienating any fans. There was still any number of people who wanted to see Leia shack up with Luke instead of Han; well, nobody wanted to see that after this. It's a pretty cheap move, at any rate; not as cheap as what comes later, but I don't think this felt right to anybody. Luke wants to face Vader, but not as his enemy. In their confrontation on Cloud City, Luke swears that he felt some goodness in there, which introduces a fairly interesting element in their conflict; now even Luke is sympathetic to Vader, moreso than Kenobi is (and who can blame Kenobi who, after all, was killed by the guy). Luke believes that he can bring Anakin Skywalker back from the Dark Side, but Obi-Wan disagrees, saying that Vader is "more machine than man". (again, the little things in The Phantom Menace give aspects of the original trilogy new resonance; that Anakin loved machines so much as a child and eventually grew to more or less become one is part of what makes Vader essentially the tragic hero of the entire story) Luke is resolute, and sets off not with the intention of defeating Vader, but of converting him. Everybody meets up with the Rebel fleet, now accompanied by giant, blistery (!) star cruisers provided by the salmon-headed Calamari, which I might add taste great with a nice tzatziki sauce. We even get to meet the head of the alliance, Mon Mothma (Caroline Blakiston, who only gets hotter as I get older), who details the Rebellion's plan to strike down this new Death Star, their most important mission ever, since the Emperor himself is supposed to be on it. The mission comes in two stages; a strike team has to go to the surface of the forest moon of Endor and blow up the shield generator (man, another blow-up-the-shield-generator mission?), and the fleet has to fly INTO the Death Star to destroy its power generator. Well, the smaller ships have to; it doesn't look like those cruisers are going to fit. Lando pilots the Millennium Falcon to lead the space mission (Han's line that he has a funny feeling that he won't see it again feels significant, even though it isn't), while everybody else goes to the surface to blow up the shield generator. On the moon, our heroes run afoul of some storm troopers who ride floating motorcycles. The chases through the trees are exciting but seem so insanely dangerous (most people who die in these chases do so by hitting trees) that they bring the film to a sort of absurdity from which the scenes on Endor never really extract themselves. The chase is exciting and does what it needs to do, but it separates Leia from the rest of the rebels. And that's when we meet the ewoks. Now, to be perfectly honest, I don't hate the ewoks, and just about everybody over the age of ten hates the ewoks. Let me remind you of the first couple of paragraphs in this review; hating ewoks is just too much work. But Ewoks are hated with a kind of irrational passion that I sometimes kind of refreshing, in that it's amusing to see people invest so much emotion in fictional creations. Hitler isn't hated the way ewoks are hated. Only Jar-Jar Binks is hated the way ewoks are hated, and that amuses me too. And, yeah, they pretty much deserve the derision, though again, the extreme loathing they've received (as if they did anything to hurt anybody more than annoy them for an hour) cracks me up; it's not like an ewok killed anybody's dad. I just don't LIKE the ewoks. Their name alone conjures up feelings of disgust at quality sacrificed for commercial concerns outside of the film; in this case, merchandising. You say "ewok", and everybody knows you're talking about introducing an undesirable element just to sell toys, just like when you say "Ladyhawke", everybody knows you're talking about a horribly inappropriate score which cruelly destroys the otherwise good movie around it. They have their moments, but the film just doesn't treat them as what they are: midget cavemen. Instead, they're given inappropriate, unlikely technologies and their climactic battle against the stormtroopers and Scout Walkers, despite having a number of good moments, is usually ridiculous at best. I've heard some not-unreasonable defenses of the ewoks, but I'm just not on board for 'em. While it's cool by me that the Emperor's grand master plan is thwarted by One Little Thing, this is just too little. I mean, they're cavemen. Cavemen should not be responsible for overthrowing a galactic empire, let alone midget cavemen. We didn't let Battlefield Earth get away with this kind of shit, did we? The scenes on Endor were reportedly originally supposed to be set on the Wookie planet of Kashyyyk, with Wookies overthrowing the Empire instead of ewoks. For obvious (merchandising) reasons, Lucas decided to downscale the Wookies (and re-arrange their names) into more cute and cuddly packages. I don't think it was necessarily a bad idea to not set it on Kashyyyk - after all, the Empire wouldn't want to build its Death Star shield generator on a planet full of hostile Wookies. Besides, the much-loathed Star Wars Holiday Special took place on Kashyyyk, and Lucas's long-time revulsion toward that particular project probably makes him want to avoid provoking any further interest. But the ironic thing is, Wookie toys probably would've sold just as well as ewok toys, and maybe better, since people already had some affection for Wookies. Anyway...down on the planet, our heroes are all