Roger Ebert Review:




Here is just one small moment in RETURN OF THE JEDI, a moment you could miss if you looked away from the screen, but a moment that helps explain the special magic of the Star Wars movies. Luke Skywalker is engaged in a ferocious battle in the dungeons beneath the throne room of the loathsome Jabba the Hutt. His adversary is a slimy, gruesome, reptilian monster made of warts and teeth. Things are looking bad when suddenly the monster is crushed beneath a falling door. And then (here is the small moment) there's a shot of the monster's keeper, a muscle-bound jailer, who rushes forward in tears. He is brokenhearted at the destruction of his pet. Everybody loves somebody.

It is that extra level of detail that makes the Star Wars pictures much more than just space operas. Other movies might approach the special effects. Other action pictures might approximate the sense of swashbuckling adventure. But in RETURN OF THE JEDI, as in STAR WARS and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, there's such a wonderful density to the canvas. Things are happening all over. They're pouring forth from imaginations so fertile that, yes, we do halfway believe in this crazy Galactic Empire long ago and far, far away.

RETURN OF THE JEDI is both a familiar movie and a new one. It concludes the stories of the major human characters in the saga, particularly Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Darth Vader. It revisits other characters who seem either more or less than human, including Ben (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Yoda, Chewbacca, and the beloved robots C-3PO and R2-D2. If George Lucas persists in his plan to make nine Star Wars movies, this will nevertheless be the last we'll see of Luke, Han, and Leia, although the robots will be present in all the films.

The story in the Star Wars movies is, however, only part of the film—and a less crucial element as time goes by. What JEDI is really giving us is a picaresque journey through the imagination, and an introduction to forms of life less mundane than our own. In JEDI, we encounter several unforgettable characters, including the evil Jabba the Hutt, who is a cross between a toad and the Cheshire cat; the lovable, cuddly Ewoks, the furry inhabitants of the "forest moon of Endor;" a fearsome desert monster made of sand and teeth; and hateful little ratlike creatures that scurry about the corners of the frame. And there is an admiral for the Alliance who looks like the missing link between Tyrannosaurus Rex and Charles de Gaulle. One thing the Star Wars movies never do is waste a lot of time on introductions. Unlike a lot of special-effects and monster movies, where new creatures are introduced with laborious setups, JEDI immediately plunges its alien beasts into the thick of the action. Maybe that's why the film has such a sense of visual richness. Jabba's throne room, for example, is populated with several weird creatures, some of them only half-glimpsed in the corner of the frame. The camera in JEDI slides casually past forms of life that would provide the centerpiece for lesser movies.

The movie also has, of course, more of the amazing battles in outer space—the intergalactic video games that have been a trademark since STAR WARS. And JEDI finds an interesting variation on that chase sequence in STAR WARS where the space cruisers hurtled through the narrow canyons on the surface of the Death Star. This time, there's a breakneck chase through a forest, aboard airborne motorcycles. After several of the bad guys have run into trees and gotten creamed, you pause to ask yourself why they couldn't have simply flown above the treetops … but never mind, it wouldn't have been as much fun that way.

And RETURN OF THE JEDI is fun, magnificent fun. The movie is a complete entertainment, a feast for the eyes and a delight for the fancy. It's a little amazing how Lucas and his associates keep topping themselves. From the point of view of simple moviemaking logistics, there is an awesome amount of work on the screen in JEDI (twice as many visual effects as STAR WARS in the space battles, Lucas claims). The fact that the makers of JEDI are able to emerge intact from their task, having created a very special work of the imagination, is the sort of miracle that perhaps Obi-Wan would know something about.



Return Of The Jedi: Special Edition

RETURN OF THE JEDI completes the epic STAR WARS cycle with the final destruction of the Empire and the inevitable face-off between Luke Skywalker and the evil Darth Vader, now revealed, as we surmised, to be his father. The film has a tone of its own. If STAR WARS was a brash space opera and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was a visual feast, RETURN OF THE JEDI is a riot of character invention. We get a good look at Jabba the Hutt and his court, we meet the fuzzy-wuzzy Ewoks, and we are confronted by two wonderfully loathsome creatures—the beast in the dungeon beneath Jabba's throne room, and the desert monster made of teeth and gullet. If I had to choose, I would say this is the least of the STAR WARS films. It lacks the startling originality of the first two: It's more concerned with loose ends and final resolutions. It was the correct decision for George Lucas to end with a trilogy and then move to another point in time for the continuation of the saga; to return to these characters a fourth time would destroy the mythic structure of the story and turn it simply into a series.

