There's an old saying that states something about leaving the best for last. George Lucas certainly didn't follow that adage when crafting the original STAR WARS trilogy. RETURN OF THE JEDI, the final installment of the series, is easily the least innovative and most hokey of the three films. In fact, most of the enjoyment derived from this motion picture comes from the simple act of getting together with old friends and enemies one more time. If Luke, Han, Leia, and Vader were replaced by nameless, faceless characters, RETURN OF THE JEDI wouldn't be a whole lot more interesting than INDEPENDENCE DAY.
Cuteness is the watchword here. The dark, eerie atmosphere that oozed from every frame of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is gone. Instead, for RETURN OF THE JEDI, we have good triumphing decisively over evil, a too- pat resolution to a love triangle, and walking teddy bears. Even Darth Vader doesn't seem very daunting this time around. With the arrival of the Emperor (a gaunt-looking Ian McDiarmid), Vader has turned into a second fiddle. It's decidedly unsatisfactory to watch him engage Luke in a civilized conversation.
RETURN OF THE JEDI picks up an unspecified time after the conclusion of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Luke (Mark Hamill), Leia (Carrie Fisher), Lando (Billy Dee Williams), Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and the droids (Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker) are on a rescue mission to Luke's home planet of Tatooine. Their aim: to save Han (Harrison Ford) from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt. Once this goal is attained, it's back to outer space, where the Rebel alliance is about to face the Empire's newest threat: a second, more powerful Death Star, that, if activated, could spell doom for anyone who stands against the Emperor. So, while the fleet prepares for the final battle, Luke and company travel to the forest moon of Endor to knock out the shield that defends the Death Star against all attacks. There, they are befriended by the Ewoks, the teddy bear-like indigenous race, and Luke, fearing that his presence is endangering the group, turns himself over to Vader.
RETURN OF THE JEDI has some interesting elements. The Luke/Vader/Emperor scenes are suitably tense and well-acted, and, if the resolution isn't a complete surprise, at least it's a little more original that it could have been. From a technical point-of-view, the space battles are amazing, easily dwarfing anything depicted in the previous films. Not only are there many, many more ships, but their speed and range of movement have been dramatically improved. On one level, RETURN OF THE JEDI is almost worth watching for the special effects. In the SPECIAL EDITION, a new, equally repugnant dance number has been added to the Jabba the Hutt scene. Additionally, there are some impressive touches tacked onto the ending. Once again, while the improvements don't significantly alter the viewing experience, they're fun to spot.
While there isn't much of a down side to STAR WARS or THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RETURN OF THE JEDI has some serious drawbacks. First and foremost are the Ewoks, an unbearably cuddly race that seem handpicked to generate toy sales. Children enjoy these creatures; everyone I know over age 12 finds them insufferably annoying. Then there's the unbelievably cheap cop-out that Lucas uses to erase the Luke/Han/Leia triangle. Whether Lucas had this in mind from the beginning is irrelevant -- it's a bad idea. Not only does it defuse romantic tension, but it leaves viewers shaking their heads in incredulity. There are other problems too -- the death toll on the rebel side seems shockingly small for a "final battle" and a bit of foreshadowing regarding the Millennium Falcon's fate is thrown out the window. Of course, I could also make the rather obvious observation that large elements of RETURN OF THE JEDI are lifted from the original STAR WARS, indicating that the creative wellspring of writers George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan had perhaps run dry.
The acting in RETURN OF THE JEDI is stronger than in the previous films. By now, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher have all matured in their on-screen personas. The chemistry amongst the trio is terrific, with the only awkward moments coming during the Luke/Leia conversations when they discuss their origins. As in EMPIRE, Billy Dee Williams gives us another human hero to root for. Newcomer Ian McDiarmid plays the Emperor as a suitably creepy, cunning, and evil creature, although he's not as imposing as Vader was in STAR WARS.
Although it was great fun re-watching STAR WARS and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK again on the big screen, RETURN OF THE JEDI doesn't generate the same sense of enjoyment. And, while Lucas worked diligently to re-invigorate each entry into the trilogy, JEDI needs more than the patches of improved sound, cleaned-up visuals, and a few new scenes. Still, despite the flaws, this is still STAR WARS, and, as such, represents a couple of lightly-entertaining hours spent with characters we have gotten to know and love over the years. RETURN OF THE JEDI is easily the weakest of the series, but its position as the conclusion makes it a must-see for anyone who has enjoyed its predecessors.