captured by the ewoks, who think that C-3P0 is one of their gods. (rolls eyes...it's a good thing Anthony Daniels is as funny as he is ["Yoo watee towa...BOOM!"], or this may have been COMPLETELY insufferable) The ewoks begin to prepare the rest of our heroes as the main course in a great feast to make 3P0 feel welcome; their best moments come around this time when they're not portrayed as cute, but as kind of creepy. One of them even hilariously sings a little song to himself as he tries starting a fire underneath Han. And I liked how the first one we meet sounds like Chuck Schuldiner. At their best, the ewoks aren't really that cute. But they're usually not at their best. Luke uses the Force to move 3P0 around in the air, depicting him as an angry, magic-using god, and making for another nice demonstration of how you can use the Force cleverly for defense instead of just in the heat of battle, or for getting beer from the fridge without having to get up. So, the ewoks give it up, and later that night, C-3P0 (who once said he's "not very good at telling stories") holds them spellbound with their tale, complete with sound effects. It's actually a pretty sweet moment, though damaged by the bizarro cuteseying of one ewok trying to hump Han's leg, I mean WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!? Then, in the movie's most awkward scene, Luke takes Leia aside and tells her everything. It's the hardest job in the trilogy for both of them, acting-wise, and neither of them are really up to it. It could've been worse...and indeed, when Han comes in afterward to find out what's going on, he actually has to go through the indignity of APOLOGIZING (but at least that ewok isn't humping his leg anymore). But it's definitely one of the more flawed spots in this flawed film. It does give us a few hints about their origins, though; Leia was raised by their mother for a while, though her existence was hidden from Vader and Obi-Wan alike, suggesting that both of them were spirited off soon after the birth. Luke sets off into the forest to surrender to the Imperials, because he's endangering the mission (Vader can sense him, though curiously the Emperor cannot) and because it's the quickest way to meet Vader. He meets up with Vader in an awkward meeting (how could it not be?), Luke continuing to protest that he feels the good in his father. Vader, while seeming to better understand the nature of his mistakes in life ("It is too late for me now"), is still adamant about his perspective on "the true nature of the Force", and takes Luke up to the Emperor. Ah, the Emperor. Here played by Ian McDairmid, as would be the case in the prequels, the Emperor is probably the most boo-able, hiss-able villain that I've ever seen. His continual taunts towards Luke almost make me leap up and cry out "He's such a BASTARD!" Hate is what converted Vader to the Dark Side, and seeing as how Vader's methods didn't work for Luke, hate is what the Emperor tries. His previous pretensions about Vader being his "friend" are blown away here, with both his made-obvious thoughts on friendship and his cruel remarks about Vader, even the word "friend" always being hissed out with spite and venom. The Emperor informs Luke that the entire scenario with the new Death Star was cooked up by him in order to lure the Rebellion into a battle they cannot win, and there is a trap for them both on the surface of the moon, and in space around the Death Star. Sure enough, down on the moon, the attempt to blow up the shield generator fails as our heroes are captured by Imperial soldiers, and in space, the Rebel fleet comes out of hyperspace to note that the Death Star's shield isn't down, and they're pinned between it (which turns out to be fully operational) and the Imperial fleet which is lying in wait. So from there, the movie splits off into three scenarios; the space battle, the battle on the surface, and Luke's confrontation with Vader and the Emperor. I've heard a number of complaints about the cross-cutting in this climax, but every time I see it, I find myself swept away (even if a number of scenes on Endor keep bringing me down back to earth). The space battle is the best of its kind in movie history, period. Nothing else has bested it in eighteen years since, and nothing else has even come close. The ships have a range and speed of movement which was eye-popping in 1983 and remains so to this day; they make anything we see in any Star Trek movie or other space opera look pretty clunky in comparison. The confrontation on the Death Star is, in its own way, just as satisfactory. There's some iffy dialogue from Vader and Luke (the earlier "I have felt him" double entendres are hilarious, however juvenile), but the waaaaay over-the-top evilness of the Emperor manages to obscure it. He takes every opportunity to remind Luke of how much Luke should hate him, making for a fairly difficult sequence of scenes, since the audience has to be rooting for Luke not to engage in the very boo-hiss hatred we're cheerfully indulging in. Eventually, seeing the diminishing chances of victory in the battle outside, combined perhaps with the Emperor's continued goading, Luke chooses to do battle; whether he is moving to kill the Emperor and is stopped by Vader, or whether Luke is going straight for Vader is unclear. But the fight is mostly a good one, and does a nice job of consistently conveying that there's a lot more conflict here than two guys with swords hacking at each other. Vader even at one point offers to spare Luke's friends if he gives himself up. Each movie in this series features a point at which Luke has to (or might have to) ask himself just how far he's willing to go to save his friends. