The ’80s blockbuster era really began with Return Of The Jedi and the millions of toys it sold
Image: Screenshot: LucasfilmGraphic: Jimmy Hasse Film Features The Popcorn Champs
Eight years after the official end of the Vietnam War, George Lucas turned the Viet Cong into adorable teddy bears that could be used to sell toys. The Ewoks, the cuddly, frequently derided scene-stealing insurrectionists from the end of Return Of The Jedi, are tribal jungle warriors who repulse a technologically advanced foreign military force attempting to use their home for strategic purposes. They’re clearly modeled on the guerrilla army that had only just humiliated America’s massed forces, and Lucas turned them into decorations for the lunchboxes and bedsheets of half the kids in early-’80s America. If there’s a better illustration for cinema’s transition from the ’70s to the ’80s—the process by which onetime radicals became businessmen—I don’t know it.
By the time George Lucas made Return Of The Jedi, his Star Wars movies had become, quite possibly, the first sure thing in the history of the moviemaking business. Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back had both been historic global smashes. The last movie in that initial saga was inevitably going to clean up. Lucas financed the film himself, and he kept all his own merchandising rights. He treated the whole project like the business enterprise that it was. He risked nothing.
As with The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas opted not to direct Jedi himself, instead bringing in an outside filmmaker to finish up his big story. Lucas initially wanted Steven Spielberg to helm the film, since the two men had just had enormous success making Raiders Of The Lost Ark together. (If Spielberg has taken the job, he would’ve directed the box office champ of the year for three years running, a ridiculous feat.) Contractual complications made that impossible. Lucas also approached David Lynch and David Cronenberg about the job. Both were rising independent auteurs at the time; hiring them would’ve been the kind of move that Marvel routinely makes now. It’s wild to think about what either one of them would’ve done with Jedi. Both of them turned Lucas down.
Finally, Lucas hired Richard Marquand, a Welsh director mostly known for the 1981 spy thriller Eye Of The Needle. Marquand, a former BBC documentarian, had never worked with special effects before. Lucas had the idea that he was good with actors, though at least a few of the actors from Jedi didn’t get along with Marquand at all. But even with Marquand in the director’s chair, Lucas was the clear voice behind Jedi. He co-wrote the picture with his Empire/Raiders collaborator Lawrence Kasdan, and stayed on set throughout production. Lucas made all the big decisions, and he made at least a few of them based on how many toys he might sell.
Harrison Ford, who’d only been contracted for the first two Star Wars films, had to be convinced to return to play Han Solo again in Jedi. (Han had been frozen in carbonite at the end of Empire in part so Lucas would have an out in case the star didn’t return.) Ford wanted to give Solo a heroic death, and Kasdan thought that would be a good idea. But Lucas knew that the kids who loved Star Wars movies didn’t want to see Han Solo die. (Solo wouldn’t get to die heroically until decades later.) Lucas also nixed the idea to have Luke Skywalker leave stoically before the fireworks celebration at the end of Jedi. He didn’t want anything working against the purity of that final triumph.
Jedi has a rep for being the weakest of the first Star Wars films. In Jedi, Lucas repeats many of the tricks that had worked so well in the first Star Wars. Near the beginning, he gives us C-3PO and R2-D2 bitching at each other as they schlep across the Tatooine desert landscape. He ends it with rebel pilots celebrating after their overmatched fleet blows up a Death Star. The Ewoks introduce a slightly overbearing cuteness factor, though it’s nothing compared with what Lucas would try to bring into later movies. Lucas turns the already-incompetent Imperial Stormtroopers into ultimate jobbers, hapless before the Ewoks’ rocks and sticks. And with almost no character development, he forces Darth Vader’s transition from iconic villain into conflicted hero. Years later, Lucas also made rewatching Jedi into a supremely aggravating experience by piling on the jarring, superfluous CGI additions. Jedi earns its rep.
But as one of the American children that Lucas was targeting with those toymaker calculations, I have to tell you, Return Of The Jedi fucking ruled. The moment where Luke Skywalker springs off the plank of Jabba The Hutt’s skiff, flips through the air, and light-sabers a bunch of grizzled-looking alien motherfuckers into the Sarlacc pit, was just about the coolest thing that my toddler eyes had ever beheld. (I didn’t even mind that Boba Fett, an iconically cool bad guy who became one of the faces of the series, dies quickly and without ceremony, almost by accident.) Jedi is full of moments like that—breathless, kinetic adventure set pieces that made kids feel like their blood was on fire.
The episodic structure of Jedi is one of its great strengths. For the movie’s opening stretch, Darth Vader and the Empire barely figure in. Instead, Lucas and his collaborators set about reuniting the story’s heroes, pitting them against a formidable and repulsive but ultimately inconsequential tertiary villain. Lucas had teased the looming presence of the usurious interplanetary crime boss Jabba in the previous two movies. In Jedi, he paid all of that off, making an iconic film character out of a giant slug puppet.
Jabba’s palace—a place sort of like the cantina from the first Star Wars, if it had been made mostly out of shadows and tentacles—works as a reason for the cast to reassemble and a reminder of why we like all these people in the first place. C-3PO cowers. R2-D2 bleeps sassily. Chewbacca roars soulfully. Princess Leia struts right up to danger and then wears a gold bikini that’s the closest any of the films come to noticing that sex is a thing that exists. Even blind and disoriented, Han Solo acts as a sort of sarcastic viewer surrogate, snarking at everything around him: “I’m out of it for a little while, everybody gets delusions of grandeur.” And Luke Skywalker, the whiny kid from a few years back, makes a badass entrance, displays both his powers and their limits, and kills a giant rubbery tooth monster.
The moment after the Rancor’s death, when the monster’s keeper cries over its carcass, is one of the tiny character moments that make a movie like this special. That bit didn’t need to be in there, and yet it somehow makes the whole affair seem more tangible and real. That monster had a story and its master had some kind of story, and Jedi only just hints that it exists.
When the Jabba The Hutt adventure is over, it’s over. In a different era, this could’ve been some kind of between-movies interstitial—a streaming-service special, or a YouTube video. It took the arrival of The Mandalorian for me to realize how much I like the way all the original Star Wars movies are structured. We meet people, get to like those people, and then follow them on a series of adventures. The adventures might connect, but they don’t have to. The movies all have builds and climaxes, but they could’ve worked just as well as a mega-budget TV series.
Return Of The Jedi doesn’t hold together particularly well as a cohesive whole. There are breath-catching interludes, like Luke’s final visit to Yoda, that feel slight and needless, mostly there to clarify various plot points. (There’s no real emotional catharsis in watching a rubber puppet fade away into the air, and I wonder how much the Yoda death scene was influenced by the much more effective death scene that Steven Spielberg put in E.T. a year earlier.) Other character moments, like the revelation that Leia is really Luke’s sister, feel arbitrary and tacked on. Certain actors—Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness in a Force-ghost cameo—wearily trudge through their scenes, killing time until this story finally ends. Jedi really comes to life during expertly constructed set pieces like the speeder bike chase through the forest. The film’s energy is in those scenes, not in the parts where people are forced to act.
As with so many blockbuster-series finales, the end of Return Of The Jedi is mostly just one big, long action marathon. But it’s a great action marathon. Lucas, Marquand, and the film’s three editors expertly juggle three different stories, building all of them in tandem. On Endor, Han and Leia lead the Ewoks in a bunker assault that looks a whole lot like a World War II men-on-a-mission film from a previous generation. In space, Lando Calrissian, getting a redemption arc after betraying his friends in Empire, leads the dogfight attack on the new Death Star. And onboard the Death Star itself, Luke comes face to face with the new final-boss villain, an Emperor who delivers every line of dialogue as a Shakespearean schoolyard-bully taunt.
When Darth Vader finally turns good at the end, throwing the Emperor into a questionably functional throne-room pit, it’s a jarring and out-of-place moment. David Prowse, the former bodybuilder who plays Vader’s physical form, does what he can to telegraph Vader’s conflicted feelings, but he can’t stop the story from ringing false. Ultimately, Vader’s redemption reminds me of babyface turns from villains like The Rock or Venom. When you’ve got a monumentally cool and popular bad guy, someone will eventually come along and make him good. But Vader’s story at least ends with that redemption, and his final goodbye to Luke is both awkward and touching.
If Jedi’s ultimate goal was to sell a fuckload of toys, then it succeeded wildly. I was born two years after the first Star Wars came out, and the first Christmas morning I can remember is the one where I walked down to find Jabba and an X-Wing in my living room. I’d seen Jedi in the theater with my dad. But I mostly remember playing with the toys.
For years, those toys were everywhere. Kenner made more than 100 Star Wars figures in the early ’80s. Characters who were barely on screen, their faces in shadow, were given names, and they became huge-selling plastic figures. In the years between 1978 and 1985, Kenner sold 300 million of those little plastic guys. I played with those things more than Transformers or Thundercats or G.I. Joe or He-Man figures. Those toys made a whole lot more money than most movies, and they probably also helped tighten Star Wars’ grip on entire generations that had been too young to see the first two movies in the theater.
It’s almost unfair to compare Return Of The Jedi to anything else that was happening at the 1983 box office. Other than one segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas’s only real competitor, didn’t release a movie that year. Other blockbusters came out in ’83. Plenty of them made an impact on the culture at large and influenced the blockbusters that would arrive later in the decade: the neon hard-body sensationalism of Flashdance, the high-concept sitcom-style irreverence of Trading Places and Mr. Mom, the Reagan-era high school intrigue of WarGames and Risky Business.
Terms Of Endearment, the year’s No. 2 movie, earned $108 million and dominated the Oscars. It was a huge deal, but it barely earned a third of what Return Of The Jedi made. And anyway, kids weren’t exactly running out to Toys “R” Us to buy plastic Shirley MacLaines. The Star Wars movies were working with a whole different set of mathematics. After Jedi, Lucas took a 16-year break from the franchise. The rest of Hollywood rushed in to fill the vacuum. And thus, the ’80s blockbuster was truly born.
The contender: These days, Paul Brickman’s Risky Business, the 10th-highest earner at the 1983 box office, is mostly remembered for the sight of a 21-year-old Tom Cruise sliding down a hallway in his tighty-whities. But the film itself is a sleek, stylish, beautifully made piece of work and a fascinating fever-dream image of yuppie capitalism in action. Cruise’s Joel Goodson, left alone for a weekend, accidentally becomes a pimp and suddenly thrives. The film’s producer-imposed happy ending blunts a lot of its impact and removes all its irony, but the finished product still sings.
With its polished surfaces and its twinkling Tangerine Dream score, Risky Business exaggerated the streamlined ’80s aesthetic that was still only just taking shape. And it announced the strange hungry-mannequin charisma of Cruise, a figure who will become important in this column before long. The ’80s gave us plenty of horny teen comedies, and plenty of those horny teen comedies are great. But none of them is anything like Risky Business.
Next time: Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop, two vehicles for former Saturday Night Live sketch comedians, use their stars’ anarchic chops in service of sleek Hollywood spectacles.
541 Comments
As a sucker for all things Pacific Northwest, I’ll always have a lot of appreciation for all things Endor because of it being filmed at Smith’s River California. The combination of Redwood trees and Northwest humidity really makes me appreciate the scenes set in Endor.I’d say this though: Lawrence Kasdan really bought all three films together. Kasdan alongside Marcia Lucas and Duwayne Dunham are the reasons why this film isn’t a trainwreck, and I was more confused by the fact that Lawrence Kasdan was not hired back for The Last Jedi and The Rise of the Skywalker. If you watched both Return and Rise back to back, you can tell that Kasdan managed to salvage Return from the worst of Lucas’ instincts, and that Kasdan would’ve done the same for Rise. Also, Kasdan didn’t write Batman vs. Superman so they should’ve brought him back for Episodes 8 and 9 instead of just 7 and Solo.
I think a lot of the problems with Rise of Skywalker were the result Disney higher-ups being adamant that it had a Christmas 2019 release no matter what happened. And I understand why that is from a business perspective. This was planned years in advance. You have tie-ins with several different companies plus a huge marketing campaign already in the works. You can’t just halt all of that just because Carrie Fischer died before production happened and you had to swap out the Director of The Book of Henry with the Director of Star Trek: Into Darkness. If they did, they’d lose a lot more money. Better they just get it done quickly with someone who can just punch up a new script that makes that they think will please the Fandom Menace as quickly as possible.
Also, the problem with The Rise of Skywalker also stems from Disney’s biggest advantage ending up as its biggest flaw: Pleasing everyone.Disney is great at pleasing everyone, especially as a company with kids as its main target market. Everyone loves Disney movies, and everyone loves Marvel movies.But there’s a problem: When you make something like The Last Jedi which is VERY divisive as a film, the only way to make another quality follow up is to take a stand and continue where that goes even if it pisses off a certain audience that used to be loyal to that product.But the problem is, it’s Disney. They want EVERYONE who’s loyal to Disney to maintain loyalty. Kathleen Kennedy and Bob Iger are scared that people who don’t like The Last Jedi won’t be going to Galaxy Edge’s as a result, or won’t be subscribing to Disney+ to watch The Mandalorian as part of a “Star Wars Boycott” or something. They’re scared that the simplest backlash to anything would affect not just the Star Wars brand, but also the Disney brand as a result.And so, they’ve decided to make a film that pleases both sides. “Oh, you don’t like Kelly Marie Tran? Don’t worry we threw her under the bus, but you TLJ fans will love the Reylo moments in this film! You liked TLJ for that Reylo shit, right?”And in the end, Disney’s attempts at pleasing both sides ended up pleasing either.
I don’t think Disney was trying to please everyone. They just gave their directors too much power. Rian undid JJ’s film and JJ undid Rian’s film. I still can not believe the incompetence of the higher ups at Disney. I would have been Happy with a JJ style trilogy, I would have been happy with a Rian style trilogy, I was not happy with the tug of war trilogy.
He didn’t undo anything because that’s not how Abrams operates. His whole philosophy on storytelling, The Mystery Box, is to drop hints of greater mystery without considering how to resolve them until the last minute. Based on the fact that the Dual of the Fates script doesn’t resemble the final product, it’s likely that a lot of the plot points for Rise were developed a lot closer to when production on the film actually started.
And based upon the massive market haul it delivered, Last Jedi was unpopular among a very vocal but relatively small portion of fans. Lord knows plenty of people still went to see it.I’m squarely in the camp that everything it did made perfect sense. Luke nearly murdered his own nephew because he panicked he’d be Obi Wan / Anakin Skywalker part II, ultimately deciding he had nothing more to offer as a teacher. So as the last of his kind he went in search of the original truths behind the Jedi order, and found that it didn’t hold up to his scrutiny. He doesn’t renounce the Force, just the Jedi interpretation. Ultimately he becomes one with it, like Obi Wan and Yoda. This set up an entirely blank slate that Rise could have built on, but instead chickened out and hit the reset button.
I had a ton of issues with Last Jedi but it still gave me an emotional reaction other than rolling my eyes. I was genuinely moved by Luke and Leia reuniting and Yoda giving one last lesson on failure during a time where I was really down on myself. Rise of Skywalker just made me feel utterly empty. It was the alleged end of an era and I just did not care.
Well, maybe not everything. The casino part was a mess and even the whole Holdo/Poe storyline starts to crumble if you think about it too long. That said, I’m so tired of anti-TLJ diatribes at this point. It’s just a movie and everybody needs to get over it.
I agree on the casino part. It seemed like something out of another movie. The tone was just all wrong relative to the rest of the film. But that’s a quibble over one scene, not a denunciation of the entire concept behind the movie. Agree that at this point it’s silly to still be debating. Everyone loved Empire for taking a chance, going dark. But someone tries a similar move with LJ and fanboys go nuts.
Hell even when we all agree Rise of Skywalker sucks, there are still a handful of people who will blame Rian Johnson for it. As if they forget how JJ Abrams’ Mystery Box works. At best, his involvement in Rise of Skywalker begins and ends when he turned down the directing role back when Trevorrow was fired and did Knives Out instead, well before the final product Abrams and Terrio cooked up was even an idea.
Box office means absolutely nothing for how well a film is received, because you have to see the film before you know how you receive it. It’s a useless variable in this discussion.
Had they taken that approach in Rise, it certainly could have worked. But the third film in a planned trilogy is not the place to be hitting reset buttons— starting over from Act One in Act Three is generally just bad writing.
Which is the real problem: no one sat down in 2014 and said, “Hey, should we maybe figure out what the stories and themes of all three of these movies will be ahead of time?” Instead they just let people throw shit at a wall for three successive films.
It’s absolutely astonishing that they weren’t planned that way, scripted front to back before TFA even started production.
I was so excited after Force Awakens. I recognized its faults, but damn it they had a fantastic new cast and it was entertaining. Even with all my quibbles with all the choices they made for the sequel trilogy setting, I was looking forward to what came next.It boggles my mind how thoroughly it was botched afterwards, and I can only return to my initial misgivings with the whole setup of the sequel trilogy to begin with. I don’t know who is happy with how that all turned out in the end, and what a waste of an opportunity to reunite the OT cast again.
I think the main problem is that they just didn’t really have any idea behind the story at all other than making movies that make billions of dollars
That film reeks of studio mending saying add this because the charts says do this. The amount of backsliding from TLJ is ludicrous. I didn’t even like TLJ and yet I feel bad for Rian Johnson. Its the messiest of the Star Wars films give or take Clones.
I think the key weakness of all of the Disney “post-quels” was Abrams’ decision to leave the storyline essentially open and make it up as the directors went along. It’s baffling to me that the producers, committing over a billion dollars all-told to such a project, would agree to shrug at having a clear road map for it.
Abram’s MO is the Mystery Box. He loves leaving ideas for big mysteries without considering how he’s going to resolve them until the last minute.
Which is fine, but it’s fairly amazing that he could persuade people to invest a billion dollars in that proposition. 😉
How or even if.
“Think they’ll please the fandom?!” Have we not learned that nothing pleases the fandom? NOTHING!
No, the problem with the sequel trilogy is that they didn’t have a roadmap for it. They were just winging it as they went along. So when Last Jedi happened (because they let Johnson do what he wanted with it) and some people weren’t happy with the result (note: I liked it), they had to do all this course correcting in Skywalker. They could have saved themselves a lot of hassle if they’d just had a broad story arc planned out before they started instead of just decided to see where it took them.
The problem with Rise of Skywalker came from allowing TLJ to throw out everything that TFA set up (meager and repetitive as that might have been), and not rewriting and reshooting TLJ to show Leia die instead of and/or along with Luke. It would’ve been a big overhaul to that story, but there are multiple points to allow Leia to be killed in a satisfying send-off. But they didn’t.