By : James Berardinelli
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 3
I'll admit that I was surprised when I heard of plans for the Special Edition of STAR WARS, and not because I thought of the original film as inviolate. I just wasn't sure why George Lucas would feel the need to make STAR WARS "the way (he) really wanted to make it," since it seemed as though he had already done it. It was called RETURN OF THE JEDI. Yes, I know Lucas didn't direct JEDI -- the way Steven Spielberg didn't direct POLTERGEIST -- but it was clearly an amped-up version of the original film, with all the things Lucas couldn't do the first time around. The climactic dog-fight was more complex, the destruction of the Death Star more spectacular...even Jabba the Hutt finally made it on-screen. After the moody second act of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RETURN OF THE JEDI was a return to the playful adventure of STAR WARS, only with six years' worth of ancillary revenue burning a hole in Lucas' pocket.
Unfortunately, RETURN OF THE JEDI turned out to be an example of what happened when film-makers became conscious of what ancillary revenue could be. The introduction of the cuddly, teddy-bear primitives called the Ewoks has long been reviled by STAR WARS aficionados as an obvious bow to commercial interests, but they were only the most obvious example. Entire sets in JEDI seemed to have been designed around features for an action play-set -- Jabba's palace with trap door and Rancor cage! Endor forest with catapult launcher! -- and many moments of comic relief were so utterly goofy that it was had to imagine they weren't designed for an audience under 12. In my comments on the STAR WARS: SPECIAL EDITION, I noted that the original film never could have worked if Lucas had been aware of the merchandising potential, because its innocence would have been compromised. RETURN OF THE JEDI, I think, is proof of that. STAR WARS was made for the kid in all of us; JEDI was made for kids.
That doesn't make JEDI a bad film; it would take a concerted effort for one mediocre film to spoil the goodwill of two great ones. JEDI provides a necessary sense of resolution with the rescue of Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, as well as answers to questions about the Skywalker family tree. Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas' script does take advantage of our familiarity with the characters, playing with C-3PO's sense of dignity and propriety when Luke levitates him in a show of "god-like" power to intimidate the Ewoks, and making Chewbacca's reunion with the thawed-out Han Solo a reunion between a boy and his loyal puppy. The speeder bike chase on Endor is tremendously impressive, a dizzying piece of action film-making which still out-classes most of the attempts at chases scenes you'll see in contemporary films. There are plenty of satisfying moments in RETURN OF THE JEDI, even if most of them come from the pleasure of visiting once again with old friends.
If there is anything the SPECIAL EDITION emphasizes, however, it is that JEDI is much longer than it needs to be. Among the new scenes are a re-tooled version of the musical number performed by Sy Snootles in Jabba's lair -- the once-puppeteered Snootles is now a computer-generated Snootles -- is a ridiculous piece of technical flash which looks like it belongs in a 3-D feature at Disneyland. Worse still, it slows down a film which got repetitive even in its original incarnation. The simultaneous battles on the surface of Endor's moon and in the sky above go on for an awfully long time, all the while inter-cut with the taunting of the Emperor (Ian McDiarmid) as he tries to woo Luke to the Dark Side of the Force. It is those scenes on the Death Star which grow particularly insufferable; if I were Luke, and I knew all it took was going over to the Dark Side to get the Emperor to shut up his incessant yammering...well, just call me Darth Vader Jr. By the time Vader has his moment of redemption, revealing himself to be something resembling Ray Milland in pancake makeup, the effect is undercut by a desire just to see the whole thing wrapped up already.
There is one very effective addition to this SPECIAL EDITION, an extension of the epilogue which shows celebration on several different worlds after the defeat of the Empire in addition to the celebration in the Ewok village. When one of those scenes shows a massive statue being toppled, it's hard not to think of Lucas turning the STAR WARS trilogy into a grand metaphor for the defeat of Communism, with the galaxy made safe once again for private enterprise. The film industry was certainly made safe for private enterprise after the massive success of the STAR WARS films. RETURN OF THE JEDI might have been the first glimpse at the down-side of that victory.
By : Scott Renshaw
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