Pardon me while I ramble on about how much I love this movie...
Return of the Jedi (1983)
Director: Richard Marquand
Country: United States
Length: 132 minutes
Type: Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Yeah objectively
'The Empire Strikes Back' is probably the better film and yeah
'Star Wars' was the ground breaking one but
'Return of the Jedi' has always been my favourite. I love the scale, the drama, the emotion, the imagination, the excitement, the fun, the hordes of weird aliens and armadas of space ships engaged in titanic battles, realised through unrivalled practical FX. RotJ was/is arguably the most abused film in the trilogy "special edition" changes wise. So thank heavens that today I sat down to watch the 4K83 fan scan of a theatrical print for the first time (minimal DNR version of course). I've never seen a transfer of the movie look this detailed, contrasty, clean, colourful and rich with grain. All the matte paintings/glass shots look better than on the Blu-ray, not over exposed and miscoloured but perfectly meshed with the live action. The matte lines are also hardly visible, which puts the lie to the 1997 claims that they needed to recomposite and change everything to "fix" these films. If they ever release a true official version I'll buy it but I can't imagine it looking better than this.
I can never get over the thrill of the Sarlaac scene when Luke catches the Lightsaber timed with
John Williams' score and starts wrecking the place. It's easy to forget that we'd never seen a Jedi be a "Jedi Knight" until that point (before all the Jedi saturated videogames, sequels and spinoffs). We'd seen two lightsaber duels but not the full powers of these legendary warriors that old Ben spoke of in the first film, able to take on Jabba's entire retinue single handedly (it's literally seeing
"The Return of the Jedi"). RotJ was also the first time we saw the Rebels doing rebel stuff (which again is ubiquitous in the spinoffs), a strike team on a covert mission behind enemy lines, using stolen codes from other rebel agents, planting bombs, taking down shields. I'm not sure but was this the first full-scale space battle on film, the first actual
"star war"? SW had some dogfights and ESB had a ground battle but vast capital ships, cruisers and squadrons of fighters facing off? The arrival of CG allowed a mid-90s, mid-budget TV show like
Babylon 5 to regularly mount battles of the same scale and similar quality (and that was a quarter-century ago), since then we might have gotten a bit jaded with that sort of thing. But to do this back in 1983 with models, motion-control and optical compositing was astonishing. The FX used in RotJ's space scenes will possibly never be bettered. It's not just that they are technically brilliant, the camera movements are so natural and free flowing. The shot where the camera is following Lando and Wedge racing along close to the Death Star's surface, swerving between pylons and then does a rapid turn and takes us straight down spiralling into the interior of the space station takes my breath away every time. Then the Falcon blasting back out of the fireball at the last minute with
Billy Dee Williams shouting
"Yee-haa!" is one of my all time favourite movie moments. I'd rate Williams' score as his best for the trilogy because he gets to play with all the themes from the last two movies and weave in beautiful new ones. On this re-watch I was really appreciating the Emperor's spider web throne room design, plus all the incredible drama set within it and the intensity of the cold blue lighting.
I never really had a problem with the Ewoks. Some find them too cute but they are introduced trying to cook our heroes alive and they often get criticised for defeating the heavily armed Empire with sticks and stones, which they don't really do. They create a diversion and in the process of getting half massacred, set the Rebel team free and buy Chewie the opportunity to steal an AT-ST and turn the tide of the battle. It's true that
Harrison Ford isn't putting as much effort into his performance but 1983 Harrison easily has enough charm to coast a little and still be enjoyable to watch. RotJ also gets single out for having a 36-minute mini-adventure on Tatooine, before moving on to the main plot, even though ESB opens with a mini-adventure on Hoth before moving on with the main plot, which is exactly 36-minutes long too. There are lots of original pop-culture trilogies that have a great first movie and some that have a better second film but there are few that have a straight run of three classics and manage to wrap up a continuous narrative with as much crowd-pleasing satisfaction as RotJ (I might include the
'Back to the Future' trilogy, depending on how generous I was feeling towards part 2).
'The Matrix',
'Terminator' and
'Alien' stories all went off the rails, on or before the third movie and
Star Trek's fantastic and dramatically weighty "Spock trilogy" concludes with a light time-travel comedy about whales (which I do love). RotJ manages to concludes all the plot threads left over from the last two movies, Han's fate, his romance with Leia, Luke's evolution as a Jedi, the rising rebellion, Lando's redemption, Vader/Anakin's arc, good's triumph over evil and does it all in a big exciting action adventure. I hadn't really noticed before that in the penultimate shot of the film, a smiling
Mark Hamill briefly looks straight into the camera and winks at the audience before turning away, kinda like
"that's all folks" and sometimes I wish it was (the moment was removed in all versions after 1997).
As delightfully cheesy as the voiceover is on this vintage 35mm trailer, it absolutely nails what the film is all about. I love that
"The heart of a hero... the courage of a rebel... the strength of a leader... the loyalty of comrades" bit: