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#653 - Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
Richard Marquand, 1983
A farmhand-turned-warrior must rescue his friends from a terrible fate and help them to take down a totalitarian regime once and for all.
Setting out to make the type of trilogy that tells a complete story across its three parts is a risky proposition, especially when the latter two parts are supposed to be a single continuation of what could originally function as a stand-alone film. Assuming you can avoid sophomore slump with the second installment, that just puts greater pressure on the final part to deliver a satisfactory conclusion. Even if it does succeed in that regard, that success doesn't automatically guarantee that the film is a solid film in its own right; as a result, the final film in a trilogy stands a very good chance of being considering the weakest. Return of the Jedi has unfortunately earned such a reputation as it is generally considered the weakest of the original three Star Wars films, but it's not exactly a colossal failure considering the eminent reputation of its predecessors. The best one could hope for was a satisfactory conclusion and, in many regards, Return of the Jedi does provide that.
After dedicating a considerable chunk of its opening time to resolving the cliff-hanger ending of The Empire Strikes Back, which saw roguish anti-hero Han Solo (Harrison Ford) being captured and delivered to the repulsive underworld figure Jabba the Hutt, the story picks up once again as the war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance heads towards its final stages. The Empire has started working on a new Death Star to replace the one that blew up two films previously, but the Rebels have once again managed to get their hands on the plans necessary to expose and exploit a structural weakness. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has managed to recover from his devastating battle with Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones) and is ready to realise his full potential as a Jedi knight. Unfortunately, this means that he must confront Vader once again for reasons that go beyond merely defeating the skull-faced figurehead of the evil Empire. Of course, Vader not only knows this but is also working on behalf of his immediate superior Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) to not only defeat the Rebel Alliance but also turn Luke from a formidable enemy into a powerful ally by any means necessary...
The Star Wars films have always felt like their first acts tend to run for a bit too long for their own good even if it is the name of exposition and spectacular action; Return of the Jedi arguably avoids this by dropping audiences into the middle of a new adventure as our heroes mount their own somewhat complicated plan to rescue Han from Jabba's clutches, though it does get a little repetitive as it shows failure after failure before the inevitable success. I can understand how the heroes would try more subtle plans before resorting to more drastic measures, but watching them play out isn't all that exciting for the most part (even when understood as part of a slow-building adventure, it still drags). The film then slows down a bit for the sake of some fairly stolid exposition...and then comes the forest moon of Endor. A lot of the ire directed at Jedi can be credited to how the powers that be decided that the heroes' allies in their final battle with the Empire should be...Ewoks, the small bear-like tribal race that are initially willing to eat their human captives and revere the incredibly shiny C-3PO as a living god. The attempt to create family-friendly shenanigans using the fuzzy little monsters does come across as over-compensating for the moody cynicism that defined The Empire Strikes Back, especially when their primitive methods end up overcoming the Empire's advanced technology in ways that don't exactly seem that plausible. Still, at least they're not quite as annoying as the equally pandering tribe of feral kids from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
I noted in my review for The Empire Strikes Back that one of its greatest strengths was the strong characterisation that was afforded to characters great and small, especially in the case of the three heroes. In Return of the Jedi, the only character arcs of any apparent importance or depth become those belonging to Luke and Vader. To this end, Han, Leia, and Lando are effectively talking props who exist here less as fully-formed characters than as interchangeable pawns in the film's various action sequences. They do get the odd piece of character development (the main example being Leia's reaction to a certain revelation that leads to some tension with Han), but otherwise they basically have to exude the same level of personality displayed in the last two films and little else beyond that. Of course, just like the Emperor's complex web of evil plans, this is a flaw that's arguably by design as the Star Wars trilogy has always really been Luke's story. He's the one who made the journey from ordinary moisture farmer to battle-scarred Jedi in the space of three films, just as Vader has gone from being a faceless agent of pure evil to an emotionally conflicted subordinate to a power-hungry overlord. Bringing the two of them together doesn't just mean that we get to see cool-looking lightsaber duels, it's also the whole point of the trilogy and to watch it finally play out before the malevolent, manipulative Emperor easily ends up being the best thing about this film (even if the Emperor himself does come across as a bit too transparently evil in ways that not even his villainous croak and shadowy appearance can adequately balance out).