The production schedule is, I suspect, also to blame for a lot of The Last Jedi’s wonkiness. 20 months is a brutal timeline for a film of this scale, especially when the director is also the primary screenwriter. IMO there wasn’t much wrong with TLJ that another 6-8 months of careful script revisions wouldn’t have changed. (But then of course Fisher might well have died during production…)
Kasdan made it absolutely clear he’d have nothing more to do with Star Wars after Solo (which is the only one he originally signed on for) and Awakens (which he was more or less roped into doing). He’s perfectly happy making small, middling movies no one sees.
Kasdan had a big ‘83 when I think about it— besides this movie, he co-wrote and directed “The Big Chill”, the sort of middlebrow mid-level hit that people complain the big studios don’t make/release on a wide scale anymore.
They do, they just turn them into premium cable series.
I’m . . . less convinced than you that Kasdan could have saved it, just because the production process was way different for the OT than it was for the ST.I feel like I bring this up every time I talk about Star Wars, but the fact is that it never ceases to be relevant: it took three years to bring Empire Strikes Back to the screen. The first 18 months of that time was nothing but some early pre-production, and tossing out their first story idea (which would ultimately be shaped into the novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye) when they realized that they had a finanical juggernaut on their hands, and then went about fashioning an entirely new script. Again, that’s 18 months of nothing but chucking ideas around in the writer’s room, and occasionally ducking out to see what the effects guys had crafted in pre-production to give them some ideas.By contrast, RoS went from concept to story to “finished” product in just about the same time, once you discount the time wasted chucking out the rejected Trevorrow approach. Abrams had about 20 months, all told.That kind of time compression meant that, dude, of course we were going to get an absurd, slapdash conclusion. Of course we were getting a ridiculous, half-baked story structure that exacerbates all of J.J. Abrams’ worst storytelling instincts. He wasn’t there to tell a coherent story; honestly, if you care about coherent storytelling, you wouldn’t hire J.J. Abrams in the first place. Abrams is who you hire if your goal is to 1) get a massive opening weekend, and 2) to keep the trains on a troubled production moving on-time. That’s what he does. That’s his gift. And given that was very clearly what they were interested in, I don’t know what Kasdan could have done to save it. I mean, I get the impression that Kasdan was “hired” on to TFA mostly on the basis of brand recognition: he was there mostly as a name to secure the participation of fans who were still leery of the Star Wars brand, and on the fence about participating in this whole sequel trilogy business. Lord knows it was the strength of Kasdan’s name that convinced me to give TFA a shot in theaters. But as far as his actual participation? Nothing about TFA convinced me that he did any more than spent an afternoon bullet pointing some basic parts of the Hero’s Journey for Abrams. Nothing about that film suggests that Abrams understood, or cared, about the Hero’s Journey structure, given that he so clearly apes it without actually getting the substance right on pretty much anything. Which says Kasdan’s influence was pretty nominal, all things considered.
Abrams has undeniable talent as a character creator, cinematographer, and producer. He is straight trash at every other part of movie making and story telling.
“tossing out their first story idea (which would ultimately be shaped into the novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye)“And let’s all thank The Maker for that.
Or, subsequently, if Kasdan worked on any of the prequels. Somebody needed to reign Lucas in with those and he might have been the one to do it
They tried to get Kasdan back, he just refused. Kasdan might’ve been a good choice for the Kevin Feige-type role that no one filled on the Sequel trilogy, the guy who keeps the various creatives from butting heads and keeps his eye on the big picture. Still, there’s no indication he was offered such a role, or that he would’ve accepted if it was offered.
My sister hated Flashdance and anything to do with it purely because it pushed Raiders of the Lost Ark out of the last theater in town that was still showing it — nearly two motherfucking years later. My memory may be fuzzy, but I believe the ’80s had already given us the horny teen comedies of Porky’s and Class by the time Risky Business came out. It took that last one to show the genre could actually produce a good film (depending on whether or not you include Animal House in that genre).
Nah, Animal House is very much of the v snobs universe like Caddyshack (hardly a coincidence, obviously) and barely leans into sex at all except as a punchline. Sex is definitely not what motivates the characters. I miss comedies that are both shaggy dog and incredibly scripted like those two movies. They are so tightly packed with clever jokes that the plot barely matters, but they do not have the obnoxious improvisational or setup/reaction feel of too many post-Hangover comedies.
There really aren’t that many comedies that are “here are a bunch of loosely related skits” like Caddyshack or Animal House anymore.
Instead that’s what action films have become: loosely related fight scenes against a veneer of a plot.
Works for John Wick!
You’re right, Animal House is more snobs-vs.-slobs, not so much horny student comedy, although sex does motivate Otter quite a bit (the dean’s wife, the scam to pick women at Dickinson College) and Pinto to some extant (the underage checkout girl). Which is probably why Porky’s isn’t nearly as good.
I guess it comes down to sex not being the end goal for the characters. Even a character like Pinto who is a virgin, he doesn’t have some journey trying to get laid for the first time. It’s unlike the other horny teen comedies where losing virginity is a goal. Or there is a specific girl that the teen has to get with like Revenge of the Nerds or Spring Break or Private Resort.Fast Times at Ridgemont High might count as a horny teen comedy, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character wants to lose her virginity as well as her male counterparts.
It definitely motivates Bluto too – he’s a dedicated peeping tom, and tries to pick up Greg’s girlfriend at one point I believe.
A friend of mine was an usher at a midnight movie place, so she saw Flashdance over 700 times.
And to think, I’ve never even seen it once.
I finally saw it recently (37 years late), and… you’re not missing much. Jennifer Beals’ charisma does as much heavy lifting as it can, but it’s really just a slick, dumb, empty movie.
Obligatory Top 10 Highest Grossing Movies Of 1983 Post:Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, 20th Century Fox, $249,333,284Tootsie, Columbia, Dec 17, 1982, $136,302,219Flashdance, Paramount Pictures, $90,463,574Trading Places, Paramount Pictures, $90,400,000WarGames, MGM, $74,433,837Octopussy, MGM, $67,900,000Mr. Mom, 20th Century Fox, $64,800,000Staying Alive, Paramount Pictures, $63,841,474Risky Business, Warner Bros., $63,541,777National Lampoon’s Vacation, Warner Bros., $61,400,000
The dearly departed 80s All Over podcast made a great case for ‘83 being the worst year of the decade in terms of movie quality (though had it lasted longer, I would have really liked to hear their thoughts on 1987, the year “Three Men and a Baby” came out on top). There were a lot of films Drew and Scott like and love — hey, they loved “Risky Business”! — but the lows were low because this was the point when multiplexes were definitely a thing and the smaller studios — especially Cannon — were starting to shovel out filler by the truckload. The May 1983 episode is one of the shorter ones they did after the 1980 installments because aside from “Return of the Jedi” the major studios offered next to nothing that particular month — there was “Bill Cosby Himself”, Cheech and Chong’s “Still Smokin’”, “Doctor Detroit”, “Blue Thunder”, “Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone”, and then a bunch of really minor productions.
Maybe there was more junk and thus lower average quality (I have no basis to dispute that assertion), but I have a hard time accepting any year that had an OT Star Wars film, Trading Places (one of the best comedies of all time), Risky Business, Vacation (also a comedy hall of famer), Mr. Mom and, yes, Bill Cosby Himself can be worst of the decade. Blue Thunder and War Games were excellent action thrillers, and even Flashdance is still a pop culture touchstone.
I think Trading Places is the ur-80s comedy, more than Caddyshack or Stripes — it’s slicker and more interested in the business that dominated the decade. And it is hilarious.
Yes, with its pointlessly detailed stock market revenge plot, it prefigured a lot of later-in-the-Reagan-era comedies, from Head Office to Big Business to The Secret of My Success, and probably lots of others. But few if any of those dared to include a gorilla offering a savage bummy to one of the antagonists.
The gorilla rape is influential as well, foreshadowing Ghostbusters’ phantom blowjob and Revenge Of The Nerds’ Darth Vader deception rape in the “this comedy just took a sketchy sexual turn and we’re not going to make too big a deal about it” department.
*stands up, startled* CLARENCE BEEKS!
I would think it would be more Risky Business as Risky Business was seen in perfectly in line with Reagan era “Greed is Good” ethos. I think, in hindsight, Breakfast Club, has become the defining 80’s comedy, probably because it’s the one that most mythologizes that kind of suburban ennui that defined and was later mytholgized by us Gen X’ers
Trading Places is by far the best blockbuster of 1983.
Of those movies you list, Drew and Scott liked if not loved most of them; they did find “Trading Places” and “Mr. Mom” overrated and hated “Flashdance”, but their discussion of how painful it is to watch “Bill Cosby Himself” now because it’s such a good set is near-heartbreaking, and the same episode’s look at “Blue Thunder” is delightfully positive.
It probably wouldn’t have looked as bad if 82 hadn’t been the obvious top year of the decade
Their discussion on RotJ remains one of my favorites to recommend to people because they’re looking at it both in the past and present. It’s a welcome clear reminder that, despite the attitude now, RotJ wasn’t always warmly welcomed and that SW is a series where its flaws are often glossed over with time as people gain a more rose-tinted view of things.
To be honest, it’s also kind of why I’m sad they didn’t finish their run, cause I was interested in hearing them do the similar debate for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (which is a fun movie, but it DOES have some valid criticisms, such as the characterization issue Drew brought up when they discussed Raiders.)
That said, speaking of their work in ‘83, finally got to seeing Terms of Endearment recently, in large part on the strength of their recommend.
…and yeah, I’ll admit it – it lived up to the praise.
I picked up a DVD of that movie based on their enthusiasm for it also, but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. Glad to hear they weren’t just blowing smoke.
So far I have yet to be steered particularly wrong by any of their recommends (and even some of their didn’t quite recommend, but still had some good to say for, such as Eureka)
Some others I thank them for getting to me to check out – Used Cars, Mephisto, Burden of Dreams, The Long Good Friday, Amadeus, The Killing Fields
and still got more on the list to get to.
I miss that podcast too, and would really like to have heard them go through some of the later years in the decade.
Oh yeah, you knew certain months were just going to be epic. July ‘85, August ‘86 (“The Fly”, “Stand by Me”, “She’s Gotta Have It”, “Transformers the Movie”, two big slasher sequels; even “Howard the Duck” and “Shanghai Surprise” would have been hoots in their hands), December ‘88 (all five Best Picture nominees just for starters!), June ‘89, etc.
Yeah, I was particularly looking forward to the August ‘86 episode. Wasn’t Manhunter in there as well? Anyway, that was a big moviegoing summer for me. Ah, who am I kidding – every ‘80s summer was a big moviegoing summer for me!
Yes! 🙂
Is this where we talk about the amazing Howard the Duck movie novelization?
Hey, if Cosby hadn’t turned out to be such a shitbag, Himself would still stand as a classic comedy concert film. Certainly it’s not in the “1980s Blockbuster” template that we’re about to see, but that was some good comedy.
any year with Spacehunters was an awesome year.
It’s sort of amazing that late period Roger Moore James Bond films like Octopussy were still in the Top 10 by 1983—the Bond franchise has had some staying power.
I posted The Numbers list earlier, but didn’t have time to put in Wikipedia’s list. So…1 Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, 20th Century Fox, $252,583,6172 Terms Of Endearment , Paramount, $108,423,4893 Flashdance, Paramount, $92,921,2034 Trading Places, Paramount, $90,404,8005 WarGames, MGM, $79,567,6676 Octopussy, MGM, $67,800,0007 Sudden Impact, Warner Bros., $67,642,6938 Staying Alive, Paramount, $64,892,6709 Mr. Mom, 20th Century Fox, $64,783,82710 Risky Business, Warner Bros., $63,541,777
nowadays the top ten are all animated movies and superhero movies. nobody goes to the cinema anymore for a regular film, like a drama or comedy. even horror movies routinely make more than a mature drama.
WarGames was good. I rewatched last year. Still good.
Obligatory Every Movie Featured In These Articles Ranked From Best To Worst Post:The Godfather (1972)2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)The Exorcist (1973)Jaws (1975)Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)Blazing Saddles (1974)Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)Rocky (1976)The Graduate (1967)West Side Story (1961)Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi (1983)Spartacus (1960)Kramer VS Kramer (1979)The Longest Day (1962)Billy Jack (1971)My Fair Lady (1964)Cleopatra (1963)The Sound Of Music (1965)Grease (1978)The Bible: In The Beginning… (1966)Love Story (1970)
Sound of Music under My Fair Lady? Over my dead body!
Sound Of Music May have better leads, but My Fair Lady has better songs and a better story.
I respectfully disagree, especially the ending. I’ll take going over the alps compared to Rex Harrison saying bring me by slippers any day.
I keep thinking you need to move The Graduate down, but don’t see a lot below it to move up. Hmm.
Spartacus?
I wouldn’t argue with that. Sound of Music or The Longest Day might work as well.
I’m Spartacus.
My ranking of the “Movies I’d watch any time”. Probably has pretty much the same criteria as your list except I’m moving some of the better quality movies down (eg The Godfather) because there is a limit to the amount of time and attention I want to spend on a re-re-re-watch. There is almost no chance I would re-watch anything on this list lower than #16.
Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)Blazing Saddles (1974) Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi (1983)The Godfather (1972)2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)The Exorcist (1973)Jaws (1975)Spartacus (1960)E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)Rocky (1976)West Side Story (1961)The Longest Day (1962)The Sound Of Music (1965)The Graduate (1967)Billy Jack (1971)Cleopatra (1963)My Fair Lady (1964)Kramer VS Kramer (1979)Grease (1978)The Bible: In The Beginning… (1966)Love Story (1970)
You clearly love Billy Jack WAY more than it merits. That, or you mostly hate musicals.
Swap Rocky and Jaws, and you’re pretty much spot-on.Also – I’ve never seen Love Story, but I love the fact that it’s somehow worse than Grease and something called The Bible: In The Beginning.
Jedi finally delivered a really good light saber fight. It wasn’t two guys weakly swinging sticks like the original, it wasn’t a kid clunking around like Empire. Jedi is what kids were emulating play-fighting with swords, the reason the prequels were saber-heavy even though what Lucas really cares about is spaceship dogfights.For me the coolest part of Jedi is the speeder bikes. I grew up living in the sticks, albeit the southeast instead of the filmed northwest, but here was a planet-biome I could get behind.
I was trying to think what toys this movie created, because the first one, obviously, gave us X-wings, TIE fighters, and the Falcon, the second one gave us snow speeders and tauntauns, but this one — A-wings and B-wings? But the speeder bikes were fucking rad.Also, the A-wing and B-wing really disappointed me b/c they look very little like the letters A and B.
AT-ST.
AT-ST and speeder bikes. Everyone had at least one of each, and they were spectacular toys. The walker had moving legs, and the speeder bike “exploded” when you pushed a button.Also, biker scouts are by far the coolest-looking stormtroopers.
IIRC the speeders eventually wore out if you used that feature too much, and wouldn’t stay together. Sort of like the Han action figure losing the ability to hold onto his blaster.
I had em, and the tie-fighter that exploded too.
I like the snow outfits, too.
I remember those. only the “explosion” was more of a half-hearted falling apart, and then you had to put the pieces back together again…
For 1983, that was still awesome
There’s an AT-ST in the Hoth scene in Empire.
I know the clip you’re talking about. Was it there originally, or added in the special edition?
I always remembered it for being kind of janky stop motion (very specifically not CGI), and a thread on stackexchange with screenshots of the theatrical cut seems to confirm that it was in the original, not added later.
You’re right, now that I think about it, I remember it as being a little Harryhausen-esque. It surprises me that Lucas didn’t attempt to replace the walkers, and the stop-motion portions of the rancor scene, with CGI.
What did RotJ give us? Ahem, only one of the classiest ships in cinema…
Smooshed by logs, tripped by logs. It’s like the Empire hired The Three Stooges for their mechanized infantry.
The B-Wing May not look like a B, but it’s a friggin’ awesome ship. Always disappointed that after the initial jump out of hyperspace in the Death Star assault, they weren’t seen again. Just recently got back into model kit building as an antidote to Covid-related cabin fever, and I just finished a B-Wing kit last weekend
The B Wing doesn’t look like a B and has arguably the stupidest design in all Stars, Trek or Wars (why are the blasters so far apart?!? How are you supposed to aim?!?), and yet it’s probably my favorite of the bunch, closely tailed by the TIE Interceptor and Padme’s inexplicably chromed ship
“Padme’s inexplicably chromed ship” is the tag for my Amidala/Captain Phasma fanfic.
In World War II, the guns mounted on wings of fighters were angled inward slightly so that they would converge on a point in front of the fighter. The targeting sight was calibrated to match that convergence point.
If I recall, the Kenner toy had a cool little mechanism that kept the cockpit upright if you rotated the body like clock hands.
T-wing or Crucifix-wing would have been a better name. ;-P
That would’ve alienated the Jewish sci-fi . . . I mean SPACE OPERA fans.
The best toys I remember from this one were the Ewok village, Jaba, the Rankor, the B wing (which was barely even in the film), the Imperial shuttle and the speeder bikes. The speeder bikes also had the cool spring release that made the bike break apart and sent the rider flying.I’m pretty sure the AT-ST toy came out after Empire, but they may have rethemed the packaging after Jedi. And who could forget the culinary perfection Pepperidge Farm Star Wars cookies or Kellog’s C3P0’s breakfast cereal, both of which came out around this time?
the ewok village was later recycled into the robin hood prince of thieves tree hideout.
I remember the C-3PO cereal, but not the Pepperidge Farm.
I love the aesthetic of Ackbar’s ship, as well.
I think I read somewhere that the camera crews didn’t like shooting the Mon Cal ships because they resembled pickles. Maybe DoP’s don’t like pickles.
The A-Wing looked like a letter A to me, with the cockpit serving as the whole of a capital A. I had to really imagine the B to see it. (For years as a kid, I misheard and thought it was actually a T wing.)
it’s full name (added much later?) is the “blade-wing” because it looks like sword.
The best I could ever do is that it looks like a small b when turned upside down.
My son is obsessed with A-Wings for some reason, and has the LEGO version. Top down, it does resemble an A, I guess.I seem to remember the big deal about the A-Wing was it had massive sub-light engines and could match TIE fighters for speed and maneuverability. What I remember most about it in the movie is that one guy who kamikaze’d the Executor’s bridge and brought it down.
Yeah, the West End RPGS filled in so much of the backstory of this universe during the late 80s, and alot of it stuck. The A-Wing was supposed to be a super fast scout ship, trading in some of the X-Wing’s armament for speeds exceeding TIE Interceptors, which I guess where the other fastest thing around. But yeah, in the movie it was just window dressing and taking down the Executor. I read somewhere that there was originally supposed to be a whole sequence showing the B-Wings taking down a Star Destroyer on their own that got scrapped.
