Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - Review
Originally published April 2016After The Empire Strikes Back proved that Star Wars, despite its soap-opera plot twists, didn't have to be B-movie quality (it could be B+ or A- quality), people were more excited than ever before to see the finale to the Star Wars saga that had started six years earlier. While certainly filled with action, including the biggest lightsaber battle of the franchise at the time, Return of the Jedi hits a few bumps in the road. It's still a watchable and entertaining film, but the schlock is strong with this one.
Frankly, there are enough pros and cons in Return of the Jedi that I could use to make a Fair or Foul review, but I'd rather just talk about the things wrong with it, even though I'd still consider it a Fair film. So we'll do something different this time and blend the reviews together. Here's a quick Foul review of a Fair movie.
Image: 20th Century Fox
Pros
The opening story arc with the rescue of Han Solo from Jabba's palace is still great
The space battle at the end is exciting and fun
The lightsaber battle, while not as well-shot or interesting as Empire's, still has an ominous and emotional quality to it
Emperor Palpatine is over-the-top and evil AF
Cons
Recycles too many ideas; Death Star for example
Dialogue is cheesy and should have been a warning sign for the movies to come
Ewoks
Characters that have changed over the past few movies are no longer consistent; some of their qualities feel forced
Reduced tension
Child-pandering characterization and storytelling
Luke is a walking plague of melodrama
Plot & Thoughts
When it comes to movie trilogies, and even those new ones that try to make an unnecessary split-end movie to try to stretch it out, the finales tend to be rough around the edges. Even Christopher Nolan's Batman film trilogy wasn't safe from the finale curse. The "finish-the-fight" story isn't an easy one to tell because it's where all the loose ends need to be tied up, which means there's not much more room for character development or growth, aka the fun stuff. Everything has already been established and now it's just a matter of creating a scenario that helps tie it all together. Numerous other film franchises made it to the end of their trilogies and lost a lot of the interest or pull of their plots, ie The Matrix, Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings—though, I will say that most people think Lord of the Rings was still very good to the end and that I'm in the minority for believing it suffers from the third-movie curse. That being said, Return of the Jedi certainly tries to maintain the momentum and quality of Empire, but it falls victim to the failings of a third film and to George Lucas's scriptwriting.
Image: 20th Century Fox | Here's that cool-looking guy, Boba Fett, doing what he does best: suck
The movie starts off promising enough with the rescue of Han Solo. The animatronics and make-up work in this section of the movie are spectacular and still hold up incredibly well; the blue-screen part involving the rancor is the only bad-looking part. The escape sequence is classic, harrowing, and still fun to watch, especially the part where the character whom everyone seems to think is super cool (for some reason) gets taken out by a slapstick joke involving a blind Han Solo and a monster in a sand pit that can't move. It's a great opening to a movie and I still enjoy watching it, but it is unable to carry the momentum through the whole movie, and it actually diminishes the film's value in some ways.
Foul: Han Solo
One negative thing that the opening sequence does is that it completes Han Solo's character arc that had been active in the background of the previous films. In both Episode IV and V, we knew that Solo was on the run from bounty hunters and Jabba, which was also often the reason why he was so conflicted in his decisions, and thus a more interesting character. However, the things that made him a more interesting hero, such as the self-preserving attitude and the persistent womanizer attempts of trying to get Leia to Netflix and chill, are wrapped up real quickly in this opening sequence of Return of the Jedi.
Image: 20th Century Fox
The first time we see Leia's face in the movie, there's no longer a question of "Will they or won't they?" They are in love, dammit! So the romantic tension that worked so well between them in the last film is gone now too.
As a result, Han Solo doesn't really have that much to do for the rest of the movie. He becomes a standard hero and kind of just comic relief a lot of the time. Harrison Ford still makes the character charming, but a lot of the unique qualities that came from Solo being a cornered animal trying to escape and get sex at the same time is lost. It's no surprise that Ford was trying to convince George Lucas to kill off his character in Return of the Jedi to give the character a little more of an impact in the film, but then we wouldn't have had the same expansive universe they decided to retcon eventually anyway.
Fair & Foul: Leia
Perhaps to make up for the fact that Han was given less to do in the film, Leia is more active in this film, physically active anyway. She's given more to do and is much more involved in the missions taking place than in the previous films like rescuing Han Solo and infiltrating the Empire base on the forest moon of Endor. This, of course, also includes the scenes involving the infamous, career-damaging gold bikini, but at least she was the one who killed Jabba the Hutt.
