[ernesttomlinson]

I wrote this to rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc two years ago and I'm arrogant enough to consider it worth reposting here.

Before I go on, by the way, I must say that, despite everything I say here, I'm still rather fond of "Return of the Jedi". I don't mind rewatching the film at all (not like, say, the prequel movies.) But it's still goofy, and here's why.

---

I'm home sick from work watching my Star Wars movie tapes, and a few
thoughts about _Return of the Jedi_ come to mind as I watch.

1. Isn't Luke's plan to rescue Han from Tatooine completely incompetent?
Luke sends R2D2 and C3PO to Jabba's palace as earnests of his goodwill; then
he shows up at night and tries to "Force" Jabba to give Han up. Why, then,
was it necessary or smart for Luke to make a "gift" of the droids, if Luke
was just going to cheat anyway? Leia disguised as a bounty hunter uses
Chewbacca to gain entrance into Jabba's palace, and thus attempts to free
Han; even if she had succeeded, what would have happened to Chewbacca (or
the droids)? Lando has successfully infiltrated himself into the palace,
where he does every bit of nothing.

Basically, everything depends on Luke & Co. all being taken to the same spot
in the desert so that Luke can spring his master rescue plan to save them
all. His master plan consists of getting his light saber from R2D2 and
killing everyone.

2. One of the big problems with _The Phantom Menace_ and _Attack of the
Clones_ is that they're packed with unmotivated action scenes (e.g. the
podrace from TPM, the gladiatorial battle in AotC.) _Return of the Jedi_ is
just as bad. The only reason that Luke ends up fighting the beast in the
pit in Jabba's palace is that, well, he's completely incompetent (see
above). The fight in the desert around the "sail barge" (have I got that
right?) only happens because Lucas painted himself into a corner and needed
some way to rescue everyone who ends up stuck on Tatooine.

3. And that desert fight is hilarious. We expect stormtroopers to be
terrible shots, but Jabba's minions are even worse, I guess. Luke slashes
away merrily while guys with guns only yards away from him stare at him in
slackjawed inaction. Boba Fett can't hit Luke even though he's maybe
fifteen feet away. The one guy who _does_ shoot Luke gets him in the hand,
and then instead of firing again, he watches placidly as Luke cries out,
whirls around and cuts him dead with his light saber.

Other dishonorable mentions: Lando spends the whole sequence hanging from a
rope and screaming for help; nobody seems to notice that Leia is strangling
Jabba to death (the most powerful organized crime boss on Tatooine doesn't
have any bodyguards?).

4. Why the f**k does the commando team on Endor bring C3PO along? He's
slow, he's noisy, he's _shiny_. I can only guess that since they possibly
needed R2D2, they needed C3PO along to translate. _The Phantom Menace_ is
afflicted with the same problem: Jar Jar Binks accompanies Qui-Gon,
Obi-Wan, and Padme on ther expedition into the town on Tatooine, even though
there's no reason for Jar Jar to be there.

4a. Could the commando team on Endor have been more incompetent?

5. Han waxes one of the Imperial soldiers at the shield generator facility
by tagging him with a box full of explosives. The soldier has the drop on
Han, but again, he looks on quietly as Han throws something at his chest.
That's not a very fast way to kill someone--couldn't the soldier have gotten
off at least one shot?

6. "An entire _legion_ of my best troops awaits them!" "Legion" implies
certain things, like drill and discipline. Yet when this "legion" is
attacked, it scatters pell-mell into the woods and allows the good guys to
pick them off man by man. They don't even leave a detachment behind to
guard the shield generator, allowing Leia and Han to work on it almost
unmolested.

7. The good guys get R2D2 to work on the shield generator door. R2D2 is
irreplaceable if killed; he's the only one who can open the door. So
instead of standing in _front_ of him, Han, Leia, and C3PO stand _behind_
R2D2 so that the stormtroopers can have a nice clean shot at him.

8. Roger Ebert, in his "Little Movie Glossary", writes of the "Fallacy of
the Predictable Tree", a common movie error. For example, the cops are
hunting John Rambo in the woods in the movie _First Blood_. A cop pauses
under a tree. Rambo, hiding in the branches, drops on him. But how did
Rambo know that the cop would stop under _his_ tree? The Endor battle in
RotJ is full of such moments. Booby traps take time to set up, and they
have to be set up in particular places; and of course the stormtroopers
obligingly stumble into all of those places, even though they've got the
whole forest to run around in.

9. Before the shield generator blows up, we see Han running away; he gets
maybe fifty yards away and then hunkers down. But in long shot, the
explosions looks to be several city blocks across (and of course it's your
typical movie explosion, with a big fireball obviously generated from the
combustion of gasoline--haven't we seen enough video of _real_
high-explosive demolitions to know that explosions don't really look like
that?)