I'm not sure which Star Wars film suffers more from the very unnecessary tweaks provided by the Special Editions; the original film or this. I think I might be inclined to give it to this film because, damn, that number with the computer-generated singer from early in the film really gets on my nerves in a way that not even the addition of extra scenes and Hayden Christensen to the celebratory denouement can reach (though it's not for a lack of trying). I think it does kind of work when it comes to depicting Lando's own attack on the Death Star, but that's about it. The climatic lightsaber duel naturally works, though it is a bit too broken up by the Endor scenes. While said scenes are intermittently entertaining and arguably necessary, their deployment within the narrative did make me realise that the climaxes of Star Wars films really do tend to involve multiple simultaneous conflicts regardless of whether or not they mesh together all that well. The same ambivalence extends to the non-action scenes, especially when the film tries to milk some humour out of the Ewoks (even if that one scene with the dead Ewok is genuinely a little sad) or get a little bogged down in exposition. That doesn't stop the film from having the odd good moment - the scene where Luke and Leia reconnect after being set free by the Ewoks proves a surprisingly touching and well-acted moment in the midst of that aggressively cartoonish sequence of events.
While Return of the Jedi definitely deserves some recognition for how well it handles the conclusion to the trilogy's arc involving Luke and Vader, it does so at the expense of the rest of the film. There are plenty of nice touches that mean that the film doesn't become unwatchable; John Williams' score once again involves orchestras at their most bombastic and I really do like the simple yet supremely sinister leitmotif that is used during scenes featuring the Emperor (though any attempt to veer outside that purview ends up being rather questionable). The characters may be flatter for the most part, but everyone does their job just fine anyway; Hamill is particular is quite a stand-out as he aptly lends dramatic weight to the final steps in Luke's journey. The more irritating parts of the Special Edition do admittedly drag it down a lot, and the Ewoks' antics bounce between charming and annoying a bit too often, but those flaws can ultimately be overlooked as Return of the Jedi provides a fairly satisfactory (if not overly amazing) conclusion to one of the most beloved film trilogies in existence.
Richard Marquand, 1983
A farmhand-turned-warrior must rescue his friends from a terrible fate and help them to take down a totalitarian regime once and for all.
Setting out to make the type of trilogy that tells a complete story across its three parts is a risky proposition, especially when the latter two parts are supposed to be a single continuation of what could originally function as a stand-alone film. Assuming you can avoid sophomore slump with the second installment, that just puts greater pressure on the final part to deliver a satisfactory conclusion. Even if it does succeed in that regard, that success doesn't automatically guarantee that the film is a solid film in its own right; as a result, the final film in a trilogy stands a very good chance of being considering the weakest. Return of the Jedi has unfortunately earned such a reputation as it is generally considered the weakest of the original three Star Wars films, but it's not exactly a colossal failure considering the eminent reputation of its predecessors. The best one could hope for was a satisfactory conclusion and, in many regards, Return of the Jedi does provide that.
After dedicating a considerable chunk of its opening time to resolving the cliff-hanger ending of The Empire Strikes Back, which saw roguish anti-hero Han Solo (Harrison Ford) being captured and delivered to the repulsive underworld figure Jabba the Hutt, the story picks up once again as the war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance heads towards its final stages. The Empire has started working on a new Death Star to replace the one that blew up two films previously, but the Rebels have once again managed to get their hands on the plans necessary to expose and exploit a structural weakness. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has managed to recover from his devastating battle with Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones) and is ready to realise his full potential as a Jedi knight. Unfortunately, this means that he must confront Vader once again for reasons that go beyond merely defeating the skull-faced figurehead of the evil Empire. Of course, Vader not only knows this but is also working on behalf of his immediate superior Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) to not only defeat the Rebel Alliance but also turn Luke from a formidable enemy into a powerful ally by any means necessary...
