Revisiting Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983): Dir. Richard Marquand. Written by: Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas. Story by: George Lucas. Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and Ian McDiarmid. Rated PG (Stormtrooper on Ewok violence and a revealing gold bikini). Running time: 134 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

When we last left our heroes, things weren’t looking too good. Luke abandoned his Jedi training to fight his (spoiler alert) father, Darth Vader, and lost his right hand in the process. Han Solo was frozen in carbonite and taken by a bounty hunter, his fate now in the hands of the gangster Jabba the Hutt, to whom Han owes a considerable debt. The Rebel Alliance suffered a serious blow in their war against the Empire when their secret base on Hoth was invaded and obliterated. Good must prevail though and the battle comes to a conclusion in Return of the Jedi, the whiz-bang final chapter of George Lucas’s Star Wars saga.

The film opens on Tatooine, the homeworld of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), where Jabba’s lair rests between the sand dunes. Jabba, as it turns out, is a massive, ill-tempered slug and his horrifying, bloated body is one of Mr. Lucas’s finest creations. He remains planted on a raised platform while musicians and dancers perform for him. The fact that he never moves is a sure sign of the influence he holds over the unsavory characters who hang around his palace. The rescue of Han Solo (Harrison Ford), which involves an elaborate bit of deception and more than one lucky break, takes up the first half hour. Its a thrilling sequence and the highlight of the film.

But there are bigger foes to face (if not in actual size) than Jabba and in Return of the Jedi we finally meet the dreaded Emperor (Ian McDiarmid). In the film’s opening scene, Darth Vader (the body of David Prowse, the voice of James Earl Jones and – at long last – the face of Sebastian Shaw) tells the commander of a second Death Star, “The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.” The irony of this comment is surely not lost the commander, having no doubt heard about the half-dozen officers who were strangled to death by Vader in the last film.

The remainder of the movie follows Luke, Han, Leia (Carrie Fisher) and the rest of the Alliance as they plot to destroy the new Death Star before it becomes fully operational. In order to do so, they must first take out a power supply located on a nearby “forest moon” called Endor. There they find an unlikely ally in an indigenous species of waddling teddy bears so cuddly that everyone in the movie smiles at the sight of them.

Return of the Jedi, written by Lawrence Kasdan and Mr. Lucas and directed by Richard Marquand, has no shortage of creative creatures or locales but its tone is confused. George Lucas seems to want the film to be a light-hearted adventure, perhaps more in the vein of A New Hope. Return of the Jedi, however, does not have the simple, classical structure that is essential to that film's plucky innocence. Instead Jedi chases multiple narrative threads much as The Empire Strikes Back does but it’s difficult to take Jedi as seriously as Empire because it so often undermines its own drama.

In its final act, when the tension should be at its height, the movie oddly juggles two vastly different moods. The antics of the Ewoks, even in battle, are broad comic relief, an odd counterpoint to the gloom of Luke’s confrontation with the Emperor. The film needs to choose – it can’t have it both ways – and Mr. Marquand clumsily moves from one to the other without finding an appropriate middle ground.

He also lets the movie slouch during key scenes, bringing Jedi’s energy and momentum to a halt. In Luke’s revealing conversation with Leia under the stars – where he discusses some important familial connections crucial to the mythology of the series – Mr. Marquand does little to liven the bland performances of Mr. Hamill and Ms. Fisher and what should be a startling revelation becomes a snoozer of a scene.

Plenty of stuff happens in Return of the Jedi and yet there isn’t much of a story. Once the action gets going, there aren’t any surprises. Everything plays out as you would expect and, in a way, that sounds like a satisfying movie. But simply following one narrow path toward the inevitable Jedi victory with nary a twist or turn thrown in to surprise audiences makes for underwhelming entertainment. If the first Star Wars set the blueprint for the present-day Hollywood blockbuster and The Empire Strikes Back elevated the genre with smart storytelling and artful style, Return of the Jedi is one of the first “event movies” to opt for the easy route: Give audiences what they want, don’t take many risks and success will be guaranteed.

