04 May Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi Review

RETURN OF THE JEDI

dir. Richard Marquand, starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Ian McDiarmid, et al.

I was born in 1979, and Return of the Jedi is the first Star Wars movie I remember seeing to any degree. I didn’t just see this movie in theaters; I was old enough to soak in every aspect of the marketing blitz. The action figures. The play-along cassette/book combos. The Marvel Comics adaptation. I had it all. I bring this up because viewing and enjoying this film today tends to be, for me, more nostalgia-driven than other entries in the franchise.

Coming of age in the ‘90s, the debate being had among many of my friends and the “older kids” I was occasionally in the presence of, whether at school or in my early days slinging popcorn at a local theater, was which Star Wars film was superior: Empire or Jedi. Hell, Kevin Smith even devoted an entire scene of Clerks to the argument. It struck me as odd then – Empire is objectively the better movie by a mile – but it’s even weirder to me now, as Jedi wasn’t even the second-best Star Wars movie back in the days when there were only three of them.

This isn’t to say Jedi is a bad film. Far from it. But I’ve always viewed it as a shot of pure nostalgia not just because of its place in my original viewing order, but in how it’s intended to function as a movie. Star Wars: A New Hope set the stage, Empire upended it, and Jedi took everything everyone loved the most and cranked the dial up to 11. The scenes in Jabba’s palace make the cantina sequence of A New Hope look like a dozen guys made a run to Spirit Halloween and slapped some costumes together in about five minutes (which, to be fair, they did). The final space battle is suitably sprawling, with virtually uncountable numbers of TIEs, X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-wings, Star Destroyers both Super and Original Recipe, and even a sneaker rumored to be in there somewhere. It is, as both a technical standpoint and a piece of cinematic entertainment, an absolute marvel.

And still, for the at-the-time conclusion of the biggest blockbuster film series in history, many of the proceedings feel relatively small or rushed. The battle for the soul of Luke Skywalker deserves this treatment, and the movie delivers on the Luke/Vader showdown spectacularly. And sure, there’s a new Death Star, but they improved this one by…widening the design flaw that proved catastrophic for the first one? Two proton torpedoes? Try an entire damn squadron. This station never stood a chance, and never matches the fearsome spectacle of “the first dreaded Death Star.” And then there’s the final scene, in which our heroes celebrate with…a cookout? I’m not the only one who thinks the finale of the movie is a little too intimate for the implied stakes involved – Lucas himself added the celebration sequences from other recognizable locations across the galaxy to the 1997 Special Edition, just to let us know that, yes, the rest of the galaxy IS happy that the terrorists won this time.

And surely no one would’ve imagined that the battle for the fate of the galaxy would ultimately be won by a bunch of primitive, forest dwelling bears. Well, except maybe the guys at Kenner, who must’ve been chomping at the yuzzum to turn each and every one into a toy (Fun Fact: I absolutely knew Chief Chirpa’s name before I knew Mon Mothma’s, and that’s all due to the shrewd marketing decisions of Lucasfilm and Kenner execs). What does manage to sort of surprise me, thinking back on those conversations of the ‘90s, was just how many of the same people arguing on behalf of Return of the Jedi as the best Star Wars movie were, just a few years later, grousing about a certain race of underwater goobers who ultimately functioned in much the same way in The Phantom Menace.

My point in all of this: nostalgia. Jedi arrived for an entire generation – myself at last included – that craved exactly what it delivered. Derring-do. Spaceship fights. The greatest Rebel pals in the galaxy reunited for the first time since the opening moments of Empire. TONS of new background characters ripe for toy production. A lightsaber fight for the ages. Everything A New Hope brought to the table six years earlier, Jedi amplified.

So why then is it merely the third-best movie in that classic trilogy? Because it doesn’t break new ground; it gives us exactly what we already know we want. It does it marvelously, and it remains essential viewing, but I would hesitate to put it against A New Hope, and I wouldn’t dream of comparing it to the far superior Empire. In a restaurant where Empire is the filet mignon and A New Hope the dazzling appetizer that you wish you had ordered two plates of, Jedi is the comfort food that’s always just as tasty as you remember and feels like a warm blanket (I still have the bedsheets to prove it). And that’s just fine.

Review by Brian Martin