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan wisely took that choice away from him. In The Empire Strikes Back, he rushed off to save them at a huge risk to himself and the galaxy, and there's no real answer as to whether or not that was the right decision. But here, he makes the curiously satisfying decision of choosing to let his friends to go their fate, whatever that might be, sooner than make that ultimate sacrifice to save them - now THAT'S faith in your friends. This is, of course, what Yoda meant when he said "If you value what they fight for?" Vader then pulls information about Luke's sister out of his mind; Vader never knew about Leia. For that matter, by the end of the movie, it's a little unclear as to whether he knows it's Leia, or just knows that Luke has a twin sister. Indeed, it's the scenes on Endor which are the least satisfactory here. I guess I can imagine accepting the notion of the ewoks managing to overwhelm the legion of troops down there in sheer numbers, but as it happens, it just doesn't make sense. Midget cavemen should not be building catapults, flying in gliders, or rigging ingenious mechanisms to squash a Scout Walker's head between two logs. The fact that they have all of this technology intriguingly suggests that the ewoks are actually quite a warlike species, but that of course doesn't go anywhere. There is stuff down here that works. The ewoks cleverly topple one Walker by rolling a stack of logs downhill at it. They continually find the (very obvious) ways you can unseat a speeder bike rider. And I liked the shots of a group of ewoks trying (unsuccessfully) to trip up a Walker with a vine. This battle was not a completely doomed concept; it could've worked, had Lucas had the confidence to play it straight instead of for laughs and for toy sales. But most of it is total hogwash. No matter how bad the stormtroopers' record has been up until this point, you'd think that their armor could repel miniature arrows from miniature bows, and the occasional thrown rock. As I said, there are engineering feats here which should be way beyond any ewok. Frequent slapstick is a problem, causing us to entirely forget that Leia and R2 actually get shot, moments after it happens. Anyway, it's a gimme that the ewoks and the rebels will triumph downstairs, causing the rebels to triumph upstairs. The ol' Test-Audience Syndrome ensured that the Falcon and everyone aboard got away from the Death Star in one piece. I have mixed feelings about this; after all, not EVERYBODY can be psychic, and if Han's "funny feeling" that he wasn't going to see the Falcon again came to be true, then we'd pretty much have a whole galaxy full of potential Jedi. But on the other hand, for a while, the battle in space came with a number of rebel casualties; whole cruisers were being blown up! But once they're inside the superstructure of the Death Star, it seems like rebel casualties drop near zero, and it feels a bit like they're winning without paying a price for it. But on the Death Star, before it blew, the three-way conflict resolves itself satisfactorily, if not spectacularly. Vader, who once offered to join forces with Luke against the Emperor, is finally given this opportunity, sort of. But not before a good fight between Luke and Vader, alas climaxing with a rather stiff, artificial "fall" by Vader (a climax problem that would repeat itself in the otherwise awesome sword battle in The Phantom Menace). Luke throws away his lightsaber after this, possibly because he doesn't believe he'll survive anyway, since at one point, he says something which suggests that he does not intend to survive this battle on the Death Star; even if he wins, he expects to be blown up with the space station anyway. So this is a purely personal conflict, not a political one. Or maybe because he suddenly thinks he can take on the Emperor mano-a-mano. Either way, he's wrong, and the initially pleased Emperor (Woohoo! New apprentice!) is quite pissed off by Luke's continued insistence that he'll never join the Dark Side, and proceeds to try to torture him to death. It's strange, how effective it is to see Vader (who in terms of appearances, at this point, is an unmoving, impenetrable mask) watching the Emperor torture his son. His ultimate choice of loyalties is a religious rush about the size and intensity of that of Luke retrieving the lightsaber in the ice cave in the last movie; good, but one might expect a little more for the climax of a trilogy that aspires to modern myth. Some have questioned why the Emperor didn't just use the Force to "float" himself up out of the shaft in which he perished, but I guess it's conceivable that Vader was using just as much of the Force to force him down. I actually like how abrupt the Emperor's demise is; we've invested our attention in three movies to see the conflict between Luke and Vader resolved, not any conflict with the Emperor. We like Luke and have some solid compassion for Vader; the Emperor, we just want to die. The script wisely keeps things with Vader pretty quiet after this; Luke drags him back to