The Revisit – Return of the Jedi (1983)

1983 was the peak of my Star Wars fan craze. I was six years old, watching Saturday morning cartoons on an everlasting loop, and playing with Star Wars toys. I also had the books, the records -sometimes combined- and the wallpaper. I was not the mostly cynic person you know today. Advertisers, seeing the money to be had, would advertise Return of the Jedi every other commercial break. You could not watch The Smurfs without seeing a series of moving images involving Luke with a green lightsaber hacking away on Jabba’s barge. THIS, as they said, would be it.

Background: Raking in the benefits of spearheading two huge franchises (Star Wars and Indiana Jones) George Lucas was nonetheless in a stressful time of his life. He was coming off a divorce from the person many say saved Star Wars from obscurity, film editor Marcia Lucas, and still wanted to hand his series off to other directors so that he would not put up with the ‘burden’ of working with actors. After his war with the Director’s Guild forebode him from hiring his friend Steven Spielberg, Lucas asked The Empire Strikes Back‘s Irvin Kershner to come back for a second go around. But the former university professor turned Lucas down, citing a massively stressful shoot and mounting pressures that he did not want to live up to again. Lucas even famously had a meeting with a hot at the time commodity known as David Lynch. Lynch was coming off his hugely successful, Oscar nominated film The Elephant Man and was looking to do something in the science fiction realm. But something tells me the quirky Lynch did not see himself meshing well with the visionary but very hands on Lucas, and passed on the project. The fact he decided to take Dune instead is a topic to be discussed another day.

Less famously, Lucas took a meeting with Canadian B movie schlock director David Cronenberg. Now THERE’S a match made in hell if I ever saw one, and reports indicate that meeting didn’t get much past the hand shaking/greeting phase.

Enter Welsh filmmaker Richard Marquand. Coming off the character drama Eye of the Needle, in Marquand Lucas saw a man who knew how to work with actors and would allow Lucas to concentrate on the technical aspect of the film. Though future recounts by actors and crew members on the film say Lucas ended up doing a lot of the film’s directing. If he wasn’t telling Marquand how the Ewoks walk, he was getting in arguments with him over the film’s overall vision. Now there is a line a producer walks when producing a film. But you have to remember. This was Lucas’s baby (as Steven Spielberg will point out to him while the prequels were in the planning stage), and his hands on approach might be looked at as a filmmaking version of bullying. But if this indeed was going to be the series’ swan song, I don’t blame the man for wanting to get it right.

As for me personally, I believe I already outlined what my expectations were going in. I was all set to see Return of the Jedi on the big screen, and NOTHING was going to stop me. My father seemed to be almost as anxious as I was, and we were all set to see the movie we had waited three years to see. You have to remember. The end of Empire was a HUGE cliffhanger. I still was trying to wrap my head around whether Darth Vader was telling the truth about his father’s true fate, and we had no idea how -or if- Han was going to be fully rescued. Though I DO specifically remember a TV ad that had the funny exchange with Han and Luke in Jabba’s palace which goes like this:

Han: Together again huh?

Luke: Wouldn’t miss it.

Han: How we doin?

Luke: Same as always.

Han: That bad huh?

But this time, we were not going to the film alone. We dragged my mom to the movies with us. Now I was too young to know under what circumstances my father was finally able to get my mother to see the film with us. But I know for a fact she was not as excited as we were. Maybe it was sheer curiosity. No matter the circumstances, I have not heard the last of how she felt afterward.

What I Thought Then: Though I didn’t realize it at the time, Return of the Jedi was everything I could have asked for and more. It was bigger than life. It had huge space dog fights. It had massive amounts of new characters (MERCHANDISING!). And it had Luke being the one who brings balance to the Force. It was a tour de force (rim shot) of everything Star Wars. I don’t remember much about that late 1983 night at the movies. But I DO remember nudging my mother every thirty minutes or so asking when they were going to finally use lightsabers. The lightsaber battles were so exciting to me, that I did not care about Luke’s emotional tug of war with the Emporer.

I also had a love/hate relationship with the Ewoks. Though not in the way most do. They were some of the funniest things about the film to me. But one thing always disturbed me. People like to remember the Ewoks as being ‘cute,’ and ‘cuddly.’ However, I remember being traumatized by the fact that these ‘cute’ and ‘cuddly’ things were about to roast our heroes for dinner. It wasn’t until I saw the future Ewok movies and indulged in some book and record stories containing the furry creatures that I finally was able to accept them. Of course, the fact they helped our heroes in the end also helped.