Image: 20th Century Fox
She still has some significant character flaws, though that prevent her from being much of a Fair point for Return of the Jedi. Leia, while more physically active in the film, loses almost all of her spicy personality that she once had, though. Now that the love floodgates between her and Han have opened, there's no need for her to be witty and sharp towards anyone anymore. Even when she's first captured by Jabba, she could have said something cool to maintain her character, but just said, "We have powerful friends." Good for you. Couldn't even have her say that she was going to kill him as a bit of foreshadowing?
Sadly, she ends up having nothing interesting to say for the majority of the movie. Most of what comes out of her mouth is emotional bullshit about her and Han, or the recent revelation of her genetic relation to Luke.
Foul: Vader
Speaking of genetic relations, the father-son relationship between Luke and Vader completely depreciates Vader as a villain. While an imposing and threatening presence in Empire, he feels like he's just hanging out in Return of the Jedi. Vader has jack-all to do the majority of the movie. Even in the room where the emperor is making his evil speeches about evil, Vader has nothing to do or say; he only speaks up a little bit during the lightsaber battle. When he is actually talking with Luke, there's a lot of "I know there's still good in you" and "It's too late for me, son" melodrama that is straight out of a soap opera.
Image: 20th Century Fox
Foul: Luke
Luke is probably one of the biggest problems of this movie, in all honesty—we'll get to the Ewoks in a second. Luke is a very different character from where he started in Episode IV, but a majority of this transition in his personality took place off-screen. He grew up a little bit in and after Episode IV, and we could assume that he was doing that in Episode V with Yoda, but he was still very recognizably the impulsive, naive hero from the original Star Wars. However, the most drastic change in personality seemed to occur between Episodes V & VI. Now, he's come back as this calm (smug) Jedi with a lot of Days of Our Lives dialogue to spew from his mouth. The stuff he says to Vader and to Leia is so cheesy and seems to spread like a disease throughout the script because then they start doing it too. He's a walking Bloody Mary of schlock dialogue.
The fact that Lucas decided to make him siblings with Leia adds nothing positive to the franchise, too. It really just complicates things and ends up getting altered in the prequel trilogy anyway just to help it all make sense. If they had just said there was another Skywalker or another potential hero in the universe and never revealed it, or just said that Leia was the other hero without being directly related to Luke, it would have been fine and we would have avoided the incest jokes that came from their kiss in Empire. Hell, it would have been even a little more acceptable if she was just a distant Skywalker cousin. Besides, Leia doesn't really show off any Jedi-like abilities except for a Vulcan mind link with Luke, but maybe that's just their wonder-twin powers, not Jedi powers. Who knows?
Image: 20th Century Fox
Luke's failings are the result of letting only one person write the story and screenplay, unlike the last few films. George Lucas's writing is the real culprit here. He deflates characters like Vader with emotional melodrama about a fact that had no impact on the character before while bloating other characters like Luke and Leia with last-minute changes that serve no purpose other than eliminating romance between them. In all honesty, the quality of the scripts from the prequel trilogy would have been no surprise to anyone if we all looked at Return of the Jedi without the rose-tinted glasses. So much forced emotion and unnatural behavior already exists in Return, it should have prepared everyone for what was to come 15 years later. Though, I suppose nothing could have prepared us for the "love" story in Episodes II & III.
Foul: Ewoks
Oh right! The Ewoks. Ewoks suck.
Image: 20th Century Fox
They completely stop the momentum of the story when they show up and do nothing but destroy the intimidation and presence of stormtroopers. Stormtroopers had a cool design and were supposed to be specially trained killing machines with blasters. While they may have been cannon fodder in the previous films, they still had an intimidation to them. The fact that the tiny teddy bears use rocks or sticks to take out these trained killers with superior technology only diminishes the image of a stormtrooper. At their worst, before, they were target practice, now, they're just bumbling idiots.
It's said that Lucas injected the Ewoks into his script to appeal to children. It may have worked to his benefit to sell more toys, but it has since been considered a poor choice. Back when I could find empathy somewhere other than a dictionary (when I was a kid), I felt sad for the Ewoks that were killed, but I still found them boring. Watching their scenes now is just a tedious affair. It's a good thing that there's an exciting starfighter battle and a lightsaber duel happening at the same time to break up the monotony.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Despite everything negative I said about Return of the Jedi, I still think it's a passable film. The action sequences are still fun. The special effects and make-up are still great. It's still a necessary end to the original trilogy with the characters with whom we've become invested. All of the positives help balance out the middling failures to make it a Fair finale. It's just a shame that it suffers from the third-movie curse and ends up being so lame in comparison to the films that came before it.
Image: 20th Century Fox | Harsh nitpicking, bro