Return of the Jedi review- ***, 1983, (dir. Richard Marquand).
PLOT SYNOPSIS:
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and the gang race against time to rescue their beloved scoundrel Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from carbonite purgatory while facing certain confrontation with crime lord Jabba the Hutt. Meanwhile, the Rebellion and the Galactic Empire are gearing up for warfare, as Darth Vader (David Prowse) prepares to confront his newfound son yet again. If you don’t understand a word of this, read no further.
THE REVIEW:
The beginning of the end for the Star Wars franchise, both for its filmic canon and in its quality. The greatness and operatic grandeur hinted at in The Empire Strikes Back is almost completely brought to a dead halt this time around as frenetic action takes precedence over drama and character development (traits that were so vital to the making the film’s predecessor work so well).
Luke’s turn from the vulnerable, bruised protagonist in the 2nd film to know-it-all messiah in ROTJ is almost wholly unconvincing. Even the gritty and lovable outlaw Han Solo has diminished as a real-world counterpoint to all the routine, archetypal fairy tale elements of the films thus far. In simpler words- he's lost his edge (note that most of the character’s best remembered dialogue appears in the other two films). Adding to this mess are some rather outlandish plot elements including an abrupt brother-sister revelation and an extended rescue sequence in the first portion of the film that stretches on for far too long (oh, and lest we forget the forest-dwelling Ewoks, but enough bile has been spouted about these fuzz balls already).
Still, there are elements in here that more than save the film from nose-diving into disaster. Creature design is quite imaginative this time around (look at the slug-like wonder that is Jabba the Hutt), and the space battle engulfing the final third act of the film is a beautiful, penultimate display of ILM’s model and compositing work (before CGI became a cinematic substitute for all things fantastical). Even a redemption involving the series’ central villain manages to rouse some emotions in this reviewer’s heart.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Its not that Return of the Jedi is a particularly bad film. It’s just that its mediocrity is too strong of a come down after the brilliance of the trilogy’s middle picture. It was the The Empire Strikes Back that managed to puncture the Saturday matinee feel of the series with a refined dramatic and aesthetic feeling (qualities that I’m certain SW creator George Lucas couldn’t have envisioned when he dreamed up this Flash Gordon tribute of a franchise in the first place). If Return of the Jedi was the beginning of the end, then the Prequels (the most recent trilogy of the Star Wars saga) were its final, crushing blows. Sad, really, considering how much I wanted this series to regain its old glories.
-Nadim Zaidi