10. So just how is whiny, California-accented Hayden Christiansen going to
turn into Sebastian Shaw? {ed. Oh, my, how prescient I was!}

I don't really mean too much by all of this--just passing the time until the
antipyretics take effect--but they are among the reasons why I've always
though _Return of the Jedi_ was a silly film. The action scenes are lame,
because the heroes are never in any credible danger, the bad guys are so
thoroughly hapless, and because they often don't happen for any good reason
(unlike, say, the asteroid-field chase in _The Empire Strikes Back_, which
makes sense in terms of the plot.) RotJ is very much like _Attack of the
Clones_, in other words :]

[Vwing]

Ernest good post, I would argue except, these points have been beaten to death already (although number 10 is really a fault of the prequels consistency with the originals, not the other way around, so you can't blame ROTJ for that), and I'm not really in the mood to argue over it again. The next time I talk about ROTJ will be in conjunction with ESB when I watch them back-to-back on a day when I have nothing else to do. Now, this could be tomorrow, Saturday, or it could be a month from now, but the point is I really don't want to argue until then.

What's funny is that Ebert gave the movie 4 stars, though he said it was the least of the trilogy, he still loved it. I'm not saying go by what Ebert says, I'm just saying it's interesting that you mention his rule to degrade the movie, when the man himself sings its praises.

Oh and point 9, first of all I don't think a minor thing like that makes a movie bad, or even less good, but in all fairness, the generator explodes, and I think the generator is higher up than the bunker and so they wouldn't be in that much danger. I'll have to see it again, but I remember thinking it wasn't that bad.

[ernesttomlinson]

I should hardly expect that any of my commentary is too original; after all the movie is not that much older than I am. (I was born in '74.) I contend, however, that far too much criticism of ROTJ has centred about the Ewoks. I don't even think that the concept of the Ewoks is, all by itself, a bad one. Anyone who's familiar with H. Beam Piper's "Fuzzy" stories can't be entirely unsympathetic to tales of (superficially) cuddly, furry little warriors. It's just that Lucas made them ridiculous for a reason that pervades "Return of the Jedi": the good guys win because the bad guys are paralysingly stupid. So I hoped in 2002 to draw some attention to that.

Similarly I contend that far, far too much attention and scorn has been directed at Jar Jar in "The Phantom Menace". He's not the reason the film is bad--at least, not the main reason. Indeed there are moments when he's the only interesting character on screen because everyone else is so flat and stale. "Exsqueeze me" is unforgivable but Episode I has worse moments. "That's gotta hurt!"

[Chefelf]

Just to make sure we're on the same page... you have read this, right?

50 Reasons Jedi Sucks

[ernesttomlinson]

I hadn't read it. (But then have you read "Little Fuzzy"?) I'm looking at it now, and just so soon as I read this line...

"How intensely were the Ewoks marketed? Consider this: Ewok is a household word, despite the fact that it's never once spoken in the film."

I realised how naif I've been. This never occurred to me.

[jariten]

your comments are all valid naturally, and although they occasionally got to me while watching the film, theres something throwaway in the delivery of Jedi that makes it the most brain-switch-off watchable installment in the series.

[Madam Corvax]

I am sorry Ernest. We exhausted these topics long time ago. The discussion got so hot over ROTJ that Chefelf had to lock the topic. It is still somewhere at the bottom.. check it out … those were the days… I haven’t participated then, but I read it all.

Sad thing is, I understood that JYAMG has a point here, we have discussed most of the things related to SW as they are now. I think I need to wait for ROTS to be seriously involved in any discussion.

[Just your average movie goer]

Yeah, I feel kind of tired from going over the same territory again. However, I will say that it always does my heart good to see another fellow Return of the Jedi hater on the board. Far too many people think that as part of the original trilogy, it should be above criticism. Whereas I believe this is where the rot first set in. The Empire Strikes Back set up the precedent for a truly superb climax to the trilogy.. Return of the Jedi returned the favour by wrapping up all the loose ends in a wholly uninteresting and contrived manner, recycled old ideas and locations, dulled down all the main characters and let the Star Wars trilogy die out with a whimper instead of the great climactic ending it deserved. Yes, there are good moments in the film... but not many. As far as worthwhile movie is concerned, there is approximately 40 minutes of it. The problem is that this movie is over two hours long.

For any interested parties, here is the debate on the subject that was so hot, Chefelf had to lock the thread. You can decide for yourself which side had the better argument. It is worth a look.

Where the biggest debate on Return of the Jedi kicked off.

[Chefelf]

(But then have you read "Little Fuzzy"?)

What's Little Fuzzy?