I’m sure the B-wing with all the moving parts was a pain to animate; but it is described in EU material as the most heavily armed one-person star fighter class ship in the galaxy. It would’ve been cool to see them really unleash the fury
When I had a PC and was playing X-wing vs. TIE Fighter the A-wing was my fave to play. The Y-wing has ion cannon but was too slow and, like, any farm boy would go for the X-wing. Yeah, I was a star fighter hipster.
Lower case t-wing!
This had lots of cool toys, from what I remember. I had lots of fun with the Desert Skiff (with the collapsible plank, so awesome) and the Rancor and Jabba himself. I had an Ewok village which was a pretty cool playset. Oh, and Shuttle Tydirium! That ship was huge! The TIE Interceptors also premiered here, which were a cool update on the TIE fighters. The B-Wing toy was pretty interesting, too. It barely figured in the movie, but the gyroscope cockpit on the toy was very entertaining.
Fuck yes that imperial shuttle.
You had the desert skiff, you bastard? That was so rare. I went back to my local toy store over and over again waiting for them to get it in. Apparently they only made a small number that only certain parts of the country got.
also you never get to see the b-wing do anything, and they’re supposed to be awesome, like one alone can blow up a star destroyer!
You really have to squint to see the A in A-wing. The B is apparently short for “blade wing” since the wings are supposed to resemble well, blades. Yeah, I don’t get to kick this knowledge too often.
Well I personally loved my Ewok Village with the net traps, tree elevator and fire pit!
The second one gave us snow speeders and tauntauns? You didn’t even mention the most iconic thing that everyone remembers first: the twin pod cloud car!
Definitely the speeder bikes. And not a vehicle but I remember the Emperor’s Royal Guards being a hot item…hard to find. I snatched two of them (had to explain to my mom why so she’d pay). They looked cool and had cloth robes, even if they did nothing in the film.
Eh, I like the RoTJ saber fight, but I think the Empire one was much better. Lots more actual dueling, interesting use of the sets, and the emotion. The dueling here is very limited and pretty quick- the most sustained part comes when Luke rallies at the end, which is mostly him hacking away at Vader, not an interesting give and take.
This movie never stayed as much with me as New Hope and Empire did but the thing I always remember most about it and the thing I always thought was the coolest part about it was the speeder bikes.
Sixth-best Star Wars film, and pretty much the pivot between “excellent / really good” ones (4, 5, 7, 8, Rogue One) and “mediocre / lame” ones (prequels, Solo, Rise). Which is to say: I can watch Jedi and enjoy it for the glorious action sequences and humorous grace notes and gloss over the clunkier bits, which, while certainly there, are not frequent or pervasive enough to ruin the overall effect.
There’s no way I’m putting 7 and 8 over 6, although I’d go 4,5, Rogue one, 6, 8,7,9,Solo,3,2,1, Holiday Special.However, I might put RiffTrax Holiday Special ahead of Solo.
I just caught Solo again and it’s actually a fun movie without all the expectations piled up on it. My only real beef is that everything we hear about Han’s background – winning the Falcon, Kessel Run, the play on “I have a bad feeling about this” – all comes from his first adventure. And the Kessel Run wasn’t even about how fast the Falcon was, it was about deciding to take a suicide route because they had no choice. There’s no way other pilots and smugglers were gauging themselves against one another by who had done that particular run the fastest.
Yeah, but bragging about something no one else gives a shit about is a very Han thing to do.
Fair point. It also reminds me of people who reference statistics or such that are supposed to sound impressive, but everyone just nods along with no idea what they’re talking about.
My issue with Solo (and it is fun, admittedly) is that it’s basically just two heist films piled together. We should have got a better character study and maybe just one heist plotted out. It also felt cliche in a lot of it. I agree that it is fun though and Donald Glover kills it as Lando. I’m also in the minority I think, but the actor playing Solo I genuinely liked. But then again I also thought he was one of the best parts of the Coen bros “Hail, Caesar” so maybe I’m just letting that role sway my judgement.
I thought Solo was a lot of fun. You are correct in your critique, and I sort of hate how it piled in everything we knew about Han into one film. But taken on its own, its entertaining (I love love love the train heist), and when I forget about Harrison Ford and pretend that this is the only guy who’s ever played Han Solo, it works in of itself fine.
Would that it were so simple.
Agreed: I’m sure there were time restrictions and so forth. I just felt like there was a great film in there but that it needed a few more revisions and judicious editing.
Say it trippingly.
Solo was fun, although slight. And it didn’t feel as slapped together as the mostly terrible Rogue One. But my assessment is the opposite of yours. I wish they had cut out the character study crap, like the beginning of the film, and leaned more heavily into the heist movie genre. That would have really improved the film.
The fact that you can have an incredibly wrong and misguided opinion on Rogue One makes me feel that I should simply invalidate all your posts moving forward, Sir…
But I’m a random person on the internet. You have to respect my opinion. I liked the big battle at the end Rogue One. It’s just that everything else didn’t work.
Well you’ve swayed me 🙂 In all seriousness I could watch Donnie Yen kick ass in that film all day. I legit liked it a lot, and I felt the concept of sacrifice really worked. To say nothing of how awesome enraged Vader was. What’s stunning to me is folks who like the prequels. I don’t get that logic in ANY way.
i think, often, people who were children when the prequels came out really liked them. I grew up on Hanna Barbera and Krofft Superstars– kids will like anything.
So did I – to say nothing of the ‘Filmation” super hero cartoons. But then again we had way less choices in entertainment back then. True story: my middle daughter loves Puff’n’Stuff and all that 70’s oddness.
I enjoyed it a lot although I was quite disappointed that they killed off the feminist droid whom I LOVED.
Yeah, Alden Ehrenreich is perfectly good in the role as long as you let go of thinking about how this guy is supposed to develop into Ford’s version.
Solo sucks because Han was basically a “rascal” for, what, like three weeks between the end of Solo and the beginning of Star Wars? He’s actually a romantic, except for the three weeks between the two movies? By the time we meet him he had already done battle against a galactic space squid? Chewie used to eat people?
I watched it on Netflix thinking it was going to be awful but thought it was kind of fun and I completely agree with all of your points. My biggest problem, though, is that it was clearly set to be a trilogy so everybody got away at the end (I’m thinking particularly of Emilie Clarke’s character) and instead of being the final, end point, the ending didn’t really mean anything to the story
“There’s no real emotional catharsis in watching a rubber puppet fade away into the air”I beg to differ. As someone who watched this in the theaters in 1983, I can confirm that the entire theater was sniffling when Yoda died and faded away. People *loved* Yoda after TESB. They were not ready for him to die.
Also this: “David Prowse, the former bodybuilder who plays Vader’s physical form, does what he can to telegraph Vader’s conflicted feelings, but he can’t stop the story from ringing false.” doesn’t jibe with my memories. It’s a weird Kuleshov Effect, but somehow I see struggle in that motionless mask. I think that whole scene is really well done overall. As noted, Palpatine is a magnificent dick — “I’m afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive” is great but that reading of “you will die” is even better, that slight emphasis on “will” giving it all the more implacability. He’s someone that Luke cannot beat, so Vader sacrificing himself and doing it for Luke makes sense, and he’s only able to do that because of how Luke resists. The Force is something that gets passed down through bloodlines and becomes boring to me after a while, but the drama here is about family and choice and that works beautifully.
i saw the struggle there too. the mask is now scorched and his breathing is even more labored. the lighting helps a lot too. him turning from his son’s face to the emperors multiple times, the angle of his head turned down when it used to be held stiff and straight ahead. Prouse did a good job.
And now it’s completely undercut by a dubbed-in “NOOOOOooooo!”
I did such a spit-take the first time I heard that.
Great point about the lighting and angles.
The way the lighting shifts across the front of his helmet when he moves his head really seems to sell the struggle somehow.
His helmet is DUSTY, too. After previously always being at a highly buffed shine. Definitely a team effort across all the departments. . .
Was it even Prowse? He had been slowly but surely pushed to the side by the time ROTJ was filmed and I don’t think he was in a lot of those scenes. There’s a documentary I Am Your Father that talks about the decline in his and Lucas’s relationship, to the point that now he’s pretty much banned from anything officially Star Wars.
I think it was still Prowse in the “acting” scenes. From Empire forward he’s replaced for the lightsaber duels and in Jedi he’s not in the death scene, but I’ve never heard anyone suggest he wasn’t in the suit for the other scenes.
Yeah it worked for me perfectly, so much so that it’s rage inducing to watch it now with the tacked on “NOooooooooooo!”
I agree on Vader’s expressiveness, but don’t forget to credit James Earl Jones voice work in Empire and Jedi as part of it.
Oh, of course. But like Baltimoron says above, Prowse is doing good work behind the mask too.
very similar to what what’s his name is able to do in the mandalorian
I’m definitely reading things into this scene that maybe aren’t there, and the Kuleshov effect could certainly be one reason for that. But when you see him look back and forth you just *know* he’s struggling with the two options. There’s probably a name for this effect as well, but the blankness of his mask allows us to project emotions on to it, and in the end it simply works.
And just in case Prowse wasn’t telegraphing enough, the Blu Ray did dub in some James Earl Jones pitifully moaning. For extra gravitas, I suppose.
I’ll probably take some heat for saying this but this may be the one instance in which seeing the prequels slightly helps this scene. Bad acting and character development aside, we at least have some sense of who Anakin was and what he went through before he turned. I’m someone who saw the originals in theaters, and I already loved it, but now when I watch I can picture Anakin behind the mask thinking about all of the choices he has made, and especially losing Padme. This is a chance for him to redeem himself and honor Padme’s memory by saving their son from death.I just wish Lucas hadn’t added that extra unnecessary “Nooooo” in there.
Ralph McQuarrie was really the genius that made these movies something special. You really can read different emotions into that mask, I’ve thought that for years. And whoever did the lighting did a hell of a job too.
That whole ending scene always bothers me with Luke’s actions after he defeats Vader. Why does he throw away his lightsaber????? Yes, as a Jedi you spare your father, but that doesn’t mean you just commit suicide by offering yourself undefended to the Emperor. What did he think was going to happen?
His plan from the beginning was to try to turn Vader back to the Light Side, throwing away his weapon and offering himself up forced Vader to make that decision.
Dismissing Prowse as a former bodybuilder really underrates the amount of acting he’s doing under that mask, just with gestures and posture. The problem with that scene isn’t what Prowse was doing, it’s just that the story doesn’t set up any good in Vader prior to meeting with Luke on Endor, and even then, that “good” is limited to not wanting to kill his own son. In some ways, it works, because Luke’s conviction that his father has the potential for good lends the story dramatic tension—no one else sees that potential, not Leia, not even Yoda and Obi Wan. It’s an article of blind faith on Luke’s part, and no one agrees with his decision, not even the audience, because it isn’t based on evidence. The only thing Luke and the audience have to go on are the feelings that Obi Wan’s been telling Luke to trust since the first movie.That said, you can see where, if the prequels had been better constructed, a Machete-order viewing (with the prequels as basically a flashback to Anakin’s story between Empire and Jedi) could’ve really paid off, showing us a conflicted and basically good Anakin who we might think would be worth redeeming, even after participating in genocide. Heck, it would’ve been interesting if instead of casting and writing Anakin and Amydala as direct analogues of Luke and Leia, he’d inverted it, so that Padme resembled Luke rather than his sister.
It might have been interesting for casting, but Anakin was the ultimate narcissist. If Luke had been more like Padme, he wouldn’t have seen himself in Luke and had that self preservation instinct kick in. I know, I know, he’s supposed to be saving his son, but I refuse to believe that a guy who killed a Jedi temple full of younglings and force choked his pregnant wife gave a shit about his son. He was trying to save himself. Which makes Luke’s dilemma even more poignant. At what point do you give up on your toxic as fuck parents?
I mean, that’s how it reads in the Lucas trilogies as made, because Lucas’s views of romance and love are so shallow and muddled that it’s impossible to credit Anakin for really loving anything or anyone. Heck, he seems more self-loathing than narcissistic (and I know those two aren’t mutually exclusive, but narcissists don’t usually sacrifice themselves, even for people who resemble them). My point is that if you were constructing the sequels from scratch, the more poignant thing to evoke would be that Luke looks like the tragically dead love of Anakin’s life more than Luke looking like Anakin himself, pre-volcano incident. Vader’s motivation to betray the Emperor would then be driven by a desire to atone for a mistake in his own life. Vader as a mirror for Luke in the cave and when he cuts off Vader’s mechanical hand works in the OT, as a warning of what Luke could become if he gives in to the dark side. Anakin actually resembling Luke in the Prequels doesn’t accomplish much of anything. It’s a failure of imagination.
Whatever else is going on, Prowse really takes his time. There are long pauses between Vader moving his head that give you the idea of a man locked in an internal struggle.
It’s also not like they didn’t lay groundwork for that all throughout the film, either. Palpatine asks Vader if his feelings are clear, the conversation on the moon before Vader actually brings Luke up to the Death Star. It’s definitely not something that was on Lucas’ mind in Star Wars or Empire, regardless of what he claims, but when they decided to go that route, they put in the work of making Vader progressively more conflicted all through the film.
Many people believed he had not faded away, but that his soul had transferred into his blanket, and then were heart-stricken that Luke did not take the blanket with him, but instead left it on Dagobah System.
Wouldn’t that have turned him into Linus Van Pelt?“Gimme that stupid blanket, Luke!” from his bossy sister
Haha really?! I guess the concept was still so new to audiences that it could be easily mistaken for that happening. The only other death like that was obi wan 6 years ago
Also I really want a plot where there’s a talking blanket and Luke wears it as a cape
Sort of a Twiki / Dr. Theopholous relationship.
Why does Yoda play Solitaire?
To make the Dagobah!
I’ll see myself out.
IMO that’s the most moving scene in the whole movie.
Not the scene where the Stormtroopers kill one of the Ewoks, and the other Ewok (Wicket?) walks over to him, thinking he’s all right, then realizes he’s dead.Sorry, I got something in my eye …
I agree. Keep this in mind: in ESB we learn an awful lot about the force through Yoda. Star Wars (‘77) introduced us to the idea, but the force “theology” (if you will) was expanded upon and laid out by Yoda. At Yoda’s death, Luke loses a tangible/living link to information, to an almost unknown history, and to the only other light/good side force user (the only other remaining force users are pure evil). He is now alone in this. And think of what Yoda drops on Luke before he dies: yes, it’s true, Vader is your father; the Emperor is too powerful; you must confront them; they will tempt you and turn you or destroy you; there’s more information about the force and then, oh yeah, Leia is your sister. Watch the reactions on Luke’s face as Yoda tells him all of this. He goes through the five stages of grief and then comes out with resolve to finish his journey. And there’s a bigger impact on the viewer (and one that becomes more apparent and meaningful as the years go by): this would be the last time we hear anything about the force for a long time – and hear about it in it’s purest, simplest form. Yoda told us almost all we know about the force. Outside of novels and extextended universe stuff (which I never got into), we don’t learn anything else (and don’t expect to) until Lucas brings midichlorians and an exotic, strangely bureauocratic, almost demystified Jedi past into focus with the prequels. Yoda really is the representative of a pure force user/teacher. Everything that comes later muddles the Jedi history, complicates it, yet doesn’t really add much to it. With that in mind, Yoda’s death still stings.
Yeah, hard to defend the idea that Yoda’s death didn’t work emotionally. It’s sold really well, both by Hamill and by Oz, and it’s necessary because Luke has to be on his own going into the final confrontation (supposedly, an earlier version of the script had Yoda and Obi-Wan’s force ghosts participating in Luke’s confrontation with Vader and the Emperor, which would’ve been…less good).Logically, the scene presented some problems for me when I first saw it, because there’d been so much emphasis on Luke needing to complete his training in Empire and then he manages to do so through self-study, I guess? But I remember that the puppet dying hit me hard, and obliquely explained Obi-Wan’s empty robes in the first movie.
I was 10 years old watching this in the theaters in 1983 and I agree that Yoda’s death/fading away was a really powerful moment. The other thing I’ll say, but this time something that no one will agree with, was that most people liked the Ewoks and found them cute. But that may be my memory just because I was a stupid fucking 10 year old kid
People liked them, especially kids (including 12 year old me). They made two TV movies about them they were so popular. Jedi was my favorite of the trilogy for a while until my more adult sensibilities came into fruition.
Yes. That’s how I saw it too. When I was a kid I definitely saw this as the best of the three movies due to the great action sequences and the fact that it wrapped the series up with a satisfactory conclusion. And I liked the Ewoks. I found them to be a fun new cute weird race of creatures. It wasn’t until I was an adult in the 90s that I became aware of the orthodoxy that you just HAD to like Empire the best because it was supposedly the darkest or most complex or whatever
I’ll probably be stuck in the greys forever for mentioning this, but I loved that part about The Last Jedi when they brought back the real Yoda.
The prequels and even in clone wars TV show have such a boring version of him, the idea of him just being a jokester on the council who has lived for so long that he’s over the force was such a perfect concept.
I completely agree. I was very moved myself
I’ll always remember the part of Ebert’s review of RotJ where he singles out the scene of the Rancor’s death and its owner/trainer sobbing. I’m paraphrasing here, but it’s “Even in a galaxy far far away, everybody is loved by somebody.”
No one loves The All-Consuming Sarlacc.
There are certain fetish communities that would beg to differ.
You made the Sarlacc feel sad.
I’d like to hear a Phil Collins power ballad about the Sarlacc’s sadness, called “Tears in the Desert.”
Jabba loved him.
I heard that Jedi was the most insulting installment.
“What’s a nubian?”
SHUT THE FUCK UP
I can’t get one of just the chastised sitting down, so here:
You didn’t tell me you were gonna tell “Black rage”; I almost pissed myself!”
According to the prequels, some sort of starship engine.
That shit was so confusing. Was Nubian meant to mean from Naboo?
Maybe it was pronounced Nah-BEE-in, but Watto’s wholly necessary and not at all racist accent fucked it up.
Maybe, still shocked at how, uh, outdated that film was. Did Lucas sincerely not get what was wrong? Or was he that committed to the 40’s serial aesthetic that he had to add some old timey racism? I also can’t fathom Lucas coaching someone in his voice how Jar Jar and Watto should speak
Oh my god dude! I feel like NoHo Hank talking to Bary.
Did I need a sarcasm tag on that? You’re like one of the best. I feel that was my fault.
Really? I thought they were Naboobians.
“What’s a Nubian?”
They trying to tell us that deep inside, we all wants to be WHITE!!! “Well, don’t you?”
Man when Kevin Smith was great he was fucking great.
I like Chasing Amy just fine, but it never again rises to the level of that early scene.
“Always some white boy gotta invoke the holy trilogy.”