Still, there are inspired things here. The early scenes are dominated by Jabba the Hutt, whose cavern is populated with lots of small obnoxious creatures in the corners, and with a grotesque intergalactic jazz band that seems to have been improvised along with its music. Secure in his lair, Jabba has Han Solo frozen in a sculpture on the wall, and eventually takes all of our heroes captive. His gurgling voice is wonderfully reprehensible, and he squats beneath his cavern ceiling like a stalagmite of slime. (It has been observed that Jabba seems much larger here than in STAR WARS. Some say it is because he is on a platform, some say it is an optical illusion; I suggest that a hutt is a slug, and slugs continue to grow all of their lives.)

The monster in the dungeon, made of teeth and scales, is the embodiment of disgusting aggression, and yet its death provides one of the movie's finest moments. The creature is crushed beneath a heavy door, and then we see its keeper come forward, weeping to have lost his pet. It's a throwaway moment, but typical of the film's richness.

An extended sequence takes place in the desert, where Jabba's hovercraft positions itself over the creature in the sand, which seems to consist primarily as a large digestive system. He intends to force his captives to walk the plank, but the tables are nicely turned. I have always felt Lucas lost an opportunity here; since Jabba obviously must die at some point, why not feed him to the sand thing? I can envision the hutt's globular body slithering along the plank and plopping down into the big open mouth—and then being spit up again, as too unsavory even for this eating machine. Final shot: Green gooey Jabba-stuff dissolving in the monster's digestive juices under a pitiless sun.

The Ewoks (never referred to by name in the film) are as cute as stuffed animals, and bring a kind of innocence to the Forest Moon, where the power station for the orbiting Death Star is located. Their forest provides the location for the movie's most inexplicable sequences, in which characters chase each other on high-speed hover-scooters. As you know if you have seen the film (and USA Today assures us the average American has seen it several times), bad guys regularly get wiped out by running their scooters into trees. Question: Isn't a thickly-forested area the wrong venue for these vehicles? How about flying above the treetops, where there's nothing to run into?

This third movie lacks the resonance that Obi-Wan and Yoda brought to the second one (they make cameo appearances, but are not major players). We see a great deal more, however, of Darth and the Emperor, who looks uncannily like Death in THE SEVENTH SEAL. There is, of course, the climactic moment when Vader reveals his real face, allowing the character to become the first in movie history to be played by three actors (body by David Prowse, voice by James Earl Jones, face by Sebastian Shaw). By this third installment, I think, we've seen quite enough of the swordplay with laserbeams, and those scenes could be shortened. The Sharper Image catalog, I see, is offering replicas of the lightsabers (cq) for $350 to $450—pricy, when you consider the original prop was a photoflash grip.

At the end of it all, after the three movies, we've taken an epic fantasy journey. George Lucas has in common with all great storytellers the ability to create a complete world; these films may spring from space opera, science fiction and Saturday serials, but they are done so superbly that they transcend all genres, and become a reverberating place in our imaginations.

Thinking back over the three, I find that the most compelling characters are Darth Vader, Yoda, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. That is because their lives and thoughts are entirely focused on The Force. To the degree that characters have distance from the Force, they resonate less: Skywalker is important although boyishly shallow, and Princess Leia harbors treasured secrets, but Han Solo, for all his importance to the plot, is not very interesting as a person, and a little of Chewbacca, as observed earlier, goes a long way.

The droids, R2D2 and C3PO, play much the same role here as their originals did in the movie that inspired them, Kurosawa's THE HIDDEN FORTRESS. They're a team, Laurel and Hardy or Vladimir and Estragon, linked together by fate and personality. The other characters—Lando, Jabba, the Grand Moff Tarkin, and the many walk-ons and bit players—function, in Eliot's words, to swell the progress of a scene or two. At the end, what are we left with? Marvelous sights: The two Death Stars, the lumbering war-machines on the snow planet, space warfare, the desert monster, buckaneering action. Marvelous sounds: The voices of Darth Vader, Jabba, and the chirpy little R2D2. And an idea—the Force—that in encompassing everything may, perhaps, encompass nothing, and conceal another level above, or beneath. I'm guessing that will be the subject of the next trilogy.



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