That may sound like faint praise (it is) but I mean it when I say the film is a success. That it is still pretty good fun is a testament to the strength of its best moments. The speeder chase on Endor is as lively and exciting as anything in the series and the segment at Jabba’s palace could stand on its own as a mini-episode. I am also fond of the performances of Harrison Ford and Ian McDiarmid, both of whom know how to handle this material. Return of the Jedi stands on the shoulders of its predecessors and delivers more of the same. I wish it had tried to do more but, as a friend of mine once told me, there is no “try.” Only this.

- Steve Avigliano, 4/5/12

Revisiting Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980): Dir. Irvin Kershner. Written by: Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kadan. Story by: George Lucas. Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams. Rated PG (A severed hand and some questionable father-son bonding). Running time: 124 minutes.

4 stars (out of four)

The Empire Strikes Back takes a good thing and makes it great. A select few sequels are able to pull this trick off. Whereas the first film is typically burdened by necessary but cumbersome tasks like introducing characters and establishing setting, a sequel has the opportunity to use its predecessor as a launching pad, a base with which the audience is already familiar, and take off in bold, new directions.

This particular sequel is fortunate enough to have been given a whole universe to play with and freely invents new worlds for its characters to visit and subsequently blast the heck out of. The planet-hopping begins on an ice world called Hoth where the film’s first act takes place. There, Luke (Mark Hamill), Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Han (Harrison Ford) hide from the Empire in a secret base with their Rebel Alliance buddies.

The opening sequence concludes with a spectacularly exciting ground battle in which the Rebels just barely escape extermination. (The Empire’s small army of four-legged, mechanical colossuses is a highlight.) The gang is forced to split up and from here the movie follows two main narrative threads. Luke looks to further his Jedi training by seeking out a wise, old master named Yoda in the remote swamps of Dagobah. Meanwhile, Han and Leia, along with furry first mate Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and C-3PO, the pesky cyborg with a British accent, navigate the dangers of deep space after a close call with Imperial ships.

In a number of scenes, the film adopts a dark, grungy sci-fi style reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s Alien, released in 1979, one year before Empire. The Rebel base on Hoth has the look of a hastily built safe house – stray wires and power generators are all over the place – and maintenance on Han Solo’s prized ship, the Millennium Falcon, involves tinkering behind wall panels with a rusty box of tools.

These sets – along with the perpetually overcast and bat-infested marshes of Dagobah; the cold, metallic interiors of the Imperial Star Destroyers; and the industrial inner workings of Cloud City where the climactic battle between Luke and Darth Vader takes place – flesh out the Star Wars universe and reveal it to be an expansive place that is not necessarily always pretty.

Director Irvin Kershner and cinematographer Peter Suschitzky shoot these locations in a way that suggests much more of these worlds exists beyond the frame. A number of the fancier set pieces are filmed with a large depth of field, which allows several layers of background activity to be seen in a single shot. What was likely a limited set becomes bustling with life and action. There is always something interesting to look at in this film.

The movie’s success does not rest solely on its visual style though. The script, written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan from a story by George Lucas, is more sophisticated than the first Star Wars. There are gray areas between good and evil, and independent agents such as Han’s dashing pal Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), who picks neither side in the war and acts in his own best interest. But none of the darkness or complexity of the film dampens its sense of whimsy. Even in the face of the dark and ominous power of the Empire, the adventures of our plucky heroes remain lighthearted.

The romance between Han and Leia adds a new wrinkle of human interest. The flirtatious banter between Mr. Ford and Ms. Fisher could be from an old Hollywood romantic comedy; the wit and rhythm of their dialogue recalls that of Bogart and Bacall:

Han: “Come on, admit it, sometimes you think I’m all right.”

Leia: “Occasionally. Maybe. When you aren’t acting like a scoundrel.”

“Scoundrel? …Scoundrel? …I like the sound of that.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop that. My hands are dirty.”

“My hands are dirty too. What are you afraid of?”

“Afraid?”

“You’re trembling.”

“I’m not trembling.”

“You like me because I’m a scoundrel. There aren’t enough scoundrels in your life.”

“I happen to like nice men.”

“I’m a nice man.”

“No you’re not. You’re—”

They kiss.

The Empire Strikes Back is blockbuster filmmaking at its finest, full of explosions and excitement but also crafted with care. Far too many of today’s summer heavy-hitters seem to be going through the multi-million dollar motions only for the box office. What a shame. Here is a movie that does not take its profits for granted (and given the success of Star Wars, it most certainly could have) and instead sets a high water mark for quality in big budget action movies.