[ernesttomlinson]

It's a fairly well regarded book by science fiction writer H. Beam Piper in the '60s. The lucrative development of a planet (called, unfortunately, Zarathustra; SF writers often didn't have much imagination then, or now) is threatened because a prospector discovers that one of its lifeforms, small, furry humanoids jokingly called "Fuzzies", are possibly sapient.

Search around a bit; you'll find hardly anything bad said about Piper. I don't mean that as proof that his work (and there were more "Fuzzy" books) is good; I cite it rather as indication that having, er, little fuzzy creatures in a sci-fi story shouldn't be an automatic death warrant. It's what's done with the fuzzies that matters.

[Paladin]

I didn't think ROTJ was all that bad when I first saw it... but it could have had something to do with the fact that I was 13 years old, very easy to excite and irritate, and all in all inexperianced in judging movie quality.

Now I just don't care anymore.

[Chefelf]

You can get Little Fuzzy" for $0.15 on Amazon.com! Maybe we should all get a copy and discuss! Or I may just send them out as Christmas cards.

I didn't think ROTJ was all that bad when I first saw it... but it could have had something to do with the fact that I was 13 years old, very easy to excite and irritate, and all in all inexperianced in judging movie quality.

Well, I saw it when I was 6 (got lost in the theatre and started crying). I like it, obviously. As I grew older I found myself less impressed with it than the other two. I then found myself fast-forwarding past the Tatooine bits at the beginning and some of the slower Ewok parts. I still really like the story and Vader's character development. It has its flaws but tying up a trilogy is never easy.

[Michel Orla]

I remember seeing Empire when I was three (no idea why my mom would take me when I was so young) and being scared and bored. Three years later I saw Jedi in the movie theatre and loved every second. Now it's quite the opposite. I can watch Empire over and over, and with the exception of the final Vader/Luke duel, can't really focus on most of ROTJ. ROTJ was definitely for a younger Star Wars crowd. Much younger

[Garth Vader]

Great things about jedi (some of the the best in the trilogy):

Opening scene with vader
Luke walking the plank and taking on jabba's criminals single handedly - first time you see a jedi night in action, even if it wasn't that well done of an action set piece.
The death of Yoda. That little light that goes out in his little home - heartbreaking!
speeder bike chase.
Luke and Leia in the village.
The emporer
Luke and vader meeting one another on endor.
The final confrontation between luke and vader
the final space battle. all of it.
vader destroys the emporer
vader's funeral
when lando and wedge enter the core of he DS - amazing scene.

Bad things about jedi:

Ewoks
The emporer's "best legion of troops". all 50 of them were absolute wasters who couldn't hit a cows ass with a banjo.
Shuttle tyderium. I used to think it was vader's personal ship - everyone in the empire seems to use it. They should've made different imperial star ships instead of the same one all the time.
The battle on endor was far too small scale for star wars, an intergalactic empire leaves a bunker unguarded for folk to gain access and blow up an entire sheild. Surely the whole area would've been an imperial stronghold? Disappointed that lucas never made it more grander in scale for the final installment - it was kind of a lazy half assed approach.
Ewoks. and their stupid music theme and little sticks - the low point of the SW OT. No way believable as warriors who could fight the empire.
all the puppets and jabba's palace kinda sucked as well.
The take down of the Super star destroyer - couple of pint size a-wings took it down? How about being a bit more bold and having a couple of blokade runners ram into its bridge?
the overral jevenile theme that wasn't present in empire. very annoying.

This post has been edited by Garth Vader: 08 October 2004 - 08:11 PM

[Just your average movie goer]

I remember enjoying it immensely when I was a kid... but when I was a kid, I thought ewoks were cool too. As you get older, things change.

Now, I've watched all three films countless times over the years. The more I watched Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, the more I appreciated what masterpieces they were. These films seem better and better with age - timeless classics.

Now Return of the Jedi hasn't aged well at all. It punishes repeat viewing, rather than rewarding it. The 50 Reasons Why Jedi Sucks website touches on a lot of the problems... but believe me, that's only the tip of the iceberg.

The whole Jabba sequence was unbelievable... the contrived, hopelessly complicated plan by Luke was just childish. What if Jabba had accepted Luke's "gifts" and let Han go? What if Leia had been killed? What if she succeeded - who would rescue Chewbacca then? At the start of the sequence, there was one person who needed to be rescued. At the end of it, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, Threepio, R2 and even Lando had be to rescued too. Nice work, Luke. Why didn't he just go in and rescue Han by himsef, seeing that's what he did at the end anyway?

