From the Vaults: Four Reasons - Return of the Jedi

Today we're going to look at the four reasons why Return of the Jedi doesn't work. In fact, I'm going to make a bold proclamation that's going to make Star Wars fans very angry: Jedi is as weak as any of the prequels and commits a much larger crime than any of the George-directed punching bags you love to go after. But we'll get to that soon enough. As we did last time, a bit of background:

Preamble

Return of the Jedi is the first movie I can remember seeing on the big screen. It's true that my parents took me to many other films between birth and age four, but it's Jedi that stands out in my memory.

I remember that mom won tickets over the radio in some promotion, so we got to go to a sneak preview or the equivalent of a midnight show. It was the first time I ever saw CosPlay, long before it had that name: a woman dressed as Princess Leia (not slave Leia, pervs) was entertaining the crowd. To watch the movie, I had to sit on a pillow and could cover my face with it if things got scary.

To a four year old, Jabba's Palace can be a little creepy.

For a long time, I valued that experience above seeing A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back on home video, and years after the fact I had high hopes for the 97 special edition of Jedi. Even more than Empire and Hope, that was my movie. My first Star Wars.

Going back to Jedi (and subsequently Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), I found that unlike A New Hope and Empire, the film didn't hold up as well, sometimes not at all. A New Hope was scrappy and raw, and the cornball dialogue was overshadowed by a razzle dazzle exuberance. The Empire Strikes Back was the polar opposite: a dark, interwoven film that put character development over space trotting adventure. It dared to slow down for long periods of time and let the characters breathe, wherever they were.

I have lots of quibbles about Return of the Jedi, but there are four reasons I can no longer give Episode VI a pass, nostalgia be damned. They are:

1. Muppet-pa-Looza - Listen, I love The Muppet Show. I dig Sesame Street, and yes, Yoda is great. The downside is that the success of Yoda in The Empire Strikes back gave George Lucas all kinds of ideas for Return of the Jedi. Almost all of them involved "more puppets".

Ewoks are stupid, yes, but they pale in comparison to Salacious B. Crumb and Jabba's Band. Either version of Jabba's Band come up lacking, whether you prefer creepy 80s music to kill someone by or a big band number with digital muppets. Crumb doesn't actually do anything but punctuate scenes in Jabba's Palace by cackling loudly when something bad happens.

The two most interesting puppets in the entire film are the Rancor and Jabba the Hutt, and Jabba can't actually do anything but sit there and look menacing. The Rancor is undeniably a nice combination of puppetry and composite effects, but it's a drop in a water of unnecessary rubber characters.

Even Yoda's appearance feels perfunctory. The entire sequence on Dagobah suffers from brushing past interesting details and heavy exposition for things we didn't need to know, which brings me to point number 2...

2. He's making this shit up as he goes along - When Luke goes to see Yoda, it's under the pretense he has more training to do. Many folks complained when Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith jumped right over the Clone Wars, but how the hell do explain Luke learning what he knows at the beginning of Return of the Jedi?

Don't point me to Shadows of the Empire or any other semi-canonical Star Wars ephemera. This is before we knew what Holocrons were or that anyone other than Sith could choke people or open doors with a wave of the hand. All Luke learned from Obi Wan was how to use a lightsaber and use the Jedi Mind Trick. From Empire, we can surmise Luke knows how move things with the force to a degree, but he's hopelessly outmatched by Vader's force throw.

So without another Jedi to train him and without returning to Dagobah between Empire and Jedi (as the third film indicates), where did he learn the ways of the Jedi? Why can't we see some of that? Instead, we get the shift from Apprentice to Master off camera, so much so that we wonder what Yoda has left to teach him.

But it doesn't even matter: the dying Yoda says "complete your training is. beat up your father you will." and he vanishes. That's how you follow up a cliffhanger line like "No, there is another."? Seriously? But since George painted himself into this corner, he has to come up with a quick explanation, and an unnecessary Yoda scene is coupled with an embarassing cameo for Sir Alec Guinness.