My big memory of Jedi was a huge feeling of being let down. In a funny way, it was because Empire Strikes Back was too good to be a middle movie, and any finale was going to struggle to top it.But Jedi also just wasn’t good enough to be close but no cigar. The Ewoks were a big part of it, but I also think the second Death Star was a big mistake — I am guessing Lucas’s mechanical obsession with what he called “rhymes” was already taking over. What it really meant is that he lacked the creativity to move from a limited concept to a full-blown galaxy, and got stuck reusing the same stuff over and over.
Which probably comes across as harsher than it should. Making even the first one was a great achievement, and adding the second was remarkable. So I can’t fault him too much for not having the vision to go any further, especially because not many others have done better at this scale in movies or TV.
but I also think the second Death Star was a big mistakeI disagree for a couple of reasons. First off, it’s narratively efficient. We don’t need any sort of “here’s why this is a scary thing” exposition, there’s no need to go blowing up another Alderaan. Mon Mothma says “Death Star” and everybody knows why that’s scary. If anything, the only part that goes wrong is the opening crawl where it says the new Death Star is even bigger and more powerful than the last one. (Which, sure, it fulfills the need to ‘ramp up’ the threat, but it’s also pretty silly. What, does this Death Star blow up planets EVEN HARDER than the last one?).
Second, as opposed to the first time around, this Death Star is a means to an end. All the characters we know are playing different roles, the space battle is the least important storyline running. There’s no trench run, no “use the Force, Luke . . . again” so even though the nominal threat is the same, the story is fundamentally different.
One man’s narrative efficiency is another man’s laziness, I guess.
And also, it’s being used as a trap for Luke and the Rebels, at least in part, which is also different from the first movie.
He paid…for his… lack of vision…
Now, I find parts of RoTJ unwatchable because I hate the Ewok’s so much. I even feel like the scenes in Jabba’s cantina really cheesy and bad. But I was a kid and I forgot what I thought of all of that when I saw it. I think I disliked the Ewok’s and a few other parts of the movie but was too excited about just seeing a new Star Wars movie that I didn’t notice how much it bugged me until later. Kind of like how I wonder if all the Jar Jar hatred mainly came from adults and
IT was hard for me to even admit to myself how let down I felt by ROTJ as a 9yo kid – it just felt lazy and uninspired when compared to the first two releases.
I’ve always loved everything in the Death Star throne room. I just recently rewatched Jedi and it still feels like something is happening there. I think I disagree with Tom about seeing Vaders turn. The moments where he’s looking back and forth between Luke and the Emperor convey so much in such a tiny gesture. Dude was trying to get his son to join him last time, to have the family he was denied. And here his master is just going to fry him? We don’t get mounds of exposition because we don’t really need to. I think that’s one thing that modern media does poorly. Less can sometimes be more, and I think the Vader turn moment is a great showcase of that.
Even as a kid I remember being underwhelmed by the lack of originality in the plot. Empire builds another Death Star, Rebels blow up another Death Star.It’s also what I hated about the latest trilogy. “It worked before, it can work again!” The Force Awakens particularly is more remake than sequel.
It could’ve been worse. Lucas’s original plot had two Death Stars.
Of course it did.
Why stop there! let’s raise the stakes and make it 1,000 death stars. Of course, they all have to have a single point of failure so the good guys can win, but wouldn’t that be awesome?
“Why stop there! let’s raise the stakes and make it 1,000 death stars. Of
course, they all have to have a single point of failure so the good
guys can win, but wouldn’t that be awesome?”
Sounds vaugely familiar….
I think the reason the Death Star worked in RoTJ is that everyone had a different part to play from the first time around. So, sure, they rehashed the threat, but the big space battle wasn’t the focal point of the story so it still felt fresh.
The visual effect of the under-construction new Death Star in ROTJ was also really well-done. It added a little extra tension to the hashed-over story (can we catch it before it’s fully operational?) and it just looked really freakin’ cool.
It helps the Big Space Battle is a fleet action this time. Not just ~15ish fighters flying over a technosphere.Plus, those Mon Calamari ship designs we only get a glimpse of in Empire are fucking fantastic in all their glory here. It re-frames the desperation fight in an adequately different way.
Yup, the technology had progressed to the point they could show a space battle with multiple ships moving in different directions, which they couldn’t really do in Ep4. (When there’s more than one ship in-frame, they’re mostly static with respect to each other). Which meant you could have a whole fleet out there, and when Lando says “Fighters, coming in!” it gives you goosebumps when it cuts to swarms of TIE fighters. It was an incredible example of the technology ILM pioneered for Ep4 coming to maturity. It was also cool to see (or infer) the Millennium Falcon fully manned for the first time ever.
See, that’s part of why I wasn’t THAT mad at Starkiller. I rolled my eyes a little, sure, but it was more of “Eh, not like it’s the first time.”
Of course, that was also further fueled by memories of the Legends EU, where similar superweapons were almost annoyingly common (Darksaber, World Devastators, the Sun Crusher…just to name a few.)
But it’s logical to try it again, isn’t it? It’s always seemed strange to me that when a villain comes up with a world-conquering/destroying plan that the hero only foils at the last second and against all odds that the villain scraps the plan and comes up with something entirely new the next time around instead of just tweaking the original plan and fixing the miniscule flaw that let the hero beat it…
Because that’s what you are looking for in your science-fantasy entertainment isn’t it? Logic.
Presumably this death star had shielding on its thermal exhaust port, right? and since the first one evidently took the better part of 20 years to build, the second one may have already been under construction already (you don’t build one aircraft carrier for the navy, right?). They’ve already sunk a bunch of costs into R&D and initial building of the second death star, the fact that the first one got blown up wouldn’t stop them from continuing with the second one. Of course, it probably should have illustrated the risk of investing that much capital in a single weapon, but we’re talking about the government here, the budget has already been allocated…
Cobra Commander never repeated himself. He (and Destro and later Dr. Mindbender) always came up with a new, expensive, whacked out, long shot of a world dominating idea or device that anyone with half a thought in their head could see had very little chance of working.
That always particularly frustrated me with Roadrunner cartoons. Often Wile E.’s plans were stymied by some random freak occurrence. If you just give it another try it could still work.
Exactly. I mean, how many times could the roadrunner just matter-phase into a stone wall and run into the tunnel painted on it? At some point, it’s gotta slam into the rock, right?
Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I like Jedi, but the parts (Fort Jaba, speederbikes, etc) exceed the whole, and the Ewoks aren’t great unless you first saw the movie at a fairly specific age. Further, I rank it behind New Hope, with Empire on top.
I was 5 when Jedi came out and it will always be one of my favorite movies. People can apply film-school critiques all they want; it hits every emotional button for me.
You kind of validated his point.
One of the things I love about ‘Jedi’ is that every character feels like the most levelled up version of themselves: Luke is a cool, confident Jedi, Leia kicks arse all the way through, Han and Lando are just as suave and sassy as you want them to be. And on the other side, the Emperor has never been so cacklingly evil and Vader feels like a huge threat. It’s proper thrilling adventure stuff.
Came out on a Wednesday, and my parents had told my sister and I that we would see it on Saturday, three days that seemed eternal to a just-turned-10 years old kid. Wednesday night, about 9 o’clock, I was fast asleep when my dad, in a moment I will never ever forget, gently shakes me awake and says, “Do you want to go see Return of the Jedi tonight?” I think I was standing at the car door about a minute later. They talked about it, and realized how tortured I was to have to wait, and decided to take us to one of the midnight shows at the local theater. I got to skip school the next day, and when I got back on Thursday, I was the only kid in the class that had seen it. I was a hero. One of my favorite memories.
Fuck you. My one-horse town didn’t get it until it had been out for about three weeks. That staggered release pissed me off.
An all-time parenting win.
This is actually the first time this has dawned on me, but now I’m wondering if dad talked mom into it partly because he didn’t want to wait to see it anymore than I did. He was just as big a fan of the movies as I was. A few years ago, I talked my wife into a trip to Disney World because our son ‘needs to go while he’s still a kid’. Which was about 50% BS. I wanted to go because I wanted to go.
That’s definitely something my own dad would have done.
Yeah in retrospect my dad did some stuff like that as well. The Broncos made the playoffs the year I was turning 13, and he got up real early to stand in line and got us tickets to the playoff game where they came from behind and the last minute against the Oilers in ‘91. It’s one of my most treasured memories, but I didn’t realize until years later when he started buying season tickets how much he likes going to Broncos games – nobody had to twist his arm to get him line up in the cold for those tickets! Not that I mind or anything that he was enjoying stuff for himself of course, like I said it’s one of my most treasured memories, the sort of thing where I can close my eyes and picture parts of the game to this day. It’s really a pretty sweet dad move when you break the rules a bit to enjoy stuff together with your kid. I’ve tried to do things like that for my kids as well, like taking them out of school to play golf, or spending the day watching R rated movies with my son on his 13th birthday, just little things that (hopefully) mean a lot to them.
That’s generally the excuse for building a model train layout too. Kids generally aren’t into them as much as the parents.
“Honey, look at the kid, he’s inconsolable.”“That’s okay, Dad, we can wait until -”“INCONSOLABLE!”
I saw it opening day as well. I was going to get braces and they had stuck rubber bands between my teeth to loosen them up. This made eating very painful, so I had to suck on the pieces of popcorn until they softened up, before I could eat them. (Didn’t really help.)The audience cheered for everything. And when Vader chucked Palpatine into the reactor, we fucking went NUTS.Saw it again about two weeks later and the audience was still cheering at the famous opening crawl and Palpie’s death.
What a beautiful story thank you for sharing that made me very happy for some reason.
Midnight shows on a weeknight in the ‘80s? Now I’ve seen everything.
Much like a lot of Gen X folks, I liked it a ton but I also wasn’t a fan of the Ewoks (my two year younger sister loved them though) but those light saber battles and that moment when he does the flip and catches the light saber are just SO fucking awesome.
I like Jedi, it’s a fun movie, but it’s perhaps telling that it’s only really the bit at the beginning with Jabba and the bit at the end with the final battle with the Emperor that I really remember. The middle is kind of a blur of Ewoks. Looking forward to Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop. Two great tastes that taste great together.
Let’s not forget the very beginning, where Vader’s shuttle slowly lands, and he goes full middle-manager on some poor Imperial Officer.
Just watched that again now. Tom wasn’t kidding when he said that so much of Jedi is basically redoing the first one in a slightly less impressive way; that whole scene is the opening sequence of the first movie, but instead of a Star Destroyer chasing a Blockade Runner before boarding it so we can see people fire lasers at each other, it’s basically a commute from head office to an on-site inspection. Looks great, but we’re not exactly leaping out of the gates to get things started, George.
I love its opening for a different reason, with the set-up of scale. Vader flies over, two escorts, and the Death Star commander is practically confiding in him and bitching about the Emperor. When the Emperor flies over, he gets a giant escort, and the mere mention of him coming slaps the stupid right out of the Death Star commander. Really hits you how much relatively scarier and more important he was even than Vader. Also a nice touch of them landing in the smallest bay, when you can see much bigger ones next to it, then you see inside that the “small” bay is gigantic. Repeats the beginning of TESB with the shadow of Vader’s command ship blotting out a star destroyer, after we saw how big those fuckers were right off the bat in Star Wars.
I think you needed that scene in particular because Vader doesn’t do a lot in this movie, so we needed an establishing scene that reminds us all how terrifying he is. That way it bookends the end where he is a dying old man full of regret.
“We shall redouble our efforts.” – Low-level manager
“We shall redouble our efforts by more effectively streamlining operations through synergizing value-added systems integration models to effectively deliver an enhanced user experience.”“See that you do. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.”
Nah, Vader would have started Force-choking him the instant he said the word “synergizing.”
Never knock synergy, Lemon.
“I know I have a reputation for being hard on people, and I guess I deserve it. But I’m actually a complicated guy. I have a kid – two kids, it turns out – and it’s a mess. I pretend I know what I’m trying to do, but when I talk to my son it’s like we’re on completely different wavelengths. And seriously, man, you have no idea what my boss is like. No. Idea. So don’t work harder, work smarter. Actually, yeah, work harder, too.”- Darth Vader, Return of the Jedi
I hope so, for your sake. President Trump is not as forgiving as I am.
Steve Carell IS Darth Vader!
“Yeah, if you could…speed up your work on the new Death Star…that would be greeaaaaat.”
I love Jedi (I have to admit it’s my second favorite Star Wars movie), but it’s mostly due to the Jabba sequence, the speeder bikes, and the Battle of Endor. I love that space battle! It just looks spectacular, too.
Red tape or no red tape, there was no way in hell Spielberg was going to put ‘E.T.’ on hold for this. And there’s no way he could have done them back-to-back, seeing as how this one starting shooting shortly after ‘E.T.’ wrapped.
My memory, and the one that sticks, from my childhood is watching this movie and being awestruck by the opening scene with Jabba. I have a greater appreciation for it now because it’s essentially a heist and you can see the set up for all the different set pieces. I think this movie has one of my favorite opening scenes ever. It’s just something that’s been burned into my brain.
It never occurred to me that someone could read the redemption of Darth Vader as a bad narrative decision. It’s so fundamental to the movies, obviously more so after the prequels, that I can’t register it as poor storytelling.And it is an interesting concept. What if Anakin never became good again? Unfortunately, the rules of narrative for these things mean the alternatives would be pretty unsatisfying. Luke would never kill Vader in a direct duel, not after he rejects the dark side. So then Vader would either try and sneak up on Luke to kill him and Luke would have to stab him in self defense, or somehow Vader wouldn’t be able to escape the exploding Death Star. The last one could be the most interesting if Vader was broken, weak and in the end a pitiful shell of the terror he was, crawling toward a ship to escape, but finally consumed by the implosion of the empire he helped build. But still, I find that slow, deliberate observation of his son’s pleas for help before straightening with resolve and chucking his old boss into a pit to be a really satisfying scene. And, regardless of the quality of the prequels, the fall and redemption arc of a character is a great little fable.
It’s a bad narrative decision because it’s completely unearned. Vader assisted in the extermination of entire planets. He makes Hitler look like an amateur. Yet, all it takes is his throwing an old man in a hole to redeem him?It’s also a jarring move from the Eastern-influenced spiritualism to a more Western one. We go from an energy field that surrounds and binds all living things to a son who doesn’t want his father to die unrepentant.
Yeah, but for all the movie’s discussion of the force as embodying these holistic eastern principles, I think it’s fair to say that was largely window dressing and they always existed predominantly as a very dichotomous good vs. evil fairy tale.
Luke’s speech in Last Jedi was a good attempt to return it to its earlier conception. Basically now, the dark side of the Force is presented as some sort of evil personality that takes over you that you somehow aren’t responsible for afterwards.
Yeah, it’s why I hate young anakin as a ghost. He didn’t die as his young self, he died as someone who looked far older than he was because of his self-inflicted trauma. He died at peace but his body still bore those scars. Sure a ghost would have body parts again, but he’d still be that old man
7 year old me did not draw the connection between Vader and his Force ghost in the original version. I actually thought it was Uncle Owen.
Ah, Uncle Owen was a jerk too.
Last Jedi was for sure the movie that tried the hardest to understand the Force according to its eastern principles and apply it to the ethos of the movies. Which is why it’s among my favorites of the series.
I’d always understood it to be that, a kind of corrupting energy that would take you over, a heavy-handed and literal representation of the pitfalls of power. I’d always thought a goodly amount of jedi training wasn’t simply how to wield the force as a warrior, but so as to be able to resist being drawn into the dark side
It would’ve worked better without touching upon the more serious issues of redemption that you correctly bring up if he hadn’t become a Force ghost at the end. Have him save his son, die and acknowledge there was still *some* good in him, but end it there. Don’t go near the idea that all is forgiven and he has somehow earned his way into the only equivalent of heaven that we are shown in these films.
Now I’m reading it like a Monty Python scene:“There’s some good in ‘im.”“‘Ow much good?”“Well, um, five. Rather a LOT really!”
“It’ll do. Force ghost!”
I was really hoping for Kylo Ren to be that awkward person who turns good without being mortally wounded at the same time, only for the Rebels to still reject him, as forgiveness is not nearly that easy. Then he’s stuck alone with what he did, or slips back to darkness
His death, like Vader’s, is the easier out so that this series doesn’t have to truly grapple with these redemptive issues. But I think the Vader Force ghost was a step too far and still poked at them anyway.
These are films for children. While I hate the comp of Hayden’s head on top of Sebastian Shaw’s body, with the 6 films (when it was added) complete, showing Anakin at his last Jediness visually tells children that he was a good guy again. I take your point, but it’s only since I was older did I start to question his being in a Force spirit.
I’m not sure if you meant to reply to me, because I didn’t really comment specifically on the Hayden Force Ghost thing- I’m more troubled with there being any Anakin Force Ghost at all. I am soooo in the camp that these are films for children, which is why I question things like the youngling murder in RoTS as really complicating the issue. But I also think the Anakin Force Ghost in RoTJ (whichever actor) is still troubling. I see your point as it’s an easy way to let children know Vader is okay now, but I question if that’s a good message to send. I would say they didn’t need the Force Ghost thing at the end at all.
Well, by going 4,5,6,1,2,3 it’s all borked up.
Yes, absolutely!
If you’re Christian, unearned redemption is totally one of the perks. If Hitler confessed on his deathbed “sorry about all the Jews and the war” he’d get into Heaven. Oh also not kill himself.
That point really bothered me in Catholic school when a teacher tried to discuss redemption
Depends on the denomination (if you’re a Calvinist, for instance, it wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t one of the elect; if you’re a Catholic or certain Orthodox adherents, works would factor into it), but above all else, he’d have to actually be sincere about it, and it’s generally not all that likely that people like that are going to have a sudden and complete about-face about their life’s mission.
The entire point about “unearned” redemption is that it is not redemption at all. Redemption is about making up for one’s sins, which as correctly pointed out is essentially impossible for someone like Vader. The true goal is forgiveness, the sincere acknowledgement of one’s sins.
That goal is a powerful one, as what it does is separate the monsters from the imperfect. I lost a family member to a drunk driver, and I can’t tell you what it would have meant to me to have him express regret over his actions (he did not, and so he will always exist in part as a monster in my mind, try as I still will to offer the forgiveness that was not sought). To apply this to your Hitler example, had Hitler expressed true and honest regret over his actions, a “I was so downtrodden by personal failure and by seeing the people I loved so much fall to ruin that I went looking for people to blame and set out to stop those scapegoats without sufficient cause”, he would still be a terrible figure, but at least a human one, a terrible product of circumstances. But to then turn back to what actually happened, part of the reason Hitler is the abhorrent monster he is perceived to be is because he did not act under such flawed-but-human motivations, and was not the sort to express regret because he was indeed never regretful.