the shuttle they took up, and Vader simply implores him to remove his mask so that he can look upon his son with his own eyes. What he sees underneath is a frail, scarred, pale old man, with a sparkle of life in his eyes that suggests that he's come out of a long, scary prison sentence and is having his first taste of freedom in as long as he can remember. The scene between them is brief, but tastefully done; I can see some calling it sentimental, but Vader's last words are appropriate enough. It's probably the best single scene in the movie. Luke flies off the Death Star and leaves it to explode behind him, and burns his father in a funeral pyre on the moon below. We get a big celebration (looks like it's shot on video again) with the ewoks, and everybody's happy. Except for, of course, parts of the audience. Luke looks off into the woods and sees the ghost of his father re-joining the ghosts of Obi-Wan (who he once hated more than anything) and Yoda (who he never mentioned), and everything's hunky-dory. It's easy to see why nobody ever seems to watch this movie on its own, but only as the conclusion to the trilogy. The galaxy-spanning civilization is disappointingly not fleshed out here; of the three planets we see, two were visited in previous films, and the third is populated by a Stone Age tribal culture, though it's nice to see the Empire re-admitting Americans into their ranks of officers. Speaking of failing to expand on things, this new Death Star appears to have exactly two rooms: the landing bay and the Emperor's throne tower. Characters we met in the second film and invested an interest in (Fett, Piett, Yoda) are offed rather unceremoniously; and the one that isn't (Lando) gets something like two lines that aren't in the middle of an action sequence. Harrison Ford gets very little to do, and at the time, he was clearly the only person here on his way to a fruitful acting career, making for some additionally dissatisfying irony. John Williams' score is good, but brings almost nothing new to the elements he introduced in the last two films, except the choral themes for the Emperor and lots-of-tuba themes for Jabba (fat guys always get the tuba themes). There are even two single-ready pop songs, which are both kinda cute but kinda annoying. It's just not one of his better efforts; what works the best, except for the choral stuff, is the stuff he just recycles from the previous movies. Misguided decisions and self-recycling are the keys to this movie's limitations; I like Return Of The Jedi very much, but it just isn't at the level of the first two films. David Lynch was offered the chance to direct this one, but he declined and directed Dune instead, which had even fewer dead Fremen than this has dead ewoks (I can't be the only one at a screening in 1997 where people cheered at this scene). Instead, the job went to Richard Marquand, who was an even bigger head-scratcher of a choice than Irvin Kershner was; I don't want to make excuses for Lucas (since, like Dave Mustaine with the failing Megadeth, this is his baby and he has to take responsibility for every last nuance no matter who he hires to do what), but this definitely needed a director more willing to push and challenge him into making a better film. I can imagine how Lucas might have seen Return Of The Jedi as a "correction" on The Empire Strikes Back; it made a bit more money, and certainly, merchandise sales were much higher (though there was a relative scarcity of ESB merchandise compared to the other two films). It was in this spirit, unfortunately, that he pursued a number of unwise directions in the first prequel sixteen years later; while the box-office take for that one was better than even he expected, the merchandise, well, tanked. Despite how much I liked that movie, it's not like I don't think it could've been better, and I hope that Lucas comes away from that with some insight about what his filmmaking priorities should be. The 1997 Special Edition of Return Of The Jedi has the distinction of being the only one of the films to have been genuinely improved by this treatment. The first pop song is replaced by a better one (a whole new dance number too, complete with Fett hitting on one of the dancers), and the annoyingly cheerful climactic "Yub Nub" song has been replaced by a more somber tune. The scene where Jabba's dancing girl is fed to the Rancor is fleshed out very slightly, just enough to give us a better idea of what to expect when Luke gets down there. A herd of banthas is seen roaming on the Tattooine surface. A giant "beak" has been added to the Sarlaac; not entirely necessary, but it does nicely distract from the creepily vaginal appearance of the beast, and while I haven't seen it in years, I remember it being the most flawlessly photorealistic CGI effect I'd ever seen. Most creepily, Darth Vader lets out a nasty, tortured scream as he picks up the Emperor and tosses him down the shaft. And climactic celebrations are shown not only on Endor, but on Cloud City, Tattooine, and the previously unseen city-planet of Coruscant, the only real "preview" of the prequels we get in these Special Editions, unless I'm missing something. Star Wars is cool. The Empire Strikes Back is WAY cool. Return Of The Jedi is...well, it's pretty cool. Could've been truly cool, but it's just pretty cool. BACK TO THE R's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE