Subject: Retrospective: Return of the Jedi (1983)

From: "Dragan Antulov" <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Jan 1999 20:43:18 GMT

RETURN OF THE JEDI
A Film Review
Copyright Dragan Antulov 1998

The year that is about to pass was supposed to be the year
of GODZILLA. However, that unfortunate film by Devlin and
Emmerich would be remembered less by its own quality than by
the unprecedented marketing campaign and its main slogan
"Size does matter". Intended to symbolise the supremacy of
quantity over quality in contemporary Hollywood, that slogan
was also a direct challenge to Star Wars fans with its
mockery of immortal words of Yoda in THE EMPIRE STRIKES
BACK. Star Wars fans were enraged, and Lucasfilm briefly
cashed on the sentiment with its own marketing campaign for
STAR WARS: EPISODE ONE with the words "Plot does matter" as
its rebuttal of Devlin-Emmerich claims. Some Star Wars fans
welcomed that move, while the others were more cynical.
"Plot does matter? Really? To the same people who gave us
RETURN OF THE JEDI?" Those were the words of my friend who
is also an avid Star Wars fan and who simply can't forgive
Lucas for the disappointment he had experienced with the
third film of the original Star Wars saga.

Perhaps it would be too harsh to put Devlin-Emmerich's
GODZILLA and RETURN OF THE JEDI in the same basket. Those
two movies are undoubtedly light years away in their
quality. In the case of the latter, bad reputation was
deserved mostly because it failed to reach the extremely
high standards of cinematic and artistic perfection, set by
its two great predecessors - STAR WARS and THE EMPIRE
STRIKES BACK. I noticed this things even when I had seen the
film for the first time, almost a decade and half ago. For
me it was a bitter-sweet occasion - the last film of the
great saga that had used to capture my imagination. But I
was disappointed; partly because I grew up and my movie
going preferences matured; partly because I knew what was
going to happen in the final part of the trilogy; and partly
because the RETURN OF THE JEDI was really bad in comparison
with the previous two films. To this day, I watch RETURN OF
THE JEDI, but only as the last film of the trilogy; never as
original and captivating works of art like previous two
films. Without them, RETURN OF THE JEDI is a mildly
entertaining second-rate science fiction spectacle, not very
different from an average infantile blockbusters that almost
ruined the genre in the mid 1980s.

Problems of the RETURN OF THE JEDI begin with the plot which
had to solve the cliffhanger from the previous film and also
to finish the trilogy. The story begins with the attempts of
the small band of Rebels, led by Jedi knight Luke Skywalker
(Mark Hamill), to free their comrade Han Solo (Harrison
Ford) from the clutches of evil galactic crime lord Jabba
the Hut. Despite being imprisoned by Jabba themselves, our
heroes succeed in freeing Solo, but now they are faced with
a greater and more important challenge. Evil Galactic Empire
is building the new version of Death Star, battle station
able to destroy entire planets. The construction site is in
a orbit of a forrest moon of Endor, so Rebels carry out the
commando raid on a power generator on the moon's surface,
which would make station vulnerable to the attack of the
entire Rebel fleet. Rebels don't know that the evil lord
Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice by James Earl Jones, face
by Sebastian Shaw) and Emperor himself (Ian McDiarmid) are
on the station and that they have some sinister plans of
their own. The raid on the surface doesn't go well, until
the Rebels find help in the form of Ewoks, primitive but
brave natives that look like teddy bears. In the meantime,
Luke feels that he must finally confront his oldest nemesis
and father, lord Vader, and try to snatch him away from the
dark side of the Force.