Also, let’s not confuse hollow words of regret (with a resulting “reward” of heaven) as an invalidation of Christian forgiveness. Sincerity is the vital component of forgiveness, both sought and given, and just because some will aim to appear to seek forgiveness without meaning it doesn’t invalidate the actions of the sincere. If you’re interested, it is my personal belief that humans are beings with a physical body of the natural world (subject to natural laws/instincts, many of which are inherently violent or selfish due to the mechanisms of self-preservation) and divine souls. I don’t believe in “evil”, as by my take I can trace evil actions to a natural-law source. I believe “good” or “moral” living is about overcoming the dirtier aspects of natural law with divinely-inspired actions, and that moral living is determined by how strongly one resists what is understood to be “immoral” actions. Because our natural urges are everpresent (and the urges themselves cannot be shut off as with a spigot), “sin” is unavoidable…so moral living isn’t about achieving the impossible, which is to say a sinless life, but rather about striving to avoid sin AND seeking forgiveness (and, if possible, redemption) for one’s sins.
What does this forgiveness do? It nourishes the soul. The more sincerely one wishes to live morally and repent for one’s shortcomings, the more substantial the soul that grows within us. Live this way, and when the time comes that the body reaches the end of its function our soul continues to exist in some other manner…and what is left of that soul is based on the strength of our moral living. By extension, the “penalty” of an immoral life without repentance, such as with a Hitler, isn’t an eternity of suffering in “hell” (which I don’t believe in)…but, rather, is the sad outcome of immoral living withering the soul away to little or nothing. Living in this way leads to one existing only in the natural life of the body, with the sad outcome of nothing being left when the body reaches its end.
So with that long story short, Vader’s “redemption” in the end isn’t so much triumphant, erasing the many terrible ills of his past, but rather the successful reemergence of his moral self and thus a rejuvenation of his soul that continues on. I’ve never actually this personal belief of mine to Vader or Star Wars, and interestingly as I’ve written this I’ve realized that Anakin’s Force ghost at the end is essentially the visual/metaphorical movie embodiment of the continuing eternal/divine/moral soul that I just described.
Yeah, on a cosmic scale saving one person who happens to be his son is self serving and might not mean Vader suddenly cares about the Jedi or Rebels. But it works in the moment as he still ensures they win, and the Jedi return as a force for good (maybe?). He also is unmasked as a sad, withered old man whose deeds almost destroyed his humanity. I still like that his actions didn’t exactly redeem him in the eyes of the galaxy, only Luke truly knew what he did.
only Luke truly knew what he didThat raises an in interesting question, is the Force Ghost thing a universal state or only a local manifestation? i.e. is Anakin a force ghost all the time, just hanging out chatting with other Jedi, or is he just part of the force that is attendant to Luke only?
They all seemed to talk to Rey, so I figure they can appear to anyone who at least is strong in the Force. Gotta wonder if they tried to help Kylo or if Leia meets the ghost of Anakin, she did in the EU and initially wouldn’t forgive him
Yeah. I don’t take the scene where he makes the decision to kill the Emperor as all that false, the problem is mostly that he ends up just totally fine, with new Jedi robes, a high quality wig and some facial work, hanging out with his old buddies in the Force afterlife. I always thought TROS could have worked in some afterlife redemption/purgatory stuff for Anakin. He was supposed to bring balance to the Force, right? Alas, we fans are all much better storytellers than the people who actually make this stuff.
I think some kind of check in with Force Ghost Anakin (if we had to have him) would’ve made a lot of sense for the sequel trilogy, but after the prequel reception it seems the producers didn’t want to go anywhere near there.
It works because throughout the trilogy, the one throughline for Vader is his obsession with Luke. He could have killed Luke multiple times, but didn’t. Luke is his one last link to humanity. And it’s made explicit in the novelization (I know, shut up) that Vader was especially astonished when Luke turned to the Emperor and refused to kill Vader when he had the chance. That was when Vader realized his son was truly good. And since Luke had come from him, maybe there was some good in him after all. It’s really the most important point in the whole trilogy. It’s also one of the more subtle touches by Lucas, a man not well known for subtlety.
I don’t dispute that Vader saving Luke works. What doesn’t work is Vader selfishly throwing a man down a whole to save his son somehow redeeming him from two decades of genocidal murder.
I don’t think the movie ever states that it does, though? He does one good thing for the son who loved him and then dies. If anything, the fact that he has to pay with his life indicates the movie knows he’s not off the hook.
Huh? The movie shows Anakin, hale and whole and hearty, smiling and hanging with Yoda and Kenobi in Jedi heaven.
Oh well yeah that part’s stupid. I just ignore that.
3) It’s jarring because these were clearly Lucas’ high school notes brought to life with very little interference from the studio (how’d that work on the sequels?).
2) Vader is worse than Hitler, but you didn’t know about that until after ROTJ, nobody did. How much of your critique is based around a retcon that keeps changing with each movie and sequel, is my point.
1) There hasn’t been a single narrative in decades that “earned” its ending in films, and any film you mention I can easily find half the internet saying you’re wrong. If according to you, the perfect ending character arc would have also needed a complete restructure of the film, than that film was not going to be Star Wars.
I actually like your idea of the pitiful broken Vader dying in an exploding Death Star. The Dark Side has so corrupted him that he doesn’t even have the strength for self-preservation.
It would be especially interesting if the prequels were essentially the same and so you just ended up with a sort or Scorsese take on the cost of evil.
It would then have been a nice parallel to the end of Revenge of the Sith.
It also could’ve worked if he personally used the station to blow up the Imperial fleet and then had a direct hand in the station’s destruction, going down with it as a hero, but with only himself knowing it.
I was all for the redemption arc until they showed him slaughtering younglings. Look, standing aside while a planet gets destroyed is, I know, intellectually a lot worse, but it’s so abstract that it’s hard to deal with.But the idea of Anakin personally murdering a bunch of children (in any situation, but especially one where he personally knew them) didn’t make his whole plight tragic, it made it icky and gross. I don’t know if I want that guy redeemed, but I do know I don’t really want to watch anything at all to do with him.
Yeah, it was a very blunt way to demonstrate just how far he’d fallen. And ultimately, it reinforces the Western nature of the movies. He’s allowed to be redeemed, but he still has to be punished for his transgressions. And death is considered to be the ultimate punishment, despite y’know, happening to everyone. And as you say, with Anakin coming back as a force ghost. But it’s just some of these unbreakable rules of conventional cinema morality. Everyone deserves the chance at redemption, but there still has to be a punitive dimension to that redemption.
Imagine if he was redeemed AND lived. They’d have to get him out of the armor. I know some EU media said taking him out of the life support would kill him; but imagine the triumphant finale: Luke brings in the wheezing, towering terror of the galaxy (who personally tortured the sister) and said “Hey guys, this is my dad. He’s going to be staying with me.”
I vaguely remember an old EU comic that had him survive the end of Jedi and he kept the armor but just painted it white.
*Rebels raise their gunsNo no! Stop I’m good now! Then he holds up a bushel of stormtrooper heads like a bag of onions
That has either the makings of a goofy 80’s sitcom “He’s My Dad!” or a gritty prestige drama about a white middle age male trying find redemption. Call it like “Breaking Good” or “Force Man”
Didn’t Frasier live with his crotchety crippled old dad? Give Vader a Jack Russel terrier and it’s game on!
He could go back to Corsucant and try and teach young Jedis again. Call it “Welcome back Vader.”
“You sweat hogs are going to learn to use the Force!”
“Dear Mr. Vader,Please excuse Qui’s absence. He was trying to do the kessel run in 12 parsecs. Signed, Qui’s mom.”
“Off my case, blue milk face!”
I think Horshack would have gotten in one “Ooh, ooh, ooh!” before Vader lost it and Force choked the shit out of him.
It’s ludicrous. Everyone in the Alliance would be chomping at the bit to execute him, and Luke would be in disgrace. I sort of wonder if that’s why Luke was keeping his real mission on the down low.
Luke doesn’t seem the type to lie, but I think the galaxy probably sees him as the guy who killed both the emperor and Vader. No wonder his legend wore on him
That’s just kind of a universal problem with redemption narratives – you have a person who’s done *lots* of bad things, how does *one* good thing balance it out? Without making the one good thing ridiculously important (which has it’s own problems), it’s a lot easier to have them sacrifice themselves so the question is never really asked.
Which is why the Anakin Force ghost is a sticking point, because it tacks on this additional element that redemption narratives don’t usually have with its implication that all is good with Anakin now.
“He’s a reformed Vader. Lookie what he can do.” Vader puts star on the Life Day tree. “And he doesn’t even need a stepladder.”Sorry, all I could see was Yukon Cornelius and Bumble when I read your post.
How do you feel about Tiger King?
That’s why the prequels are still a huge letdown, they never truly gave us a tragic hero story, Anakin jumps from annoying brat to slightly heroic soldier to distrustful egomaniac to remorseful after a couple of slightly justified kills to murdering kids. If he had to kill a 30 rack of younglings it needed to be the low point for him, after a gradual slip and even the trauma of his lava bath pushing him to that level. And then Obi Wan truly believes the brother he knew is dead.
By brother we mean boyfriend, of course.
And by sword fight, we mean . . . well . . . sword fight.
Thank goodness for “Clone Wars”.
I can’t say that I agree with this take (though it’s a very fair opinion on your part). While some of the characterizations of Anakin were awful, his general story arc in the prequels is to me one of the great elements of them, especially in the way he is presented as not only the classical fallen hero but one who falls by trying to outrun fate and in the process causes the prophecy of the oracle to come to pass.
I think the big miss in the way the films made the character is that he was never heroic enough for his fall to resonate with the audience as it should have. To me, the first prequel does a good job of establishing him as especially capable and good, and then things go terribly wrong in the second prequel. There, rather than be presented as a restless whiny kid who wants to revel in his natural talents and then gets a creepy stalker vibe going for his love interest, it should have shown him to still be good and innocent, and someone whose off-screen growth and achievements has already become somewhat famous and respected. His desire for Padme could have then emerged more organically, with him winning her over with his good deeds (or, better yet, with her becoming interested in him first and by the power and appeal of her personality then winning his heart)…and then the tragedy of him losing his mother could have been framed not as drawing out his already-existing inner darkness, but rather as a loss that shatters his to-this-point unblemished confidence in his ability to help people, leaving him pained and unsure of how to live up to being a “chosen one”. Then episode III would have fit even better, with the film opening with him as a universally-acclaimed hero of the Republic who has a hidden fear of failure, especially for the ones he loves…and then the oracle foretells the impending loss of his beloved, and now he is a true hero desperately searching for a way to cheat fate. When he comes to believe that his only path is to follow Palpatine, he then “falls” by consciously surrendering himself to what he knows is wrong in his desperation…not realizing that in doing so the raw power of surrendering the principle of morality in this one case has led to him losing all perspective and thus completely open to the manipulation of Palpatine. He doesn’t follow Palpatine because he is a drone of the dark side – as hinted at in his rants during his fight with Obi Wan (not fully effectively but enough to send the message), Anakin is now tied to Palpatine because he has fooled himself into seeing the Jedi as evil and now believes that the galaxy needs the order that comes from a dictatorship. His failures have led him into diving head-on into “the ends justify the means”, and he quickly and completely loses the ability to question his terrible actions because he subconsciously feels committed to the path he has chosen for the sake of saving Padme…and this blind spot is so complete that he doesn’t even realize it when his actions instead directly cause Padme’s demise.
Yeah, the overall arc idea works, especially the self fulfilling prophecy of Padme’s death. As much as it conflicts with Leia’s memories it kind of had to happen. It’s just the pacing of it that didn’t sell the story
Based just on what we knew from the OT, it’s not as much of a stretch. He “only” kills 3 people onscreen, right? And one of them more or less volunteers for it? And he doesn’t have any direct involvement in Alderaan’s destruction. He clearly isn’t a huge fan of the Death Star.
He also seems to somewhat believe in putting order to the galaxy via the Empire, though that also could just be an appeal to Luke’s emotions
I think a lot of dictator types have used the justification that “Why can’t these inferior fools see that I’M the only one who can put things right?”
Don’t forget how reverent Kenobi was when he presented Luke with the lightsaber that killed dozens of kindergartners.
The end of Jedi was arranged by the Emperor as an elaborate device to achieve the corruption of Luke to either replace or “reinforce” his father. He doesn’t throw Luke in a cell or have him executed, because either would push Vader to the point where he might turn on the Emperor.
Instead, the Emperor summons Luke to witness the destruction of the rebels in his trap, knowing that if Luke attempts to kill him, Vader will defend him, and the winner of that fight will have killed their father/son and be beyond redemption.When Luke wins, but unexpectedly spares his father, he manages to thwart the scheme, and the Emperor takes out his frustration on Luke, in the process inspiring Vader to turn on him. I agree that it’s a satisfyingly elegant resolution, and certainly stands out in contrast with the prequel’s express lane version of Palpatine “tricking” Anaken into killing Mace Windu, and that somehow obliging him into becoming Palpatine’s slave instead of just pissing him off.I expect Kasdan came up with the idea for Jedi, and Lucas never really quite “got” it.
Yup. That’s Palpatine’s MO. Get an apprentice, find someone to test them, keep the winner. One of the many problems with RotS is that by then we’ve seen him use up apprentices so many times (Maul, Dooku, Vader) we know he’s doing the same thing with Kylo Ren and would have done the same thing with Rey eventually if his plan had gone smoothly. The only surprising thing is that he is too dumb to think it might fail again like it did with Luke and Vader.
I just sort of don’t get the progression that the ending of RoTJ tried to sell me that Luke killing his father inexorably leads to him being the new Darth. I think the more logical end to that would’ve been that Luke kills Vader, then dies when he tries to kill the Emperor. For what possible reason would Luke suddenly be okay with joining up with this old evil guy he just met who is killing all his friends in the Rebellion?
Yeah, that made no sense also because Obi Wan also thinks he has to kill Vader to save the galaxy. I think the point was that Luke realized for himself what it meant to be a Jedi, and that everyone else was wrong in choosing violence. But shouldn’t the wise Jedi realize that?
Your take seems very close to my non-comprehension of the prequel version — Why the hell does accidentally killing a random Jedi functionary somehow enslave Anakin to Palpatine, as opposed to pissing him off and inspiring him to kill Palpatine? I think it works in Jedi, though, because of what is, for most viewers, a sense of the importance of family bonds — the sense, dating back to Oedipus, of parricide being a fundamental and unforgivable sin that would leave its perpetrator somehow hollow and manipulable, particularly coupled with the seductive aspects of power, and a dash of Force-psychic mumbo-jumbo.
Sorry for the late reply, just saw this. If the random Jedi functionary you mean is Mace, I don’t think you could describe that as accidental, and also it’s not so much that which enslaved him to Palpatine as the devil’s bargain he believes he has to make to save Padme’s life. (Not to mention that Palpatine has been working him for years, as opposed to Luke spending just a few hours with the creepy Emperor trying to seduce him.)I agree, though, that the turn in the prequels also doesn’t feel exactly logically comprehensible either for its own reasons. I can buy Anakin killing Mace to save Palpatine (Anakin makes lots of wrong decisions in the heat of the moment) but why does that invalidate Anakin’s just moments before plea to Mace to bring him in alive in order to question him and still save Padme? But with Anakin’s obsession with saving Padme, I wouldn’t believe any scenario where Anakin gets pissed enough to try to murder Palpatine.
Luke decides to spare a beaten Vader, Vader makes a surprise leap at him, slips on a banana peel, flies into the Palpatine, and the two go over a rail. He dies, Luke doesn’t have to kill him. That’s the sort of cop out they usually take.
It’s a controversial take but it’s defensible. Vader is shown to be awful in the previous movies. Revealing Leia’s parentage actually makes what he did in ANH even worse in retrospect. Leia never gets any measure of closure or gets to reckon with learning the man who tortured & captured her, blew up her home, killed the only family she knew, & tried to wipe out the rebellion was actually her dad. And oh yeah, her just-revealed brother tried to kill him – twice. Don’t worry though, Luke swears Vader was actually a pretty good guy right at the last 10 minutes of his life, and because Leia’s force sensitive, she might even be able to see dad’s ghost on occasion!These movies feel a whole lot different once you start considering Leia’s perspective.
I particularly enjoy considering Leia’s perspective for the “you’re a little short for a storm trooper, aren’t you?” line. Like, we as the audience know that it’s actually Luke in disguise, but SHE wouldn’t have any way of knowing that. She was just tortured, and forced to watch her home planet destroyed killing everyone she loves, and now here comes some faceless solider to retrieve her from her cell, possibly for more torture or just to kill her—and the first thing out of her mouth is a dig about his height. Was she just so beaten down by all the horror that she was hoping, if she pissed the guard off enough, he would give her a quick death and spare her more torture? Or is she just one of those people who’s constantly scanning everyone around her for potential vulnerabilities and probing them for weaknesses (one can’t help but remember her comment about Tarkin’s “foul stench”, or how he was “holding Vader’s leash”, which is just gloriously snide from someone who’s currently a prisoner)? Regardless of the motivation, it’s just a fantastically badass moment of fuck-it-all waspishness from someone who by all rights should have been a shivering wreck. Leia fucking made these movies—PARTICULARLY A New Hope—and they wouldn’t have been nearly as good without her.
It never occurred to me that anyone could see it as anything but BAD storytelling. And mentioning the prequels, where they ran with that decision and made it the main arc of the series to what most people at least see as pretty poor results is a bizarre defense.
It’s pretty clear to me as someone old enough to have seen all three of the original trilogy in the theater that there was no real deep thought behind the whole “I am your father” Darth Vader face turn. He was intended to be a villain and he was a great villain and people loved him as a villain. He may have been the greatest villain in genre movie history up until that point. It would have been far more satisfying if he’d simply remained a villain and was defeated at the end of Jedi. It’s pretty obvious to me that “I am your father” and more ridiculously Leia is your sister were essentially retcons added after the fact because they decided they wanted to have a redemption arc for a guy who killed millions of people.
What’s worse was that Lucas decided to go down the rabbit hole and follow the whole story of how Darth Vader used to be good as opposed to taking some time off and simply doing sequels to the original story when the actors were more or less the right age
I’m pretty sure Lucas said that from the earliest drafts of the “Adventures of Starkiller” or whatever that it was going to be about a hero who falls and is redeemed by his son. I agree about the Leia is his sister being a (weird, icky) retcon, but “I am your father” was in from square one.
