Review: Star Wars - Return Of The Jedi

Star Wars - Episode VI
Return Of The Jedi
Cert: PG / 135 mins / Dir. Richard Marquand / Trailer

The third film of the Original Trilogy has been a part of my life for four decades now, so in the absence of a local screening*¹ I happily made the pilgrimage to London's Empire Leicester Square to be in likeminded celebratory company. This was the first time I'd seen Return Of The Jedi in a cinema since its 1997 Special Edition release (although this 40th anniversary screening was of the 2011 Blu-ray edit), and the first time I'd ever seen it projected digitally.

Star Wars is - as ever - the gift that keeps on giving, and so it's taken me forty years to actually notice C-3PO's behavior here. Our hero - indeed our very gateway to the Galaxy Far, Far Away - is fluent in over six million forms of communication and as a professional diplomat is programmed for etiquette and protocol. Not only will Threepio be able to effortlessly converse in your particular language wherever you're from, but he knows your habits and customs too. No gaffes, no embarrassments, nothing lost in translation. This droid is literally built to be polite and accommodating in difficult situations.

So what does Goldenrod do when he arrives at the palace of Jabba The Hutt, a den of iniquity populated by the edgy, the paranoid, the insalubrious and the morally bankrupt, on a backwater hideout on a lawless world? What does See-Threepio bring to the table to diffuse tension, smooth feathers and put the Rebellion's grand plan into effect without the upsetting of these potential spanners in the Alliance's works, all of whom converse in Huttese as befits the infamously selfish and mercurial crime lord who holds their lives and livelihoods on a grubby thread?

He speaks English*². To all of them. Relentlessly. What an absolute fucking Brit.

That's it. No other notes.

*¹ Seriously though, it's the fortieth anniversary of a Star Wars film, and to celebrate Cineworld showed it for one day at 10 (ten) of their 103 UK cinemas. Odeon screened it at 9 venues nationally and Vue ran the film in 8. If this was a new flick you'd swear the studio wanted it to be eligible for the Oscars to had to play it in a cinema, but also didn't want to drive viewers away from the proprietary streaming platform they've invested all their money in. And that's before we ask why an anniversary screening is running on April the 28th then the film was originally released on the 25th of May. Unless there's going to be a wider re-release next month. In which case I shall go and see it again. I mean, obviously. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Okay technically it's 'Galactic Basic', but the point still stands. He's even speaking in Basic when he's supposed to be translating between Ubese and Huttese. A very imperial attitude... ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

All I want for Christmas...

…is to make sure you never watch this scene the same way again.

Happy Christmas, you lovely lot!
Yen,
Blackout Towers,
December 2013.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

60: Twelve Movies - Return of the Jedi

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.



12 Days: 12 Movies – Special Edition
Day Four: Return of the Jedi
(1983, 129mins, Dir. Richard Marquand)



And so we get to what is generally considered the black sheep of the Original Trilogy. A lot of puppets and folks-in-suits, which led people to think of it as more of a ‘kiddies film’, but after the darkness of Empire, they’d have had that problem with any film that didn’t kill all of the heroes at the end...

Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker both turn up at Jabba the Hutt’s pad, intent on freeing Han Solo from his (wardrobe-malfunctioning) carbonite prison. It all kicks off, and before long, our band of plucky terrorists (that’s what they are, people) are steaming into Endor to blow up a government installation, and receive the trust and help of an indigenous population that the Empire would have realistically slaughtered before setting up the shield-generator base.

That aside, I love the third act of this film; the duel between Vader and Skywalker is amazingly choreographed and executed, with The Emperor providing the same voyeuristic interest that the audience also have. Ian McDiarmid is excellent in this movie; bear in mind that he was only in his thirties the first time he played The Emperor, before ‘growing into the role’ for the prequel trilogy.

In my humble opinion, it’s the weakest of the Original Trilogy films, but with an ending as strong as this, it’s almost certainly better than you remember.



The Good: The final, protracted, awesome duel. Beautiful acting from Prowse, McDiarmid, Jones and of course Hamill. And the sound-design during the speeder-bike chase is beautiful.



The Bad: Even if it was viable to torture droids, you wouldn’t do it by branding their feet. It just defies the logic which the SW universe has worked so hard to build up. Also, the threat of the Sarlaac Pit; to be “slowly digested over 1,000 years”. Well, given that a human would be dead from dehydration/starvation in under 10 days, it’s not that bad, is it? Oh, and Carrie Fisher’s acting in the ‘revelation’ scene. Jeez...



The Ugly: Han’s shirt does a reverse switch, to complement the one it did in Empire. I’m not sure if this means the continuity people noticed or not...

Best Line: “So be it... Jedi.”, The Emperor

My biased rating: 7/10


Tomorrow: Ewoks: Caravan of Courage

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

33: Dress to Distress

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh lanugage and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.



You know in Return of the Jedi? When the Rebels are on Endor, and like the terrorists they are, they steal some bikes and proceed to kill the guards? Well, when Leia meets Wicket, she's dressed like this:



...not exactly skimpy, is it? In fact, it's rather practical. So she heads off to the Ewok village with Wicket, unable to speak a word of the local language, and her co-conspiritors turn up a few hours later. When she comes out to see what all the shouting is about, she's wearing this:



Why? She was already wearing clothes, it's not like the Ewoks have made her put something more 'appropriate' on, and it's certainly less practical for fighting off an invading extra-terrestrial army. It's not even like the Ewoks wear clothes! Apart from a couple of head-dresses and some practical slings/bandoliers, they're all walking around in the nip! So rather than try to communicate with the little critters about their impending doom, she's got a few of them to cobble a dress together for her. Charming.

Maybe if Leia had been in the village for a few days, or her clothes had been irreparably damaged?



But no. She goes back to wearing her military gear later on. Costume change for the sake if it, apparently. There wasn't even a figure produced of the Ewok dress back in the old days, so it's not even like GL was wanting to push more toys (although there are several versions of that outfit now, obviously).

So what gives?



DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.