Star Wars Reconsidered: Return of the Jedi

I’m not sure I’d be so out of line if I called Star Wars the most popular pop culture creation ever. I can’t think of another property that has been so widely adored for so long. While mainstream movies these days habitually make a ton of money, none of them will ever have the cultural impact of the Star Wars films. What began as a weird little passion project for George Lucas eventually spawned five more live-action movies, an animated movie, a television series, a million video games, and a fanbase that remains as passionate today as they were back in the ’70s and ’80s. Even the ones who are vocal in their dislike for the prequels do so because they so love the first three films. This was the first true nerd phenomenon, and it has shaped the way movies are made and marketed to this very day. Things like Comic-Con would not exist in their present form without Star Wars and George Lucas.

However, with such a rabid fan base comes a great deal of pressure to deliver each and every time out. Ask Lucas about all the prequel hate that’s out there. Ask Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about the people who assault them (probably unfairly) about the ending of Lost. The nerd population (read: the Internet) will wholeheartedly support you once you are able to reel them in to your universe. Once they feel betrayed, the backlash will be fast and furious. Often this outrage isn’t quite justified, but you have to be aware that it probably is going to come at one point or another. Heck, Lindelof’s Twitter biography says that he’s “one of the idiots behind Lost.” He will never hear the end of it, and it just shows the fragility of the fan's goodwill. Audiences can’t stand the idea that they’re wasting their time, and the common reaction to that seems to be anger.

For Lucas, this hatred never came around until he released The Phantom Menace in 1999, but the potential was there for the backlash to come with the release of Return of the Jedi in 1983. Before it came out, there was no precedent for it. This was the final chapter in a trilogy that was going to wrap up everything that had been set up before, and hopefully in a satisfying way. Lucas must have been under a huge amount of pressure; perhaps more than any other filmmaker had experienced before. An entire moviegoing community was waiting to see how it was all going to end, and even in the pre-Internet age Lucas would have heard about it if things didn’t work out. The only other filmmaker that can possibly empathize with Lucas is Christopher Nolan, whose upcoming The Dark Knight Rises is in a similar situation. If that movie disappoints the fans, then Nolan’s nerd cred may fly out the window very quickly. It may not be fair, but it’s the way it is.

One of the more fascinating aspects of Return of the Jedi is the list of directors who were allegedly offered the job, as Lucas once again chose to take a more supervisory role. His buddy Steven Spielberg was apparently up there on the list, but the DGA got in the way. Lucas also approached David Lynch and David Cronenberg, but they both declined. (Lynch chose instead to make Dune, and we all know how that turned out.) Eventually Lucas had to settle with Richard Marquand; a man who had zero experience with mainstream films let alone one of the most high-pressure productions of all time. According to some sources, Lucas still made his presence felt on the set, and Marquand never quite had full control of the production. It may not have been a full-on Spielberg/Hooper/Poltergeist scenario, but it was close.

Regardless, the greatest flaw in Return of the Jedi is a general clunkiness that was absent in The Empire Strikes Back and mostly unnoticeable in A New Hope. My feelings on this film strongly resemble my reaction to the recent Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2; another recent franchise-ender. It gets most of the important parts right. It concludes in a satisfying fashion and has several exciting action sequences, but doesn’t always have the emotional punch that it should have. It lacks the non-stop thrills of A New Hope as well as the character work of The Empire Strikes Back, and what’s left is a solid conclusion to a terrific trilogy. It works on that level, but on its own merits it’s a lot easier to pick apart.

For one, there are the performances. Obviously, they’ve been a problem throughout the series, but only A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back truly succeeded at disguising them through various means. Return of the Jedi is just a symphony of bad acting, and it bothers me much more in this film than it did in either of the first two in the original trilogy. (Of course, they are distracting all the way through the prequels.) Most shocking is Harrison Ford, who somehow regressed big time in between Empire and Jedi. Perhaps it’s because he had starred in Indiana Jones and had his mind on other things besides wrapping up this Star Wars thing, but he just doesn’t seem all that in to Return of the Jedi. Not that it’s hurt his career, of course. He’s done good work since.

Surprisingly, the best performance in Return of the Jedi may be that of Mark Hamill, who I thought made huge strides as an actor in The Empire Strikes Back and he continues his good work here. One of my favorite moments in the film comes very early, when Luke Skywalker first enters Jabba’s lair with the intention of rescuing Han. This is not only the first time we see Luke in the film, but the first time in the series when he has walked into a room and been the most powerful person in it. Even at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Luke was a kid who was just trying to figure out his purpose in the universe. In the time between that movie and the beginning of Jedi, Luke went through a lot of maturing, and it shows early on. Hamill plays that moment well, and he maintains this level of confidence throughout the film. For the first time, he seems like a hero who stands a chance against Darth Vader and the Empire.

After the Jabba sequences, the film coasts along all the way to the end without taking a ton of risks and never feeling all that transcendent. It’s rarely actively bad, but it’s also rarely better than “good.” The moment when Luke learns that Leia is his sister—and the subsequent scene in which he reveals this to Leia—doesn’t hit with all the emotional power it should. It simply comes up as a new piece of information, and the audience nods in modest appreciation. That had the potential to be an “Oh, $#!*” moment on the level of the “I am your father” reveal in Empire, but such intensity never quite materializes. Every time I’ve seen Return of the Jedi, I’ve always been interested but I’ve never quite been enthralled.

One thing I quite like about Return of the Jedi that a lot of people seem to dislike is the Ewoks. I’ve always found them to be a fun species that continues the series’ fine track record of creating memorable creatures. They may just be cute, adorable bears, but I think the film does a good job of making them more than just a bunch of pretty faces. They become major players in the final battle against the Empire, and they do it in relatively convincing fashion. I buy that the Empire could be unprepared for such a primitive attack, and I find that they contribute to the film far more than they detract from it. Return of the Jedi has its fair share of problems, but I do not count the Ewoks among them.

At the end of the day, Return of the Jedi had just one job to do: end the series on a positive note. Everything else is secondary. As far as that is concerned, the film does a good job. The grand villain (The Emperor) is dispatched, Luke gets a brief moment with his father sans mask, and he returns to his friends to celebrate the rebirth of freedom. Cut to credits. That’s exactly how the series should end, and it does it with great skill and quickness. It doesn’t mess around once the battle is won. Instead, it goes straight to a happy montage of everyone dancing and the movie ends. I appreciate that. I could do without the addition of Hayden Christensen to said montage in the DVD release, but the sentiment is still the same. It’s a sequence that says we’ve reached the end, and we’ve done so without completely screwing the whole series up. To a Star Wars fan back in 1983, I’m sure Return of the Jedi was everything you could have hoped for.

Flaws and all, Return of the Jedi solidified the place of the Star Wars series as one of mainstream cinema’s great accomplishments. In just over six years, George Lucas was able to create a universe and cast of characters that are still revered to this day. Even the most ardent Star Wars hater has to admit how rare something like this is. It’s a shame that Lucas has never really gone on to make any more non-Star Wars films, but when one thing has been so lucrative I guess there’s no real reason to stray from the beaten path. Perhaps he feels that he has already done all he has set out to do, and if that’s the case more power to him. He claims that he’s going to settle down and make smaller independent movies, but there’s plenty of reason to be doubt that. For more than thirty years, he has seemed perfectly fine living off his signature creation. It’s imperfect—like anything—but it’s hard to imagine what the filmmaking landscape would be today if we didn’t have Star Wars. Thankfully, we’ll never know.