I don’t really buy everything that Lucas has said about these movies. He’s said so much ridiculous and self-contradictory stuff. But even then my main issue isn’t so much authorial intent as to whether the Anakin Skywaler starts good turns evil then turns good again in the last second arc was an interesting one or whether it made sense go give it such a prominent place in both the first two trilogies
Yeah, I feel you on this. But how could he have known we’d all be analyzing the shit out of this universe he invented way back then? Who could have predicted this?
That’s my problem with a lot of this stuff. It’s obvious to me that Lucas didn’t have everything figured out and didn’t have some huge universe mapped out from the very beginning. But he perpetuated the myth that it id basically for marketing purposes
Also etymologically, the whole Vader / Vater / Pater / Father.
Totally not true. Michael Kaminiski does a great job documenting how the “Vader is Luke’s dad” thing was only a late addition to the Empire screenwriting process in his book the Secret History of Star Wars. It’s a great book. He shows that there was no arc planned for the films at all originally and Lucas only had very vague ideas for what stories to tell in this world after the first movie.
Lucas has a tendency to self-mythologize. Anakin and Vader were written as two separate people, even in early drafts of ESB— it’s 100% a retcon.
It’s so fundamental to the movies, obviously more so after the prequels
The Prequels arguably make what Generic Poster’s talking about worse. He blows up a planet in ANH but, aside from Leia, his victims are faceless. The Prequels gives us this:
And then he chokes his pregnant wife.
And kills dozens of five year olds! With the weapon Obi-Wan reverently gives Luke!
Are you joking? It’s the worst narrative decision I have ever seen. I am still pissed at Lucas for it and I’m 53.
Villains are supposed to go out, spitting fire and invective.
“Made it ma, top of the world!”
“March on, Join bravely, let’s to it pell mell, if not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”
“If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.”That’s how a villain is supposed to go out! They are not supposed to wuss out, develop feelings and turn good.
Vader was my first villain, the one that started my lifelong love. I don’t think I will ever get over being betrayed by Lucas like that.
“The last one could be the most interesting if Vader was broken, weak and in the end a pitiful shell of the terror he was, crawling toward a ship to escape, but finally consumed by the implosion of the empire he helped build.”That was basically what happened to Krennic in Rogue One and it was awesome.
Good point!
It never worked for me emotionally. Even as a kid it was weird to me that Vader and Luke were practically fighting to the death at the end of Empire and then the next movie they’re sort of just hanging out. To me the fate of Daenerys in Game of Thrones sort of echoes it, it was more about where the writers wanted the character to end up before they ran out of time than how the character got there. Which for me seems like foreshadowing that the prequels wouldn’t pace the character development well either
I’m sure if I watched the series for the first time as an adult it might not make sense, but it’s been so baked into my experience with the films, it takes deliberate effort for me to imagine it any other way.
It’s the earliest Star Wars film that I actually remember watching because it came out when I was 6. The most interesting thing I remember about watching it was that towards the end I just kept expecting the Emperor to tell Luke he was his grandfather, because I thought that’s just what movies did. Sort of foreshadows how people reacted to character identity in the sequels, except by then I was a jaded adult and was totally fine with characters being just nobodies
Better yet, the Emperor discards Vader as a way of enticing Luke onside. Shortcircuits his breathing apparatus with force lightning. Tries to con Luke that they can work together, but Luke sees through his hustle. After all, he’s from the moisture farms. He’s grown up dealing with Jawas
It never occurred to you because, honestly, our current cynical filled media doesn’t appreciate what a great job older films did in keeping the tone throughout their franchises, which makes the story telling easier.
Godfather and Godfather 2 do have a bit of a shift change, and the interpersonal drama weren’t as deep in the sequel, but the tone was still there. The family was changing, but you can still feel the tensions and consequences of the previous film was still haunting the family (the whole point of Don Vito’s upbringing was to show where it originated from).
Vader already wanted to be reunited with his son since the second film, he said it himself. We don’t need 3 more stories explaining why the former good guy wants to be good again.
Everyone is capable of redemption and deserves forgiveness.Absolution though? That requires penance, and Anakin giving his life was his.Penance through death is a time-honored tradition. That said, I very much wish that Ben Solo hadn’t died so that he could’ve earned his penance the long way.
I saw RotJ at least 3x in the theatre. Actually 4 if you count the reissue in the 90s. And like Tom, old cynical me finds it a bit of a letdown esp after empire but young innocent me loved it, I even bought the soundtrack album and recreated the fight scenes in my living room with my sister. The one thing that always bugs me about it, even when I was a wee lad, the aspect ratio looks just a bit off. Like the image is compressed or something. everybody just looks a little “rounder” almost like they used the wrong lens and tried to compensate in post
Maybe everyone had just gained a little weight by ‘83, bellied up a little too much to the craft service table you know.
Being carbon frozen adds 20 pounds. . . who knew?
Was Carrie Fisher the only one on the cocaine diet?
Doubters!
From what I’ve heard, Harrison Ford had a different vice.
JEDI was shot using a different lens package than the first two– JDC-Scope instead of Panavision. I’m assuming that was a cost-cutting move.
Man, what movie could less need a cost cutting move than a Star Wars movie?
People forget that the OT films were all fairly economical productions. And in the case of Empire and Jedi, independently-funded ones.
This explains so much, I’m sure I’m probably one of a handful of people who notice but it takes me a good while to get used to whenever I marathon the SW movies.
I think Empire is overrated and RotJ underrated. Empire best captures the spirit of the old serials, mainly by presenting a series of disconnected episodes (Hoth, Dagobah, Asteroids, Cloud City) and yoking them together through the Force, narratively. There’s probably some Jungian-based symbology functioning there in an incoherent way, but in formal and structural terms, nothing really unites the stories. Both Luke and Han are being hunted, but the movie struggles to draw any kind of parallel there, and bafflingly, nobody cares about collecting a bounty on Chewie and Leia gets sidelined despite being the most important Rebel among the main cast. More work gets done in Jedi setting up for Vader’s turn (two whole scenes worth, including the “you made your own lightsaber” scene) than in setting up for Empire’s big revelation.In Jedi, the return of the Death Star gets motivated in that it is irresistible bait for the trap, and that works even better once it becomes clear that the Emperor cared more about trapping Luke than the Rebel fleet, leading him to disregard what’s happening on Endor. As problematic as the Ewoks are, they’re nicely emblematic of the Emperor’s complete disregard for the “little people” and they help make Jedi associate the Empire with colonialist imperialism and situate the Rebels as allies of the indigene.Even the “episodes” in Jedi aren’t: contrast the careful, multilayered planning of the Jabba operation with the slipshod Death Star attack. Compare Luke walking into a trap to free Han with Luke walking into a trap to free his father. Compare the emphasis on life and nature seen both with Yoda on Dagobah and with the Ewoks to the sterile, pit-filled environment of the Throne Room and the moment that saves Luke, the realization that he’s starting down his father’s path, and all the “bitty” side scenes become elements in a larger argument that’s being made about how to live and what’s important. That the movie can’t deliver such messages as powerfully as it might were it not in the blockbuster-mode doesn’t make it any less admirable for trying. Empire doesn’t, so far as I can see.
I liked that why the super powerful bad guy’s plan did not work made sense for the character, as of course the emperor would not have seen them as a threat. Why he did not have the construction crews add some retractable girders to those passages leading into the center of the death star is another matter.
The Vader reveal was set up throughout the whole movie by the fact that he was so obsessed with finding Luke. In retrospect it’s even supported by Vader noticing Luke’s force sensitivity at the end of Star Wars. Up until the reveal we think he’s obsessed with finding Luke because he wants to finish his job by hunting down all of the Jedi, but that doesn’t really explain why he’s being such an asshole about everything, or why he’s using Han, Leia and Chewie as bait. on the surface it makes sense, but the movie does a good job of strongly implying that the assumed explanation doesn’t add up, without providing us too many winking nods that there’s a mystery about to be unraveled.
Yeah but on the other hand:
Nah, just kidding. Couldn’t resist.
As a kid I felt kind of disappointed by ESB but Return of the Jedi … holy shit did I love that movie.
The Ewoks are a nice little illustration of a throughline of the trilogy: you don’t have to be big and powerful to make a difference. It’s “Judge me by my size, do you?” in action. The Ewoks are small and apparently inconsequential, but they can get behind the Empire’s defences and bring down those big, lumbering weapons.
Jabba the Hutt remains Star Wars’s most atypically black-hearted idea, a gangster whose only entertainment is throwing people who displease him into a pit with a big monster, to watch them be violently consumed in front of a laughing, cheering crowd, many of whom might have been that person’s friends or co-workers.
And if that doesn’t work, he throws them into a bigger pit with a bigger monster.
Can’t get much more jaded than that.
They just went there with Jabba, right? He’s even more disgusting and dangerous and nasty than his previous mentions in the earlier films suggest. He’s the epitome of the villainous rot that the Empire has allowed to fester throughout the galaxy, and he’s so perfectly realized in Jedi.
It’s funny, because some of the hints we got about Jabba prior to Jedi, particularly the deleted scene from ANH that made it into the novelization, painted him as more of a fatherly, Don Corleone type. You have to wonder what caused the shift.
Hmmm. I hadn’t really thought about how committed Jabba was to the “throwing people in various pits” thing before.
I’m sure when he took over the palace from the B’omarr Monks the first thing he asked was “Does it have a pit?”
Don’t forget rapist. Pretty clearly implied he had his way with Leia.
See, I don’t know if it was ever meant to be read THAT far, unless there’s some supplemental material that draws a more distinct line there.
That said, even the most benign read of that still isn’t great. Especially on the heels of what happened to the ill-fated dancing girl Oola before her (quite literally killed simply because she said ‘No’ to the boss.)
Not sure how else to read it. Leia goes from being the leader of a Rebellion, standing up to Darth Vader and resisting Imperial truth serums, to being chained up in a bikini with a space slug. For her to be that broken means something really bad had to be done to her. Another angle is from a podcast I heard a while back, where rape survivors were describing their experiences through the lens of Leia’s experience, and the speakers pointed out the scene where Leia strangles Jabba to death, and how much that scene looked like their own visualizations of strangling their attackers. Also add in the fact that Leia did not need to strangle Jabba – Luke was killing everything in sight and she could have hopped of the ship any time. But she felt the need to get that revenge when the opportunity presented itself.
On the one hand, I do genuinely like this read on things just in terms of how people have built on it and have found some catharsis from it.
On the other, given the general level of writing from Lucas, I can’t help but feel like this is giving a bit too much credit and speaks more for the death of the author read on this one.
Especially when one remembers his later jaw-droppingly misguided handling of slavery in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.
Yeah, I also struggled a bit with how much credit I want to give Lucas for something like that. On the one hand he clearly had a deeper political bent with the initial story of modeling the Emperor after Nixon, and making Endor like Vietnam. On the other hand, Lucas has a habit of weakening his female characters over time. Similarly in the prequels, we start out with Padme as this ahead-of-her-years queen leading a fight against villainous intruders. Then by the third film, she’s combing her hair on a balcony looking all googly eyed at Annakin.
As a child of the 80’s, whose love of Yoda in no small part encouraged me to go get an actual philosophy undergraduate degree, I can say two things about George Lucas with a fair degree of certainty. First, for someone who wrote and created such a timeless story about good and evil, he’s got a really impoverished sense of morality.I don’t mean in the sense that George Lucas is a bad guy. Rather, what I mean is that he literally doesn’t have a well-developed sense of right and wrong, which makes it really hard for him to figure out how to rank-order crimes and immoral actions. It’s part and parcel of my take that Lucas has some form of undiagnosed, high-functioning autism: the fact that in both cases, someone is dying painfully means that he can’t distinguish between, say, punishing someone by cutting them apart with a lightsaber (which would be pretty ugly, but fast), and by tying them down and lighting their child on fire, which is “omigod, why would that even occur to you” levels of worse. The fact that in both cases, it’s still one person who ends up painfully dead means he can’t tell the difference between those two. The fact that he not only pulls the “hero slaughters defenseless children” card, but does it twice, and expects us in one case not to see it as a Moral Event Horizon, says this guy really doesn’t get the whole morality thing.Two, George Lucas was incredibly messed up by his divorce to Marcia, and he never got over her. There’s a night and day difference in his portrayal of female characters before Marcia, and afterwards. Prior to the divorce, he was perfectly fine with spunky, sharp-witted women; afterwards, there is an extremely sharp, and extremely consistent zag of traditional maternal views in all of the female characters he writes. In Jedi, Leia, the quintessential strong female character (meant unironically), suddenly becomes maximally passive, and maximally maternal, and maximally male-gazey, when none of those fit her prior characterization. And you see something similar, except less jarring, with Padme: she’s spunky within defined limits, but the instant a guy comes into play, she’s defined by her relationship to the guy, to the point that she literally can’t live without him. It’s actually a really consistent through-line in his writing once you notice it.Given the confluence of those two things, I’m inclined to put Leia’s, um, perspective towards Jabba in the realm of “Unfortunate Implications”, except, ya know, really Unfortunate Implications. I strongly suspect that George had no idea what he was implying with Leia and Jabba. But I also agree that, now that you’ve brought it up, I can fully see this read of the text, and I have very little doubt that was heavily, heavily informing Carrie Fisher’s performance. I would add that she was hella smart to read it that way, and by contrast George Lucas displayed (very typical for him) a Mr. Magoo-like blindness to either the implications of what he’d written, or how Fisher snuck in a much smarter performance than he might have wanted under his nose.
IIRC she was the one to suggest that Leia had to kill Jabba, they just didn’t really think of it. Lucas’ morality definitely is a product of being a Boomerish kid who watched a ton of old fashioned serials that painted good and evil pretty simply. He had brushes with nuance and depth as a young man but it still was on a very surface level
Thanks for this take; I felt like I was on crazy pills reading some of these comments. The treatment of Leia within the movie is troubling both on the movie’s terms and in the reverberations it’s had in the culture, but to say Jabba definitely had his way with Leia requires some dot-connecting that says a lot more about these commenters than it does about George Lucas.
Well, the sad thing is, there isn’t that much dot-connecting going on, and I actually kind of feel bad for not recognizing it sooner. Obviously, I’m looking at it with my six-year old eyes, and I suspect Lucas is, too. Lucas is very clearly playing with an unreconstructed version of the trope where the evil leader, after leering evilly at the nubile young maiden, declares that she must be washed up and brought to his chambers.But the thing is, usually the timetable of the hero works on a schedule where the nubile young maiden only gets in the really revealing get-up for the climax. Jedi . . . works on a much longer timetable. And so while, yes, in the 30’s, we have the Hays’ Code and common sense to say no, the maiden in question was only put into a demeaning get-up, albeit one meant to titillate the audience, we have no such luxuries here. We only have the fact that, yeah, George Lucas really is that clueless. He really has portrayed slavery as an after-work hobby, as a plot point in his film, so yes, he really would be foolish or dim enough not to recognize what exactly the evil leader would do once he got to his chambers. And I submit that any plot point which requires that you operate on the logic or knowledge of a six-year old, or be jaw-droppingly stupid, is maybe not a plot point you want to include in your film. And consequently, maybe not leave open that possibility with Princess Leia.
The problem here is your evil leader and nubile young maiden are usually the same species. Why would a creature like Jabba be sexually attracted to a human like Leia? Even if he could appreciate that she was a sexy specimen of the human species, that doesn’t mean he is horny for her. If someone kidnaps a dog, and the dog happens to be a pretty dog, do you assume the kidnapper fucks the dog?So maybe Jabba is just using rape to humiliate Leia and demonstrate his power, right? Well given that he is a massive slug creature with no apparent dick, and she is a very slight human, how would he do that? Maybe chain her up, pull her close to his face, and lick her with his tongue? I think what you see is what you get on this one.
Exactly what you’ve said, Lucas is working within a trope-laden context. But I don’t think it reflects on Lucas’ cluelessness, it’s a fully-aware bracketing within the fantasy domain. Is it all a bit of a shallow veneer? Yes, same as the ‘hive of scum and villainy’ depicted by a single bar fight, but it is consistent through and through. Good-Evil, light-dark, etc…
In Jedi, Leia, the quintessential strong female character (meant unironically), suddenly becomes maximally passiveIf Leia is maximally passive, then I have extended the maximum because there is no way I would hop on one of those flying “speeder bike” death machines and go zipping through the dense forest. I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to save Han Solo’s ass like she did, either.
Even Leia gets kind of screwed by being in a love story instead of still leading the attack. I don’t think Lucas really had any ill intent, he just didn’t realize what he was doing, being from a different era. Also as Ron points out below he had fewer female influences post-divorce and that experience certainly changed how he might have felt about women.
I really don’t think the idea of turning Leia into a rape victim is something that deserves any kind of credit.
Yeah, all the fan theories are fun but we need to remember Lucas is a businessman and really not that deep of a writer by his own admission. Most of the mythology was retroactive.
“MOYCH-endizing! ‘Dis is where ‘da REAL money from the movie is made!”
– The Wisdom of Yogurt.
One of the original EU books (Tales From Jabba’s Palace?) filled in the blanks by showing Leia thrown in a cell and presented with the dancer outfit, which she of course refused to wear. Then they executed a palace slave and said they would continue killing slaves until Leia put on the outfit. Leia went along before any more slaves could be killed, but added the slave to why she was going to personally kill Jabba.
I mean, she was captured as part of their plan to rescue Han; obviously by the fact that R2 has Luke’s lightsaber stashed and Lando being disguised in the palace, there’s some level of “just go with it; we’ll get out of this somehow” to their plan, and it isn’t really explicit as to whether anything or everything that happens in the palace is “according to plan.” I don’t think they needed to “break” or rape Leia in order to put her in a demeaning costume, and it kinda says a lot about the regressive nature of the whole “slave Leia” costume that the immediate thought is “that slug fucked her.”
or she was demonstrating that she is unbroken and still a heroic warrior. This isn’t the first time she has participated in her own rescue. I agree with the author of the article though, putting her in a bikini seemed a weird choice, given how chaste and asexual the Star Wars universe is otherwise.
Given the nature of the series, Jabba licking her face could be seen as a stand-in for a much more horrific violation.
Can’t have smelled too good. Dude ate live frogs.
Guy was a stoner. His galaxy didn’t have Doritos. What the hell else was he gonna eat?
What’s that stuff? Used to eat it all the time back in the day . . .
Well, Jabba was definitely painted bad enough to make it not *so deeply disturbing that Luke – free of immediate threat and literally about to swing to freedom – executes every single one of his friends.Just quite disturbing
Whatever he may have actually done, biology permitting, it’s pretty clear she did NOT consent.
I still think Star Wars’ universe lived by PG 80’s movie rules, so he just enjoyed the thrill of seeing her humiliated more than actually sticking anything anywhere
I don’t see any implication other than Jabba had captured a prize and was displaying that prize in the most demeaning way he/it could think of.