The need to wrap up the story forced the screenwriters -
Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas - to cut corners, but in
the process they sacrificed plausibility and in some
instances even contradicted themselves (like in case of
Vader's true loyalty to the Emperor). Some bad guys are
conveniently present in the movie only to receive their
comeuppance (Boba Fett), some nine hundred years old people
decide to die just in the course of the film, only to
provide some cheap melodrama (Yoda), and some of the new
additions to the story are almost on the level of daytime
soap operas (Leia Organa as Luke's long lost sister). Such
decisions are responsible for RETURN OF THE JEDI having the
weakest script in the trilogy. In previous two films we saw
what could happen to our heroes and we learned to care for
them; here we don't have to. In the beginning, almost all of
them are in the hands of the evil Jabba, but we simply know
that they would get away without the scratch. Even their
lines aren't as powerful as they were in previous two films.
Leia, who used to be feminist icon in the first movie, is
now reduced to object of Jabba's infantile lust in the first
part of JEDI. Original characters - Jabba and the Emperor -
are intended to be cannon fodder, so they weren't very
developed. Jabba is nothing more than grotesque, and Emperor
looks like a caricature of Death in Bergman's SEVENTH SEAL.
His sadistic evilness is deprived of any seductive quality,
and without it he is reduced into less complex and
second-rate villain. Forced again to play stereotypes,
actors didn't have much opportunity to excel. Hamill is
here, unlike previous two films, better than Ford, who
unsuccesfully tries to turn romance with Carrie Fisher's
Leia back into unresolved sexual tension.

The look of the film is good, though. Six years have passed
since the first film, so the special effects technology has
improved. Sadly, in some instances, those effects look
cheaper. The worst example is the beginning in the Jabba's
palace - pandemonium of different and bizarre aliens looks
too much like a bad episode of Muppet Show, and the obvious
blue screen of the Luke's fight with Rancor monster haven't
been improved even in the Special Edition. On the other
hand, space battle in the end, with literally hundreds of
different spaceships fighting each other, looks really
stunning. Same is with the forest battle between Ewoks and
Imperial stormtroopers. Scenery of the desert planet
Tatooine, forest moon Endor and ominous empty halls of Death
Star is really grand and impressive. Musical score by John
Williams is good, although it doesn't offer anything new or
especially memorable, with the exception of the final duel
between Luke and Vader.

However, the biggest addition to the visual identity of the
JEDI is also the most notorious one - Ewoks. Perhaps it was
really nice idea to introduce the primitive race able to
cope with technologically superior enemy (Lucas in
interviews said that he was partly inspired by the U.S.
experience in Vietnam, although Ursulla K. Le Guin's novel A
WORD FOR WORLD IS FORREST could also be seen as a source of
inspiration), but it was compromised in the moment when
Ewoks became teddy bears, obviously intended to provide huge
profits as toys. For many hard core science fiction fans,
including the fans of the trilogy, Ewoks are the symbol of
infantilism that reigned supreme in Hollywood in 1980s.
Movies like JEDI were the reason why people stopped
considering SF to be genre for adults, and thus the Ewoks
became the object of intense hatred among hard core SF
people. One of the most bizarre expressions of that feeling
is the Endor Holocaust theory, that can be found on some
Star Wars sites, and that gives entirely different spin on
the final moments of the film. Perhaps the only redeeming
quality of the Ewoks is their innocence towards the world of
the Star Wars - the scene when C3PO tells them the epic saga
is probably the most moving and, in the same time, most
charming moment of the entire film.

Despite the Ewoks, and despite the alarmingly low quality of
screenplay, RETURN OF THE JEDI remains a good piece of
cinema. It is far from perfection, and far from the heights
reached by its two predecessors, but it still can entertain
the audience - not just the children who would enjoy Ewoks,
not the usual family crowd but even the ordinary space opera
aficionados, even those who fell in love with Star Wars
saga. As a film per se, RETURN OF THE JEDI is a very good
entertainment; but as a part of a saga, it works beautifully
despite all of its flaws. The end sequence - in its original
form and in the "improved" version of the Special Edition
(the author of this review prefers the former) - is the
reason enough to watch this film.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

Review written on December 31st 1998

--
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
Fido: 2:381/100
E-mail: [email-masked]
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