STAR WARS: Episode Ⅵ – Return of the Jedi (1983-1997-2004)
directed by Richard Marquand
★★★★☆
When George Lucas conceived of Star Wars, he imagined 6, 9, even 12 movies, with the first trilogy being the middle of the story. Episode Ⅵ was supposed to tie up the loose ends of The Empire Strikes Back — Han’s fate, Vader’s secret, Luke’s destiny — while introducing new conflicts for our heroes — the Emperor, the other Skywalker. Unfortunately, the toll of spending six years making two movies and a desire to move onto other projects led Lucas to abandon his future plans and end his franchise with just the trilogy.
This led to many compromises. No time to search for and introduce a new Skywalker sister, so I guess it’ll have to be Leia (despite the implied love triangle for two movies). Defeating Vader isn’t enough, now we also have to defeat the Emporer and the entire Empire. That long envisioned ground battle between the technologically advanced army and the primitive tribal alien creatures needs to happen, as well as completing Luke’s training and explaining his entire family history — all in a little over 2 hours.
The fact that Return of the Jedi turned out as coherent and satisfying as it did is nothing short of a miracle, and it still has some of the most memorable scenes of the whole franchise. The entire third act is one big, multi-layered battle on three fronts, all happening simultaneously with each one relying upon the success of one or two of the others. It also contains some of John Williams’ best music of the trilogy, with new themes blending perfectly with the old familiar ones.
Jedi also introduced Ian McDiarmid to the franchise as Emperor Sheev Palpatine (then simply known as “The Emperor”), a role he would reprise for four more movies, as well as in reshoots for The Empire Strikes Back for 2004’s DVD rerelease.
The ’97 Special Edition made some questionable changes, most notably replacing the otherworldly ’80s EDM-inspired Lapti Nek number in Jabba’s Palace with the Earthly ska song, Jedi Rocks, and the simple-yet-effective Sy Snoodles puppet with a cartoonishly CG-animated model; but it also replaced the teddy bear picnic finale of the original with something much more fitting with a galaxy-wide celebration, so there are pros and cons.
While Return of the Jedi seemed to mark the premature end of an era, and it tried to compress two or three movies’ worth of stories into a single above-average runtime, it managed to do it all in a way that most viewers barely noticed the narrative sleight of hand. It wasn’t as good as Empire, and may not have been as revolutionary as the first Star Wars, but it didn’t disappoint like many third chapters would go on to do in later years.
