Classic Film Review: 'Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi'

(C) 1983 Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

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  Pros: Good script; stunning effects and dazzling space battles; a classic John Williams score
  Cons: A bit talky...to some, the Ewoks and to others, the Special Edition version is sacrilege....
  On Wednesday, May 25, 1983, exactly six years after the premiere of George Lucas's Star Wars (now known as Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope), millions of fans queued up in front of thousands of movie theater box offices to be among those lucky viewers to watch Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi on its first day of release.
  
  Three years had passed since the theatrical run of The Empire Strikes Back, which had surprised critics and fans alike with its Episode V subtitle, the introduction of Jedi Master Yoda, the romance between Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), the claim made by Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice of James Earl Jones) that he was Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) dad and - frustratingly at first - its ending without a climax.
  
  That Empire ends with a "To be continued...." vibe  is, of course, predicated by the fact that Episode V is the second act of a three-act play; 1977's A New Hope introduces the characters and settings, The Empire Strikes Back depicts the story's core conflict and the obstacles that the protagonist must overcome, while Return of the Jedi deals with the resolution of all the story's existing issues.
  
  As co-written by George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan, Return of the Jedi has to resolve the central issue of the Star Wars Trilogy: Is Darth Vader really Luke Skywalker's supposedly-murdered Jedi dad, and if he is, will the son follow in his footsteps and fall to the Dark Side of the Force, or will Luke resist temptation and usher in the resurgence of the Jedi Order and help defeat the evil Emperor?
  
  There are, of course, other concerns and hanging plot threads which Jedi needs to address.  Luke Skywalker has to fulfill his promise to Master Yoda and return to Dagobah to complete his Jedi training.  Han Solo is still frozen in carbonite and serving as Jabba the Hutt's "favorite decoration."  The Rebellion against the Galactic Empire is apparently at its nadir, while  Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) must redeem himself after his betrayal of Han and Leia at Cloud City.
  
  After a brief prologue which depicts Darth Vader arriving at a new and unfinished Death Star in the Endor system to motivate its commander to complete the planet-killing battle station, Return of the Jedi's first act centers on how Luke, Leia, Chewbacca the Wookiee (Peter Mayhew), Lando, R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) mount a daring rescue of Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt's fortress-like palace on Tatooine.
  
  The sequences which depict Luke Skywalker's efforts to free his friends from the clutches of the vile slug-like gangster (modeled to some degree to resemble Sidney Greenstreet, who played Ferrari in Casablanca) take their thematic cues from the Saturday matinees of the 1930s and ‘40s;  we are treated to clever infiltration schemes that go awry, a fight with a monster in a dungeon, a melee aboard Jabba's Sail Barge and its escorting skiffs which could have been "lifted" from an Errol Flynn swashbuckler movie and a life-or-death struggle with the gangster which has echoes of The Godfather.
   
  As exciting as this first act is, it is merely the overture to the film's main events: the Rebellion's all-or-nothing attack on the unfinished Death Star and the long-awaited final confrontation between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, as well as a duel of wits and wills between the galaxy's last Jedi-to-be and the evil Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).
  
  My Take: Return of the Jedi - in all its incarnations, including the 2011 Blu-ray release - seems to be the "runt" of the Classic Trilogy, partly because "third acts of plays," as co-writer Lawrence Kasdan says in the DVD/Blu-ray discs' audio commentary track "are the least interesting parts," and partly because many fans dislike some of the movie's salient plot points, especially the Empire's defeat at the hands of - teddy bears?
  
  Interestingly, most accounts of the making of the Star Wars saga state that the "teddy bears" (called Ewoks in the final film) were originally Wookiees and that Lucas, who had seen how the Americans and French had lost two wars against the Vietnamese in Indochina, wanted to show how a "primitive" fighting force could defeat a more conventional and mechanized army.
  
  His first idea, which was to have the Wookiees acting as the Star Wars equivalent of the Vietnamese guerrillas, went out the proverbial window after he had established Chewbacca as a tech-savvy individual who was comfortable with machinery and tools.  Lucas wanted a race with no knowledge of sophisticated gadgets and could be considered to be an insignificant threat to Imperial stormtroopers and their armored transports, so he shrank his creatures from tall, furry giants to small, furry bears.  (There were other considerations behind the creation of the Ewoks, the main one being that the Ewok outfits would cost less to make than the ones for the taller Wookiees.)
  
  However, lots of viewers and fan boys despise the Ewoks, saying that they are not credible adversaries of the mighty Empire and - even worse - that they're too cute and intended to appeal to younger kids.
  
  Another complaint which was common before the Prequels were created and released was that Vader's redemption at the end and Luke's sensing that there is still some good in him seemed to come out of left field.   In both A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, Vader was originally perceived by the audience as the personification of evil, so even when his back story was partly revealed in a scene between Luke and the Force spirit version of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), the resurgence of Anakin Skywalker does seem abrupt (even though it also seems inevitable).
  
  Now, with the addition of the three Prequel Episodes and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Vader's redemption flows a bit more naturally and makes sense because we see Vader more as a tragic figure who was used and victimized by the series' true villain, Palpatine.
  
  While Jedi isn't my favorite Star Wars movie, I still enjoy it. Director Richard Marquand gets good performances from the actors and, for a guy who had never helmed a movie which featured so many special effects sequences, holds his own as a filmmaker almost as well as Empire director Irvin Kershner.
  
  On the technical side, the screenplay by Kasdan and Lucas has its share of corny scenes and cheesy dialogue (and lots of of exposition and explanations), but Star Wars films are intended to be light entertainment and not cinematic masterpieces full of melodrama and life-changing lessons.  They are almost purely visual movies with plenty of crowd pleasing eye-candy; in Return of the Jedi, the action sequences on Tatooine, the space battle over the Death Star and the climactic confrontation between Luke, Vader and Palpatine are exciting and full of suspense, the 1980s special effects - even those given digital tweaks for the DVD and Blu-ray home video releases - still hold up nearly 35 years after its first theatrical run, and John Williams' score - updated in 1997 for the still-controversial Special Edition re-edits - is stirring, romantic and simply magnificent.