This is why it always really bothers me when I see people fetishizing the “slave Leia” look. Even if she was “lucky” and escaped with only the sexual assault we see in Return, it is still deeply gross to fetishize a woman who was clearly being held as a sex slave against her will while wearing this horrible outfit designed to objectify her body.
Is it better or worse to find it kind of hot when she strangles Jabba?
I’ve been led to believe he’s also a local racing enthusiast.
I love when muppets go dark, so the whole first sequence of Jedi hooked me on Star Wars. It also happened to be the first one I watched, for some reason. By then I pretty much knew what happened in the other two anyway.
Why do they call him “Hutt” when he is so obviously in to pits?Is it like calling a fat guy “Tiny?”
Um, “only entertainment”??Like Kevin Smith, I was a budding adolescent at the time. The sight of Princess Carrie (rest in peace) in those splashes of gold and black made me feel very, very entertained…
Jabba was such an impressive achievement. Had there been anything like that level of animatronics in film before? Even as a kid I was so impressed when I got to watch From Star Wars to Jedi and see all the work that was done to bring Jabba to life. I think there were something like four guys stuck in there, one to work the eyes, one to work the mouth, one for the tail, etc. Meanwhile Salacious Crumb sat around tossing off one-liners to the crew in between takes.
It never occurred to me how like Jabba Donald Trump is until I just read your comment.
Two things: (i) I was 9 years old when ROTJ hit theaters, so I’m with you Tom – FUCK YES this movie was EVERYTHING to 9 year old me. And I still love it for the nostalgia and the fantastic set pieces. I think the back-to-back Jabba scene into the Saarlac pit scene is a masterpiece of action/fantasy film making and I still love it today.(ii) Can we talk Risky Business? The alternate ending BARELY differs from the theatrical ending. I don’t understand the big deal. Maybe I’m too dumb to understand the heightened irony of the original ending. I don’t know.
I just watched it to get an idea.It reads as deeply fucking sad to me. Lana does not have a bright future. They both know it.“Isn’t life grand?” I guess can be considered ironic, when you think about the fact that life is not grand for Lana. And man, did Rebecca De Mornay do a good job of conveying fear and sadness barely covered up with bravado.
So much more can be said about so mamy aspects of this movie (and by extension, Star Wars and blockbusters on general,) but I’ll try to keep it to two points: – Pour one out for Garry Kurtz, the first two films’ producer, who kept Lucas in check and is generally credited by the cast for dealing with the actors whenever Lucas didn’t want to (read: all the time.) He died a few years ago, and is not nearly as well known as Lucas. He’s the Roy Disney to George’s Walt, and deserves to be remembered. – I was in third grade when Jedi came out and have two vivid memories of the overall experience: one was that the line snaked around the block, and there was a fire exit in the back of the theater that faced the screen, so all the kids in that general area of the line would gather around and try to watch slivers of the movie through the tiny crack between the door and the frame. Also, a classmate somehow (at eight years old) could mimic the Emperor’s voice perfectly, and spent the summer creeping us out by saying, “oh… I’m afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive.”
Maybe that classmate was a 60 year old with reverse progeria.
I don’t know why but the image of someone buying Terms of Endearment toys makes me laugh. Does the Jack Nicholson figure come with swearing and car crashing action?
If you send in the UPCs, you get the two-pack with his hand stuck in Shirley MacLaine’s top.
With the daughter dies of cancer playset no extra charge! Buy now beat the rush!
Indeed. 🙂
That thing really strains the definition of “action playset.”
“Here you go, kids, a slug who never leaves his dais. Have fun!”
I for one loved it….
Don’t get me wrong, had I been a couple years younger, it would’ve been either a birthday or Christmas present.
You played with that thing? You’re braver than I thought!
i dunno, Jabba has five movable parts, plus his hookah, and the litter tray underneath him looks like it opens up. Action playsets never had much action. I failed to understand the allure of a great many kids toys even when I was a kid.
Got that for Christmas in 1983, from what I remember I broke the chain and Jabba’s pipe within the first couple weeks.
Did they make a slave Leia action figure?
I – don’t think so… I had a New Hope Leia and an Empire Strikes back Leia. The only slave Leia figures I know are younger …
barely legal?
“(I didn’t even mind that Boba Fett, an iconically cool bad guy who became one of the faces of the series, dies quickly and without ceremony, almost by accident.)“Boba Fett dies like a bitch and while the death may be inadvertent, the structuring of it as such clear — he is a chump. Wickett the Ewok is more of a badass. I never watched the Holiday Special, where Fett gets some significant airtime, and saw Jedi a lot more than Empire as a kid, so Fett’s icon status completely eluded me then and still does now. Listen to that candy-ass scream! The guy sucks, people.
His debut in the Holiday Special doesn’t really do much for his mystique.
It’s basically
Boba: “Hey, I’m a friend.”
Luke: “Really?”
Boba: “Nah – only fucking with ya, bounty hunter after your friend!”
and he beefs it from there.
I also don’t get the Boba Fett worship. Dude was working for an authoritarian genocidal regime.
That poor independent contractor! /Randal
My generation took the cool armor + ain’t afraid of Vader thing and blew it way out of proportion. And he was first available as a mail-in toy offer, so he had to be special.
Also, Fett was a (mostly) silent killing machine, a popular archetype for reasons I’ll probably never understand. G.I. Joe’s Snake Eyes is so popular he’s getting his own movie. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers have big followings too.
And he was arguably the beginning of a certain section of the fandom’s desire to know every little thing about every little thing (be careful what you wish for, right?), which I’ll probably never understand. Seriously, who needs to know how the damn slug ended up inside that asteroid?
When I asked friends on social media about this once, one also pointed to the line about “no disentegrations,” and I was like, “How the fuck does him being an unrepentant MURDERER make him cool?”
Because being an unrepentant murderer is ALWAYS the thing that makes cowboy villains cool? That question seems dumb. Why is Lee Van Cleef cool in The Good, The Bad, And the Ugly? Because he looks cool, acts cool, and kills people.
The money was pretty good. Get apparently charged like 5 times the usual rate for what others like him did.
Again he was just a UPS driver with a cool suit.
I am 100% with you on this. I grew up on the movies (born a year after the first one came out). In the pre-internet era, I had no idea about others’ Star Wars preferences. I just knew a whole lot of people, including me, loved it. It was only once I got to college in the mid-90s that I found out that there was this large faction of people (mostly boys) who were oddly obsessed with Boba Fett. Boba Fett had barely registered for me. He was just the bounty hunter who manages to track down Han and who dies in Return. I never understood what the fuss was about. Still really don’t.
Meanwhile, I was always much more of a Wedge Antilles girl. It didn’t take long for me to notice the ONE fighter pilot who manages to survive all 3 movies AND fire one of the shots that takes out the second Death Star. I will love him and sing his praises until I die.
Boba Fett’s “coolness” preceded him. As I remember it, a lot of the mystique came from the toy, which came out as a special mail-order thing before Empire was even coming out. So he was a bit of a teaser for the next movie, while also being the coolest looking of the toys yet. (Plus, initially, the torpedo on his back was spring-loaded and fireable until safety issues changed it.) Then he shows up and only does some understated bad-ass stuff in Empire, kind of bolstering the cool image for the original Star Wars kids. So it’s a full 5-6 years of anticipation for a character we’re expecting to be like in The Mandalorian, only for him to flame out like he does in what’s essentially a prologue for the 3rd movie. I remember almost universal disappointment in how he dies.
Tom, I saw Star Wars with my dad in 1977. Your toy anecdotes are spot on. Star Wars toys (Kenner) were huge. The toy craze of the late 70’s and the 80’s is hard for younger people to fathom. I still had all my Kenner action figures and gave them to my kids…..Great column as always!
It seems like the bulk of the character development for Vader’s babyface turn was actually in the final minutes of Empire. Vader, towering over a defeated Luke, instead of finishing him off extends his hand. Mind blowing. Then the plaintive, almost pathetic pleas for his son to join him. After the whole film of seeing Vader being so relentless and murdering Star Destroyer captains left and right, it’s shocking how reduced he is in that film’s final moments.This is what Return is building on. I’m not saying it’s much, but it’s what actually makes what occurs in RoTJ make some sort of sense- Vader is basically cordoned off from the rest of the cast to prevent him from having to be evil again and only has significant interactions with Luke and the Emperor.
That and the fact that when Luke escapes in the Falcon in “Empire” not only does Vader wistfully gaze out in contemplation of nearly reuniting his son, he’s so conflicted about it, he essentially forgives Admiral Piett and let’s him live.If that’s not an inkling of a oncoming face turn, nothing is.
There’s a show on Netflix called “The Toys That Made Us.”One of the eps is all about the Star Wars figurines and how Kenner (then a tiny company in Cincinnati) got the contract. Pretty interesting – good COVID time-killer
I would’ve gone with WarGames as the contender. A fantastically fun film that holds up, with great charming performances by Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, snappy and iconic dialogue, and a great plot with a tense thrilling climax.
The moment after the Rancor’s death, when the monster’s keeper cries over its carcass, is one of the tiny character moments that make a movie like this special. That bit didn’t need to be in there, and yet it somehow makes the whole affair seem more tangible and real. That monster had a story and its master had some kind of story, and Jedi only just hints that it exists.This is what hooked me on Star Wars as a kid (born ‘88). One of the best things Lucas did was to have the characters speak as if we existed in their world and not the other way around. Having all those in-world details really makes it feel like a real, living universe.
Moments like that are also why the Wookiepedia has like half a million entries.
Another great bit like that was when we first see the Falcon, and it looks incredible and futuristic and awesome—to us. And then Luke says in disgust “What a piece of junk.”
The thing that bothered me from the very first time I saw Jedi, that sort of soured it a bit for me was the droid torture chamber in Jabba’s palace. They are droids, they really need to be tortured? Just reprogram them, or deactivate them. C3P0 never felt pain, why would other droids? It just felt stupid to 9 year old me. It still feels stupid.
Return of the Jedi was my favorite of the Star Wars movies when I was a kid, but I can’t exactly remember why. It might have been as simple as thinking Luke’s green lightsaber was cooler than his blue one? I was born later in the 80s, after the initial craze, so my first experience with Star Wars was the THX remastered versions on VHS from the early 90s. Maybe, because of that, I didn’t realize that Star Wars fans weren’t supposed to like Jedi as much until I was older.
Same here, as an adult I get why Empire is the better of the two, but I never really got why some people felt it was a letdown. I wonder what exactly the fan theories were between 80 and 83
The letdown, if you were a kid when they came out, was that it ends as a cliff-hanger, Han Solo frozen in Boba Fett’s custody. Luke doesn’t win against Darth Vader, but instead leaves him (and us) hanging with an enormous plot twist. And you also realize now that it takes them 3 years or so to make another one.
Being born in 1983, I might be talking a bit out of my ass, but I gotta think fan theories were not the same thing then that they are now. The constant interconnectedness of fans nowadays allows fan theories to congeal into solid ideas, but back then it was all just random thoughts you talked about while you traded baseball cards with your buddies.
There was a period in the mid-1980s when JEDI was seen by many as better than EMPIRE. I won’t claim it was a unanimous consensus, obviously, but there was a feeling that EMPIRE’s darkness and lack of conclusive ending were bettered by JEDI’s jawdropping setpieces and satisfying conclusion.That opinion didn’t last, but I remember it being quite widespread. (As was the SUPERMAN II>SUPERMAN:THE MOVIE notion. “No boring Krypton and Kansas! Yay big fight in Metropolis!”
I’m an 80s kid and I honestly don’t remember that ever being a thing. Episode V has always been lauded as the best of the original trilogy, even back then.I do totally remember Superman II being hailed as a superior sequel, and I even thought that back then as a stupid kid, because it was funner!!!But II has definitely not aged as well as the original…
Yeah, I remember disliking Empire as a kid because it was so dark. The other two ended in triumph, and I think that just sits better with a lot of eight year olds than ambiguity.
I’m old enough I remember that. I recall an interview with Mark Hamill where he said he found the end of Empire so unsatisfying because Luke gets his hand cut off and Han gets turned into a coffee table. I think that’s an actual quote.
Yeah, if you had started with the unadulterated original originals, it’d be clearer to you.
I mean, these were still pre-Special Edition versions. I know Lucas tinkered with the movies a bit before the special editions, but they hadn’t been butchered yet. I do think that Jedi was done the dirtiest by the Special Editions. The musical number in Jabba’s palace is at least as bad as the cringiest Jar Jar Binks bit.
Yes, that’s what I meant.
Jedi was pretty polished and it was a massive success. But I think it is a case of kids becoming adults or adults watching the movie later on. Any male over 13 can’t admit they liked Ewoks.
Return is the very first movie I remember seeing in a theatre. I was 6 and we saw it on the back screen of the old 2 screen at Fox Village Theater in Ann Arbor, MI, some weekend matinee. My brother probably doesn’t remember, he would have been 4 at the time.The special edition has some of the best AND some of the worst changes of the three. And subsequent changes are even worse. At least in the VHS editions, the masking during the death star assault was really visable. Tie fighters had discoloured boxes around all of them. They were cleaned up in the 90s.But on the other hand, new songs, replacement songs, and replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen. Shaw was the actor who was unmasked, so his force ghost made a whole lot more sense as you just saw him 5 minutes earlier!
Just watching the three-minute video of the Sarlacc Pit action scene about, I felt a physical revulsion each time something from the Special Edition popped into frame. The early CGI in no way either looks real or meshes with the other effects, and stands out like a sore thumb. It’s like someone slapped an MS Paint addition to the Mona Lisa.
At a Q and A with David Lynch in Belfast I asked what changes he would have made if he had directed ROTJ. He said the ewoks would’ve looked like the baby in Eraserhead, before laughing.
I love the ending of Risky Business. Joel gets away with it. Most other teen-set movies end with a big confession, and hugging and learning. “’Princeton could use a guy like Joel’” is perfect, followed by his dad’s less profane rendering of “what the fuck”. Think about how many things you did that your parents still do not know about.
Doesn’t he say “what the heck?”
His less profane rendering, yes. Fits with the generational split of how much farther the teens in the movie are willing to go, realistic or not.
You really had to have seen it as a child to ever really like Return of the Jedi. It’s not a good movie, even without the endless fan service. It’s better than all three prequels and, arguably, two of the three sequels, but that’s an extremely low bar. I remember walking out of the theater absolutely disappointed by everything.But of course, at that point, I had outgrown the Kenner toys, so maybe that was inevitable.
“When Darth Vader finally turns good at the end, throwing the Emperor into a questionably functional throne-room pit, it’s a jarring and out-of-place moment.”I appreciate much of what you have to say, but think this is an extremely minority opinion. That’s the most powerful scene in these films.
Vader’s revealing a lingering bit of goodness was indeed a well-sprung surprise and a hard-hitting moment.The problematic scene is his ghostly apparition alongside Obi-Wan and Yoda, implying that this single (admittedly important) act earns him complete forgiveness after decades of epic-scale evil. I suppose people who like to search for religious metaphor might not find it as troublesome, depending on the religion, as those considering it as drama. You can hear the echoes of thousands of years of theological argument in the resulting question of how forgiveness and redemption are granted, and what if any penance is required first. But it seemed to me that it was, as they say, an unearned moment.
I do get what Tom is saying: there’s no indication that Vader in any way actually cares about Luke, so the fact that he has like 15 seconds of inner turmoil before deciding to murder the man who has inspired him to assist in committing genocide does ring a little false.
That said, it’s always worked for me, but I also can see how it feels unearned.
In Empire, he asked Luke to turn to the Dark Side and help him overthrow the Emperor. I suppose that doesn’t necessarily indicate *affection*, but it’s definitely interest.
Even with THAT in mind, it still doesn’t explain why he would actually be repentant at the end. He’d want to kill Palpatine so he could take his place, not to save Luke.
No matter how many times I watch Jedi, that Death Star run by Wedge and Lando still blows my mind in terms of special effects…especially when they are running along the unfinished, in-construction surface before flying into the superstructure. This is 1983, and it holds up as good, if not better, than anything coming out in 2020.
Yeah it does! That’s why along with The Fett-Man, Wedge was our fave of the secondary characters.
One of the best special effects shots ever. Weaving in and out of the scaffolds and diving into the pipe in a single unbroken shot, it blows my mind they could pull this off with only models and negatives
I love this movie unabashedly.I’ll admit, I was surprised to learn that it’s so derided by the masses. When I was kid and would do a rewatch of the trilogy, I would walk away from this on such an emotional high. I think it closes out the entire series quite beautifully. It resolves the Jabba-has-Han plot really nicely, it gives emotional catharsis with the passing of Yoda (the very end of the old era of Jedi). And then it makes for such a great three-tiered climax: the battle in space, the battle on the ground, and the psychological war going on with Palpatine and Vadar and Luke.I find Vadar/Anakin’s death scene to be one of the best and most poignant in the entire series.Also, to my mind, no one else even comes close capturing the spirit of what it means to be a Jedi like Mark Hamill’s Luke in this movie.
i don’t think it is derided by the masses, maybe just by the small cohort of online Star Wars fandom who were all traumatized by ewoks.
I get that Empire is considered the best of the originals, in spite of my own prejudice against cliffhanger endings. And I even understand the “by-the-numbers” criticisms of Jedi. But I’ve always hesitated to call it “weak” because of the masterful execution that Breihan acknowledges — particularly the three-fold intertwined plots of the final act, which I think he undersells. The time I first saw it I found all that momentum spellbinding, particularly punctuated by the spectacular execution of things like the throne room duel and the demise of the Executor. If the character interactions play out as a bit “pat” and underwritten, they didn’t strike me as glaringly inappropriate or gratuitous, and well within the margins of what narrative momentum can let you get away with.
And I’ve always found the criticism of the Ewoks to be excessive. I never found them to be Care Bear cute, but more comparable to pygmy tribesmen — “cute” little guys who could kick your ass in a fight. The surface battle on Endor does flirt with silliness at times — surely the Ewoks could have been fighting with captured blasters, instead of asking us to believe that you can knock out a stormtrooper with rocks. I think the actual plastic costume helmet might provide some protection against that, much less “space armor”.
Yeah, the Ewoks never really bothered me. They establish them by showing they could’ve eaten the cast if it weren’t for of all people 3PO. That’s more terrifying than cute
And remember, when C3PO tries to convince them to not eat everyone, they totally blow him off, and that’s AFTER they think he’s a god (but before Luke floats him around).
As a 10 year old seeing this first run in the theater I remembered it pretty much exactly the way Breihan describes it, as a somewhat episodic succession of bravura action set pieces, primarily the sarlacc pit action sequence and the speeder bike chase, that were probably the best action scenes in the original trilogy.