The Star Wars films have always felt like their first acts tend to run for a bit too long for their own good even if it is the name of exposition and spectacular action; Return of the Jedi arguably avoids this by dropping audiences into the middle of a new adventure as our heroes mount their own somewhat complicated plan to rescue Han from Jabba's clutches, though it does get a little repetitive as it shows failure after failure before the inevitable success. I can understand how the heroes would try more subtle plans before resorting to more drastic measures, but watching them play out isn't all that exciting for the most part (even when understood as part of a slow-building adventure, it still drags). The film then slows down a bit for the sake of some fairly stolid exposition...and then comes the forest moon of Endor. A lot of the ire directed at Jedi can be credited to how the powers that be decided that the heroes' allies in their final battle with the Empire should be...Ewoks, the small bear-like tribal race that are initially willing to eat their human captives and revere the incredibly shiny C-3PO as a living god. The attempt to create family-friendly shenanigans using the fuzzy little monsters does come across as over-compensating for the moody cynicism that defined The Empire Strikes Back, especially when their primitive methods end up overcoming the Empire's advanced technology in ways that don't exactly seem that plausible. Still, at least they're not quite as annoying as the equally pandering tribe of feral kids from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
I noted in my review for The Empire Strikes Back that one of its greatest strengths was the strong characterisation that was afforded to characters great and small, especially in the case of the three heroes. In Return of the Jedi, the only character arcs of any apparent importance or depth become those belonging to Luke and Vader. To this end, Han, Leia, and Lando are effectively talking props who exist here less as fully-formed characters than as interchangeable pawns in the film's various action sequences. They do get the odd piece of character development (the main example being Leia's reaction to a certain revelation that leads to some tension with Han), but otherwise they basically have to exude the same level of personality displayed in the last two films and little else beyond that. Of course, just like the Emperor's complex web of evil plans, this is a flaw that's arguably by design as the Star Wars trilogy has always really been Luke's story. He's the one who made the journey from ordinary moisture farmer to battle-scarred Jedi in the space of three films, just as Vader has gone from being a faceless agent of pure evil to an emotionally conflicted subordinate to a power-hungry overlord. Bringing the two of them together doesn't just mean that we get to see cool-looking lightsaber duels, it's also the whole point of the trilogy and to watch it finally play out before the malevolent, manipulative Emperor easily ends up being the best thing about this film (even if the Emperor himself does come across as a bit too transparently evil in ways that not even his villainous croak and shadowy appearance can adequately balance out).
I'm not sure which Star Wars film suffers more from the very unnecessary tweaks provided by the Special Editions; the original film or this. I think I might be inclined to give it to this film because, damn, that number with the computer-generated singer from early in the film really gets on my nerves in a way that not even the addition of extra scenes and Hayden Christensen to the celebratory denouement can reach (though it's not for a lack of trying). I think it does kind of work when it comes to depicting Lando's own attack on the Death Star, but that's about it. The climatic lightsaber duel naturally works, though it is a bit too broken up by the Endor scenes. While said scenes are intermittently entertaining and arguably necessary, their deployment within the narrative did make me realise that the climaxes of Star Wars films really do tend to involve multiple simultaneous conflicts regardless of whether or not they mesh together all that well. The same ambivalence extends to the non-action scenes, especially when the film tries to milk some humour out of the Ewoks (even if that one scene with the dead Ewok is genuinely a little sad) or get a little bogged down in exposition. That doesn't stop the film from having the odd good moment - the scene where Luke and Leia reconnect after being set free by the Ewoks proves a surprisingly touching and well-acted moment in the midst of that aggressively cartoonish sequence of events.
While Return of the Jedi definitely deserves some recognition for how well it handles the conclusion to the trilogy's arc involving Luke and Vader, it does so at the expense of the rest of the film. There are plenty of nice touches that mean that the film doesn't become unwatchable; John Williams' score once again involves orchestras at their most bombastic and I really do like the simple yet supremely sinister leitmotif that is used during scenes featuring the Emperor (though any attempt to veer outside that purview ends up being rather questionable). The characters may be flatter for the most part, but everyone does their job just fine anyway; Hamill is particular is quite a stand-out as he aptly lends dramatic weight to the final steps in Luke's journey. The more irritating parts of the Special Edition do admittedly drag it down a lot, and the Ewoks' antics bounce between charming and annoying a bit too often, but those flaws can ultimately be overlooked as Return of the Jedi provides a fairly satisfactory (if not overly amazing) conclusion to one of the most beloved film trilogies in existence.