- Steve Avigliano, 3/20/12

Revisiting Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977): Written and directed by George Lucas. Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing and Alec Guinness. Rated PG (Mild scum and villainy). Running time: 121 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Imagine reading the opening crawl of Star Wars for the first time. A strangely worded, yellow text drifts upward and fades into the stars. It references a war, a princess, an evil empire and a DEATH STAR (inexplicably capitalized) and the whole thing sounds like more than you’ve bargained for. But, really, how can you be expected to focus on flying words when music like this playing underneath them? Trumpets and strings and timpani! All that nonsense about a hidden base and stolen plans was a bit discouraging but it’s hard to resist the triumphant pomp of the score so, okay, for now, you bite.

The movie quickly recovers from a risky opening with a stunning first image and any hesitation you may have felt is rendered irrelevant. The camera pans downward to reveal a single planet floating among the stars. The camera continues to pan and you see a second, larger planet. Then another, the biggest yet, enters the frame and a spaceship soars, apparently from behind you, onto the screen. And just when you’re starting to think, “You know, maybe this movie will be kind of cool after all,” a second one, a real behemoth of a battleship, follows the first in hot pursuit, firing lasers at the little guy.

That the opening shot of Star Wars is still effective testifies to the visual bravura of director George Lucas but it must have been all the more thrilling in 1977 when the idea of a summer blockbuster loaded with special effects was still sort of new.

The first line in the movie is stupendously underwhelming. Inside the ship, as two classes of soldiers shoot laser guns at each other, a gold-plated humanoid robot says to a rolling garbage can, “Did you hear that? They shut down the main reactor. We’ll be destroyed for sure. This is madness!” As if you are actually paying attention to dialogue at a time like this.

Okay, let’s take stock of what’s happened so far. There has been an awful lot of excitement but still not much of a sense of what’s at stake here. That robot just mentioned something about “being sent to the spice mines of Kessel,” whatever that means, but that seems a dubious premise for a movie so you decide to wait for the next piece of information.

And it comes quickly! A man in a black mask, black suit and black cape marches onscreen accompanied by more of that great music and he chokes a guy to death after a brief dispute over whether or not the ship has an ambassador. We have found our villain.

As the film continues, it eases us into its universe one step at a time. The robots, which are being called droids, land on a desolate planet with vast deserts and fall into the hands of a local farmer (Phil Brown). The farmer’s nephew is a pretty boy named Luke (Mark Hamill) whose idea of a good time hanging out with friends includes “picking up power converters” (we may assume that Luke and his buddies are intoxicated for such shenanigans and that this is way more fun than it sounds).

While cleaning the droids, Luke discovers a holographic message hidden inside the rolling garbage can. A beautiful girl (Carrie Fisher) begs for help from an “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Perhaps a relative of old Ben Kenobi, a hermit who lives in the nearby caves? That hermit, played by Alec Guinness, who brings some much-needed thespian gravitas to the film, turns out to be the Obi-Wan from the message. He tells Luke all about the boy’s father, a warrior from back in the day slain by Darth Vader (the guy wearing all black from the opening scene). He invites Luke to leave his dull life as a farmer and join him in rescuing the girl, who, as it turns out, is a princess.

Star Wars is a classic adventure story, told with a sturdy, traditional structure that is effective in its simplicity. The film hops from one lavish set piece to another, each new place populated by fascinating creatures and characters from Mr. Lucas’s imagination.

In its quiet moments, Star Wars is not so nimble. The dialogue is often lead-footed and Mr. Lucas is less self-assured in the downtime between action sequences. There are some light-hearted moments in these passages, however, often thanks to the inclusion of Han Solo, a smuggler (played by the irrepressibly charming Harrison Ford) who begrudgingly joins our heroes because the price is right.

In spite of its flaws, Star Wars has a lovable scrappiness about it. In the decades that followed its release, studios have tried again and again to replicate its success. But few of their slam-bang summer action movies have been able to capture the essence of Star Wars. George Lucas made this movie with a simple goal in mind. To entertain audiences and craft a film that would thrill and delight them. He did and it still does.

- Steve Avigliano, 3/5/12