This is my favorite review, ever, of this movie. I was born in 1978. We knew ROJ was junk food. We bought all the crap. We ALSO knew that Dad watched the legit movies, and always knew SW was basically porn. These movies are all bad in their own way. They have their moments, yes they’re art, but I still cannot fathom why their fanbase can’t see this is basically porn. It’s not real, or close to it.
I thought 1977 has long been kind of denoted as the start of the blockbuster movie. Star Wars, Close Encounters, etc. Some others like Grease were just a year later in 78. And the toy craze started with Star Wars, it just grew even more by the time Empire came out. So there were plenty of blockbusters by 83, I’d say that was more the middle of the blockbuster heyday than the start.
The final throne room duel scene, with Luke’s stalwart “Never,” is still one of my very favorites in all moviedom.
And Palpatine’s “So be it…Jedi” is an epic response.
With the vocals in the music for the only time in the trilogy? Chills. Chills!
Until the opening sentence of this article, I had never heard it suggested that the Ewoks were meant as stand-ins for the Viet Con. But yeah, this movie rules. The Ewoks stuff is lame, but that is maybe 15% of the movie. Everything else is awesome. This is the second best Star Wars film.
I like Jedi, but I’ll always regret that we didn’t get something closer to the earlier, darker drafts before Gary Kurtz and Lucas parted ways. Plus, they were originally going to use Wookies instead of Ewoks, which would’ve been way cooler.
I remember reading stuff asserting that the reason they switched from Wookies to Ewoks was that they felt that Wookies had been too humanized through Chewbacca so they created a new race that was more primitive and animalistic like Wookies were supposed to have been initially. Nowadays it’s fashionable to hate Ewoks but I loved them as a 10 year old in 1983. I thought they were cute
I was 13 when Jedi came out. I remember that I liked the way the Ewoks used Rambo-like booby traps to defeat bored contractors who just wanted to collect their paychecks and hit the bar after work, but did they need to be cuddly Care Bears? That nearly killed my suspension of disbelief. I was kinda angry about the creative choice. On the other hand, I totally bought into Vader’s complete rejection of Palpy. This Luke kid LOVES me, and Palpy could take me or leave me. Seriously? After all I’ve done for you? It’s a big middle finger thrown by a scorned lover. Not unlike a nasty divorce.
I don’t care so much for the Ewoks destroying all the Stormtroopers in retrospect, but I’m in favour of George Lucas’s decision to keep Han Solo alive and stress Luke’s triumph at the end.
Are we going to talk about how Luke totally wipes out the 900+ year old Yoda, who was perfectly okay before meeting him the first time, within minutes of paying him a second visit? Guys a fucking germ farm
“Master Yoda, I have returned for more training…also, I have Covid 19. That won’t be a problem for you, will it?”
(Coughs)
The first time I watched Risky Business a few years ago, one of my main takeaways is that the scene where Cruise’s friend calls a prostitute for him, and Jackie turns out to either be a man in drag or a transwoman (this is a 1980s film, you can be sure the filmmakers didn’t know the difference), could have been so, so awful in terms of the kind of homophobia (and racism, since Jackie is also black) that so many 1980s films are full of, but ends up not being. Cruise’s character panics, of course, but Jackie, unlike what most comedies would do with this setup, immediately twigs to the fact that they aren’t what Cruise was expecting and says they’ll leave if Cruise pays for the cost of getting there.
One thing that has always bothered me about this movie is the Emperor constantly telling Luke what he should do or feel during the light saber duel with Darth Vader. That whole “feel the anger” stuff. He’s basically telling Luke what not to do during the fight. Shut up Emperor!
Ah, but the Emperor is goading him into embracing the Dark Side. The Emperor comes out ahead either way, right? If Luke prevails, it is because he gave in, a weakness that the Emperor can exploit… and no matter who wins, Luke is lost to the rebellion, either killed or turned toward evil. The one thing he hadn’t thought of (or perhaps it occurred to him and he dismissed it) was that Vader would have just a bit of good left in him, which would come to the fore at a bad moment.
I meant more like he gives the game away to Luke. By constantly telling Luke that if he gets angry or wants to kill someone, he’s giving into the dark side so if I’m Luke, I’m doing everything he’s telling me not to do. Like maybe the Emperor should have done reverse psychology (“no, I don’t think getting angry will help you, definitely don’t get angry”) or outright insulting (“your momma’s so big you would have thought she was the Death Star”) would have worked better
Na, Luke would have wiped the floor with the Emperor’s ass in a Yo Mama Fight.
You want to see Luke and the Emperor “play the dozens”?
Emotional manipulation seems to be a big part of the Dark Side. I think today we call it “grooming”.
His overconfidence is his weakness.
He might be one of the baddies.
Indeed. Instead of talking and repeating the same dialogue, show us!
Will your next article be “The Sky is Blue”? Because this is some tired ass, rehashed “insight” that’s been covered a million times already.
The man is writing a series of articles about the highest grossing movie of each year. He’s writing about 1983’s highest grossing film. A film that has in fact been written about a shit-ton of times. What the fuck did you expect him to write about?Holy shit.
You gonna be ok?
I’m fine thanks. Your criticism of this article made absolutely no sense. When I read something that makes absolutely no sense I will occasionally call out the nonsense maker. Since I have your attention to some slight degree, what the hell were you talking about in your original post I replied to?
ROTJ and First Blood might be the two movies which opened and helped define the 80s action era – especially with both movies revisiting Vietnam in both analogy and literal form.
What made the first trilogy work is that it learned the lessons of the serials that Lucas and Spielberg drew inspiration from. It had exotic locations, shallow but relateable character arcs, humor, heroism, and fantastic action pieces. The second trilogy used all the bad parts of serials: needlessly convoluted plots, random/unearned character changes, throw-away sequences, racist stereotypes, erratic pacing, and wooden acting.
A lot of the stuff in this movie isn’t super — the ewoks are always controversial, the twin reveals of “a certain point of view” and “you have a sister” are really flat, the slave bikini is…icky, in retrospect — but everything in the throne room is just A+ material. A real good fight, a good vs. evil conflict going on not just between the combatants, but within each of them as well. They stuck out the moral throughline from Empire, which is good.For the record, people who like this movie but think TLJ did the Jedi dirty did not understand this movie at all. They remember Luke wearing all black, choking out pig guards, and swanging his lightsaber around and say “wow! cool jedi!” without realizing that he only truly becomes a Jedi at the end, when he throws his lightsaber away and refuses to fight. He spends Empire and most of Jedi in the throes of the dark side, believing he can save his friends by killing just the right person without realizing that he’s destroying his soul. And, in the end, he saves the day by reaching out and turning just one bad guy back into a good guy. That’s what being a Jedi is about, and everyone who wanted Luke to stomp around and fuck up the First Order wholly missed the point.
Your point is very fatty.
Somebody needs to write an analysis on how the nominally good Obi-Wan and Yoda consistently gave Luke spectacularly bad advice. Even when I was a kid that bit baffled me.
they were both deserters, how reliable could they be?
Last Sunday was my 53rd birthday. My husband gave me a Star Wars Collector Series Admiral Ackbar figure, still in its original packaging. Best. Gift. Ever.
IT MAY NOT BE THE MAGNANIMOUS GESTURE YOU THINK!
Are you suggesting that IT’S A TRAP!
While everyone was bitching about flaws in The Rise of Skywalker this past winter (including me), I did some more reflecting on the original trilogy. Doing so helped me piece together some stuff that I’d known for years and finally come to a new revelation: the only reason Leia and Luke are siblings is because Harrison Ford decided to return for the 3rd movie.
If memory properly serves, there was never mention of a sister until Return. In Empire, they merely say “there is another.” It is very possible, even likely, that they were setting Leia up to be this other force sensitive, but not as a blood relation. Just as someone who also happens to be strong with the force. There is even a hint in that direction when she receives Luke’s telepathic plea for help. (It had not yet been established whether non-force sensitives could hear telepathic communications from force users.)Furthermore, they had clearly been setting up this love triangle between Leia, Luke, and Han in the first two movies. If Ford had bowed out, I suspect they wanted the option of a happy ending with Luke & Leia.But when Ford signed on, they found themselves having to resolve this other force user and a love triangle. They gave themselves an easy (not to mention lazy) way out of everything by making Leia Luke’s secret twin sister. This explains why she’d be strong with the force, and it gives them a quick out on the love triangle. (You know, because sexual feelings you have for another person totally go away when you discover they’re family. Sure.)As much as people bitch about the retconning of Star Wars in the prequels and sequels (yes, I am one of these people), it was also done plenty in the original trilogy, too.
Eight years after the official end of the Vietnam War, George Lucas
turned the Viet Cong into adorable teddy bears that could be used to
sell toys.
And three years after that, James Cameron turned them into evil scary hive insects that could be used to sell video games and dozens of low budget movie knockoffs. And yet I doubt if the Viet Cong got their cut from either movie.
So…that whole thing with Darth and the Stormtroopers wearing masks was just end-phase Covid stuff maybe?
“Unearned”? Pure nonsense. They set up the face turn from the beginning of the 1st movie. Why was Luke hidden away? Because his Vader (his dad) would come looking for him. We don’t know Vaders his dad so the audience thinks it must be to kill him. Empire shows that he wanted Luke because he wants his son to rule the galaxy with him. “Join me and together we can rule the Galaxy.” It was for evil purposes but it showed he cared for his son. Then the third movie, Luke tries to flip the argument and tells Vader to join him, but Vader tells him it’s too late for him, there is no good left in him. Then it looks like he has lost all humanity and will stand by while the emperor kills Luke, but he saves his son, sacrificing himself in the process. It was very much an earned redemption arc.Vader also wasn’t shown to be some heartless pyscho murder machine. In New Hope he shows admiration for a rebel fighter and says “The force is strong with this one.” He also follows the orders of Tarkin even though he could pop his head like a grape. Then he has a sense of humor in Empire, “No disintegrations!” He also doesn’t straight up kill Lando when Lando complains about the deal change. “Pray I don’t alter it any further.” Then in Return, he even shows some sympathy telling ”The Emperor is not as forgiving as I” to the military guy when the Death Star is behind schedule. He’s shows some measure of humanity in all 3 movies.
I think you are confusing Vader and Kylo Ren. Vader saving his son is foreshadowed for 3 movies. Kylo Ren became good I guess because his mom tricked him with a memory of Han Solo. Then he gets to make out with Daisy Ridley before he disappears. THAT was unearned.
The moment after the Rancor’s death, when the monster’s keeper cries over its carcass, is one of the tiny character moments that make a movie like this special.Remember “breading”?
1st there is alot of good in Return, the Emporers Throne room stuff, and especially that final space battle. IMO, that outdoes anything in any of the movies to come. Honestly as an adult my biggest issue with Return is the direction, sure the script is a bit lazy, but I think that could have been overlooked. My biggest complaint is the cinematography and staging, Tatooine and Endor just look like they drove 20 min from Lucas’s ranch. The skiff battle has some of the worst choreography of any of the movies, and it’s just an overall bland looking movie.
I love Jedi, much more than a lot of fans, I guess. Its release time landed during a movie-going sweet spot (I was 12), old enough now to really get the story, but young enough to still be wowed by all its components – including the Ewoks. One of the few movie places I’ve ever wanted to live is that tree village!
I agree with this article that Risky Business is the shit man. Like Rebecca De Mornay at this point in time is like probably the most attractive woman alive in my opinion. Like Risky Business is either my 2nd or 3rd favourite ‘80s flick alongside The Breakfast Club. Number one of course being Summer School.
Vader doesn’t have a redemption arc because he doesn’t redeem himself.Luke redeems him, at least a little.
Luke starts the movie dressed in black, using the force choke, ready and willing to kill his father.It’s only partway through their battle at the end that Luke realizes he’s fallening towards the dark side. Vader wants him to kill the Emperor. The Emperor wants him to kill Vader. So he refuses to do either.
He becomes willing to die to redeem his father.It’s his arc.
Big props to John Williams for delivering a great score that brought everything together at the end. And the amazing feat that the finale is like 45 minutes of non-stop music, masterfully transitioning from forest, to space, to throne room.
Forgive me if this has been mentioned within the 421 current comments… It’s my understanding that Lucas COULDN’T have directed ROTJ because he’d angrily resigned from the Directors’ Guild after they had insisted that Irvin Kershner’s name had to be at the BEGINNING of “Empire.” Lucasfilm won that battle (nowadays even the film’s TITLE can be held until the end), but Lucas himself was out of the picture for directing the third. (Not being a DGA director apparently doesn’t have the stigma it used to, which is why Lucas could direct the prequels – and, of course, it’s George Lucas directing “Star Wars” movies, so who was gonna stop him?)
Wow. That’s news to me. Imagine how bad Jedi would have turned out if Lucas had directed? Actually, I don’t need to think very hard.
Definitely the reason why Spielberg couldn’t direct it.
Grammar note: When describing an energy field that surrounds us, penetrates us, binding the galaxy together, the Force is capitalized. Grammar note over. Thank you for listening.
It wasn’t exactly contracts re: Spielberg. The Director’s Guild of America (DGA) wouldn’t allow members to participate because……………..There was no director’s credits at the beginning of the film.
Huh. I can now safely say that Return of the Jedi is a better movie than any one of the three in the Sequel Trilogy. I remember clearly most of the Emperor’s dialogue in RotJ was unnecessarily repetitive and clunky.RotJ was the first Star Wars movie I saw in the USA, and was not prepared for all the audience’s very loud reactions (not common in other countries), which added to the overall enjoyment of the movie.
Change Your Life Right Now! Work From Comfort Of Your Home And Receive Your First Paycheck Within A Week. No Experience Needed, No Boss Over Your Shoulder… Say Goodbye To Your Old Job! Limited Number Of Spots Open…Find out how HERE……https://bit.ly/2x2gvGo
See, for me the heel-face turn of Darth Vader works (well, mainly because I was a kid when I first saw it, but leaving that aside for the moment) because it’s NOT a “redemption”. Luke kind of tries to sell it like it is, but I think that’s just Luke being childish and delusional (and a stand-in for Lucas’s own childish sense of morality). What it is, to me, is more a “last straw” moment for a character who is aware of the negative consequences of his actions but has been so corrupted by his own despair and commitment to servitude that he, generally speaking, no longer cares. The Emperor is Vader’s master, and Vader serves him, because that’s a relationship that is meaningful to him (the prequels utterly squander their opportunity to set up a reason for this, but that’s a separate problem). There’s very little earlier in the series (I won’t say nothing, but at least very little) to suggest that Vader is sadistic, or taking pleasure out of his acts of violence; he clearly holds his fellow members of the Empire in contempt, and kills them almost as readily as he does his enemies. He’s not committed to anything except his service to the Emperor, and through that relationship his commitment to serving the Dark Side of the Force.Until Luke comes back into his life, and then we see him care about something else for once. His offer to Luke to “rule the galaxy as father and son” seems completely out of left-field; not once before that moment have we ever seen Vader say or do anything to suggest he covets the Emperor’s position or has any interest in ruling anything. What he’s trying to do there is get Luke on his own side, on his own terms; be reunited with his son without having to give up his role, by offering Luke something that would have been tempting to Vader/Anakin himself. He underestimates Luke’s commitment to the Rebel cause, and specifically to his friends; we, as the audience, aren’t surprised that Luke turns Vader’s offer down, but Vader seems not only surprised but so wounded by this rejection that he starts beating the shit out of him (but, presumably, without the intention of killing him; he keeps his distance and pummels Luke with debriis, instead of engaging in the sword-fighting close-quarters combat he was using just moments before, suggesting that he just wants to incapacitate Luke and take him prisoner).I realize this is largely just me making up my own story to fill in the story Lucas neglects to tell us, but one might imagine Vader’s feelings after Luke jumps (potentially to his death) rather than accept the offer of joining his father. Vader is cruel and heartless, but nothing in the series up to that point suggest that he’s an idiot; he’s shown as canny and considered enough that it’s reasonable to believe he would be thinking about Luke’s rejection and what it means. He leaps at the chance to “turn” Luke when the Emperor suggests it, and even tries to talk Luke into it, when they have a moment alone; he doesn’t WANT to fight Luke, and only does it when the Emperor orders him to.When Luke has Vader on the ropes, and is about the strike the killing blow, I think Vader is relieved—his son will take his place, and be safe. But when Luke rejects that option too, and the Emperor turns his anger on Luke, Vader is forced to a decision point: either do something about it, throwing away everything he’s worked for up to that point, and rendering all his acts of violence and villainy futile, or let his son die in agony. And Vader can’t accept that option; he may have killed hundreds personally and stood by to let millions die (and, as the prequels show, apparently killed plenty of children by his own hand) but letting his son be killed in front of him is too much to bear. So he throws his whole identity overboard when he gives the Emperor the toss; none of his previous sacrifices, none of the justifications he used to excuse all his atrocities (and the atrocities he helped facilitate), none of it served any end, because in this moment he’s throwing it all away to save the only person who means anything to him (sorry Leia). So his heel-face turn doesn’t redeem any of his previous actions, it just makes them meaningless (from Vader’s perspective, I mean, not ours or any other character’s). The Emperor he served, the Empire he helped establish, even the Dark Side he was theoretically in thrall to, he undercuts all of them by saving Luke and killing the Emperor, allowing the Rebellion to win (uh, until the First Order show up and apparently just become the Empire again, somehow, I guess). Obviously the whole Force Ghost thing is a problem here, if you assume that becoming a Force Ghost is a reward for his “redemption”—but there’s nothing in the films themselves that would necessarily require that becoming a Force Ghost is a “reward”, just the final state of a Jedi master. So you could hand-wave that if you wanted by saying that, since Vader/Anakin was supposed to “bring balance to the Force”, he does that by ending the dominance of the Dark Side and allowing the Light Side to flourish again, which means he’s given a place in the “pantheon” of Force Ghosts because he accomplished his Force-given purpose, not because he became a “good guy” at the last moment. (Personally I just prefer to ignore his appearance as a Force Ghost because I think it’s stupid, and only got stupider when Hayden Christiensen was edited in, but that’s me.)
Did you mean to have the flashdance clip in the Jedi portion as it is repeated later when discussing Risky Business?
One thing I loved about RotJ is the second best line of dialogue after “Apology accepted, Captain Needa.”“The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.”What a gloriously understated bit of characterization and threat!
“They’re clearly modeled on the guerrilla army that had only just humiliated America’s massed forces” This is a pretty lazy take on the Vietnam War. If the North Vietnamese had the Ewoks instead of the VietCong, the Tet Offensive would have pushed the Americans into the sea instead of suffering a crushing tactical but ultimately successful sacrificial strategic victory. On a lighter note, being only a couple of years older than you, I also thought this movie was the greatest thing ever, even better than Empire until I was a teenager.