The "log chat" may be as bad as it gets in Star Wars. Need I remind you that after Obi Wan Kenobi died, he appeared first as a voice helping Luke to destroy the Death Star, then as a spectral vision sending him to Dagobah. So seeing him wander into frame through the swamp to sit down with Luke is a little sad.

It gets worse from there: Guinness is saddled with explaining why Lucas wrote that Anakin Skywalker was murdered by Darth Vader through some silly logic twists many of you pretend is clever. Then he has to pick up the slack for Frank Oz by selling the audience that Leia, the Princess Luke was hitting on in A New Hope, is his sister. It's a repetition of the "twist" from The Empire Strikes Back about who Luke's father is, but this time it seems kind of useless. Since nothing comes of Leia being Luke's sister in Jedi, it's all the more unnecessary. The whole Dagobah sequence is a waste, but since we're talking about recycling plot elements, how can I neglect...

3. The Death Star, all over again - Bringing back the Death Star is a hint of desperation on Lucas's part. The Star Destroyers were more than credible enough of a threat in Empire, and once you've seen a fully operation moon battlestation, a half finished one isn't quite as impressive. The design looks great, to be sure, but logic dictates it should be even easier to get to the reactor if half of the Death Star is incomplete. Sure enough, it is.

I can't say I have a better suggestion for where to place the final conflict between Vader, Luke, and The Emperor, and having another "star crusher" sort of ship would be just as lazy, but the second Death Star is a little ho-hum if you ask me. George had one thing in mind during Jedi: the story of Father and Son, and everything else got the short shrift, which brings me to the unforgivable sin of Return of the Jedi...

4. Who wants to see Han Solo anyway? - The Carbonite I don't mind. It bridges Empire to Jedi and provides the credible "first act" that brings everyone back together. The way the team reassembles in Jabba's Palace is both an impressive plan and leads to a pretty solid action sequence on the Sail Barge. After he's unfrozen, Han Solo cracks wise with Jabba, Chewbacca, Lando, and Luke, but it all goes downhill from there.

Harrison Ford famously wanted Han Solo to die in Return of the Jedi, a wish that George Lucas did not grant, and what happens to Solo instead is a travesty. It's not even that he becomes a sidekick; Han Solo is a totally useless character in Return of the Jedi. Nothing he does impacts the story, save for opening the bunker on Endor the first time. Funny thing is, they get kicked right out of the bunker, and Leia does all of the work from there.

For the bulk of Return of the Jedi, Han Solo can't even be comic relief because the droids are busy hamming it up. Instead, Ford puts own his "aw shucks" face and gets flummoxed about the blossoming relationship between Luke and Leia (get it? he doesn't know is sibling love! poor Han!)

It's not just Solo who gets reduced from dynamic, nuanced character in Empire to glorified sidekick status in Jedi; Lando Calrissian loses all of the dangerous charm and becomes a pilot complete with his own alien sidekick. Why? Because someone has to fly the Millenium Falcon while Han is standing around with teddy bears. Oh, and almost getting cooked. Almost forgot that.

This is something Lucas does again with characters in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, another movie about fathers and sons that reduces characters with depth to one note stereotypes to stand around until someone has to break the tension. I almost wish Lucas had let Han Solo die, because the charming rogue from A New Hope and The Empire Strikes back is certainly dead for most of Return of the Jedi.

Postscript

That's my case for Return of the Jedi not holding a candle to Episodes IV and V. I didn't even get into things like the short shrifting of Boba Fett, which follows the pattern established by Han and Lando, or the "Tarzan" moment. I even went easy on the Ewoks, and I hate those little bastards.

Return of the Jedi is a distant third in the original trilogy, and it provides only a handful of iconic images (the funeral pyre, the Emperor) to counter the substantive shifts away from entertainment and towards pandering and simply-making-the-plot-up-as-he-goes. For children, I'm sure it's great; I mean it was a sentimental favorite of mine for years, but you know what? Kids love the prequels, and we all know how you feel about those.

2010 Thoughts: In light of two interviews with Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz, apparently the Cap'n isn't the only person who was underwhelmed with Return of the Jedi. In the six or so years since I wrote this piece, it's become fashionable to not like Return of the Jedi, something that wasn't at all the case when this came out, as I recall. How time changes things...