As far as my immediate thoughts after seeing the movie, I don’t think I was really able to process what I had just seen. A fact which is startling to me, because three years earlier, at the ripe old age of three, I had questions galore. As I said in my last column, I could not stop talking about Empire in its aftermath. Here, I had underlining feelings, no doubt. But Return didn’t really register with me until months later, when I would read about it and process it. I am not sure if that makes it good or bad. All I knew was that Darth Vader ended up being something I was not sure I liked. What did I do right after the movie was over? Well, I slept like I was supposed to (we ended up going to a late showing.) And then, got up early to watch Empire on our front room VHS. Because I wanted to remember Vader as the bad ass he was.

What I Think Now: On its surface, Return of the Jedi isn’t any more complicated than the first two Star Wars films. But it took awhile for me to understand that there is something deep past its surface which makes it something so much more. Though I will say, in watching it now, I can point out one thing I think almost kills it, and that’s its acting.

Last week, I could not stop praising how good a job Carrie Fisher did in Empire‘s most dramatic scenes. She had to do a lot of acting with her eyes, and she did it well. It is a skill in acting which is harder than you might think. Having said that, the difference between her then and here is astounding. Fisher is terrible in Jedi. Don’t get me wrong. I am not discounting the work she does in Jabba’s palace. From being Jabba’s destroyer to having another swinging moment with Luke (of course, the slave outfit too), Leia has some fine moments. But after these scenes, Fisher is merely background noise. She has an embarrassing few lines when Luke is getting ready to leave to confront Vader, and her recount of the ‘I know’ line from Empire is cringe inducing.

Across the board, Return‘s acting is pretty insufferable. Though I don’t think it is all the actors’ fault. You need a sturdy hand when it comes to pulling off a science fiction storyline. It isn’t too often that you can see a behind the scenes tug of war come across onscreen. But I feel it is pretty evident the more you watch Return. Lucas is feeling forced to direct scenes he did not deem filmmable, and the result is not too pretty.

Though the good news is there is still plenty to love about Jedi without having to dwell on its inadequacies. The Emporer, a character we had heard about for two straight films, finally makes his presence known in Return of the Jedi. Played by Ian Mcdiarmid, the evil ruler is scary and menacing. He also has a laugh that is as maniacal as it is gleeful. The folly artists did a great job of echoing it every single time he uses it. The entire triangle storyline with him, Vader, and Luke is magnificent filmmaking, as the drama between them builds and builds until its climax. As a child, I did not understand that Luke was not going to fight his father unless he absolutely had to. I also did not understand how the evil one sitting in the chair wanted it to happen just as much as I did.

There are also quite a few subtle moments I did not pick up on before that I did in this last viewing. For example, right after Luke is captured and brought before his father, they have a discussion about how Vader is hiding the fact he was once Anakin Skywalker. The conversation ends with Vader sending Luke away, and there is a slight moment of what seems to be reflection. Vader, by himself, stands and looks into what seems to be nothingness, almost as if he is contemplating what he is eventually going to end up doing at the film’s climax.

There is also a slight bit of symbolism here that I had not noticed before. Right after Luke cuts off his father’s hand (following the best crescendo John Williams has ever composed), Luke is congratulated by the Emporer, and slowly looks at his own hand. As he does this, it is in the red lights of the throne room itself, symbolizing blood and the blood lines at war. I have no idea why it took this long for me to notice that, and whether it was Lucas or Marquand (or screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan), it is an outstanding way of outlining a family plight.

Earlier I dogged the scene with Luke & Leia when Luke reveals he has to leave. But there is one moment in that series of scenes which I love. After Luke leaves, Leia is crying and greeted by Han Solo, who comes out to see what is going on. After asking her if she is ok, she tells him she cannot tell him what was said. Han implies she told Luke, therefore showing a hint of jealousy. Seeing the situation as being hopeless, he throws his hand in the air and makes like he is going to walk off. Now the old Han, the one we met in Star Wars, would do exactly that. But this time, he turns back, and softly tells Leia that he is sorry. It is here that we know he is in love with her, and that he has in fact changed. I guess being encompassed in carbonite will do that to someone.

Overall, a revisit to Return of the Jedi merited a lot more positive feelings this time than bad. Despite some pretty bad acting, I still enjoy the hell out of it. It is a fitting conclusion to a series that indeed revolutionized cinema. Wait, were there more?

In Conclusion: Return of the Jedi marked the end of an era. Yes, there were more Star Wars movies to come. But I would never again be that innocent six year old child waiting with baited breath to see the characters I had followed for so long be either christened or damned onscreen. It marked a family outing that I still remember to this day, and isn’t that truly what going to the movies are all about? Memorable experiences?

I will get into my feelings about Star Wars leading up to Episode I: The Phantom Menace in next week’s column. But for now, I will say Star Wars defined so many childhoods I don’t feel one column each about all the films is enough. The Jedi would return. But the feelings of astonishment that came with being a child would not.