Also, Jabba was just a nonsense creature... a fat slug, who can't move. I have so many problems with him. Why wasn't he a person or at least a humanoid? Why did he feed women to a rancor? Han worked for this guy, right? What does that say about Han? In Star Wars, Han was shady... but in light of Return of the Jedi, knowing that Han worked for a guy who fed women to monsters for his perverted pleasure, then Han comes across as being downright dispicable.

Also, Jabba the Hutt was supposed to be in charge of a galactic smuggling ring... yet he lived in a primitive fortress, most of his guards used axes instead of guns and he didn't even have a single spaceship!

I think a charming card playing scoundrel who lived in some bustling city, full of dodgy bastards like himself, would have been a much better Jabba. And also, being back on Tatooine sucked. The Empire Strikes Back gave us three new locales. Return of the Jedi gave us a grand total of one. And having been filmed in California, instead of Tunisia, Tatooine was a lot more boring this time around as well.

Also, Boba Fett... what the hell was he doing there? He'd finished his job for Jabba... why would he stay around? Oh wait, so Lucas can kill him off in this ridiculous slapstick manner for a burp joke. Har dee har har har.

And speaking of slapstick, let's not forget the giant teddy bear type Elephant covering his eyes when Leia pulled out the thermal detonator, the ever-annoying Salucious Crumb and that stupid, stupid laugh of his, R2 comically zapping him later on, Threepio falling over in this ridiculous manner um... three times...

1. Jabba hits Threepio and he falls over. Snare drum.
2. A gamorrean guard knocks Threepio over. Snare drum.
3. R2 pushes Threepio off the barge and he falls over headfirst. Loud applause.

Oh, and let's not forget Han's comedy hour!

Threepio - His high exaltedness, the great Jabba the Hutt has decreed that you are to be terminated immediately (note how this dialogue isn't like anything else anyone has ever said in these films before).

Han - Good, I hate long waits.

Snare drum.

Han - Thank you, thank you.

Threepio - You will therefore be taken to the dune sea and cast into the pit of carcoon, the nesting place of the all-powerful sarlaac.

Han - Doesn't sound so bad.

Snare drum.

Han - Thank you, thank you.

Threepio - In his belly, you will discover a new definition of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over a thousand years.

Han - On second thoughts, let's pass of that.

LOUD APPLAUSE!

Threepio - Wow! Put your hands together for Han Solo! Han Solo, everyone!


Have I missed anything? Um, let's not forget the freakin' musical number. I know Lucas was trying to recreate the cantina scene from Star Wars but the problem was that he failed... miserably. Jabba the Hutt's throne room is nothing like the cantina scene. Also, the cantina scene was good.

Bib Fortuna.... this guy annoys me... "Hey gooda... de wanna wonga?" Grrr.

Torturing droids for laughs.... yeah, I think the 50 Reasons site summed this one up for me.

The ridiculous slapstick melee that was the battle in the dune sea. At this point, I would really like to give special thanks to ernesttomlinson. I thought I was the only one who was bothered by that guy who shoots Luke's hand... and then just stands there doing nothing and let's Luke knock him off the barge. The childish squel he makes is silly too. What's worse is that he seems to actually jump backwards off the barge by himself, even ducking under a railing. Makes me wonder why Luke even bothered to hit him for.

The editing in this scene is terrible too. Did anyone notice the Russian looking guy with the earmuff hat (in the middle of a scorching hot desert of all places). He's standing behind one of the guns. Leia is running over there when Luke tells her to get the main gun and point it at the deck. The problem here is that the "Russian guy" just mysteriously disappears in an instant. Whereas, anyone who's gone through that stage where you look up pics of Leia in that gold bikini knows that there's a picture of her charging at that Russian guy with what looks like a pole axe.

So methinks Leia skewered him and the sequence was cut out... I wonder why... was it too nasty for children, George? Okay, fair enough.

Next question - why did you have a scene in which a very young woman is devoured by a monster because she refused sexual invitations from Jabba... and then she died in terror while Jabba and his henchmen looked on and laughed? This seems very inappropriate for children. Man, Tarantino isn't that sick. So why did you include that scene?

Oh, you're a hypocritical bastard and you were getting ready for the next Indiana Jones installment where you have a man get his heart ripped out of his chest and burned alive? Ah, I see.


Okay, one last word on the Jabba sequence. It is time filler because the rest of the movie didn't have a plot.... blow up the Death Star is not a plot. You can see a lot of creative thought went into this film...

The whole sequence, like the Endor crap later on, also feels like a major interruption in the film. Vwing made a point about the openning sequence in the movie. It wasn't too bad. Vader arrived and he warned the commander of the Emperor's imminent arrival that would come soon after. Now yes, Han had to be rescued after this... but did it have to take so damn long?

Okay, some people say how can you criticise these things if you don't have an alternative of your own? Good point. So here, I'll give you an alternative openning sequence for the film...