That rather organic centric of you, since we’ve seen the very much nonhuman droid members of the Alliance in both Star Wars and Empire.
But they’d have to fix the choreography. You know… so the Ewoks don’t trod upon it.
Fine movie. About as good as AOTC. Not as good as ANH, ESB or even ROTS.
I thought Return was ok when I first saw it, though my opinion of it has declined over time. Kevin Drum claims that “Return of the Jedi” is the Best Star Wars Movie of All Time, which is risible. Basically while he agrees that the Ewoks were execrable, their main scene was only 10 minutes long. I say I wouldn’t want to be waterboarded for 10 minutes either but hey opinions differ.
Drum goes on to note the way Return tied up a lot of loose ends without screwing things up. I didn’t think they were as masterful as he did, but I concede that other than the Ewoks there were no howlers. Though frankly I wasn’t convinced by the idea that Vader was somehow redeemed in the end by transforming into a glowing middle aged fat guy with a scar. Still I have to take seriously the contention that there were places where the movie could have “Fucked things up a hundred different ways”, but did not. Kevin sez, “*This is much, much harder than it looks. *”
FTR, I saw eps 1 and 2. I skipped ep 3, though I’m told it wasn’t too bad.
Return of the Jedi alone on the basis that it gave us Slave Liea, the mainstream icon of the sexy slavegirl who is also a capable and effective leader. She’s a very nice metaphor for the reality of BDSM in our culture, where women who work successfully in difficult jobs and run families are also their husband’s hot, sexy slavegirls in the bedroom. Pure genius.
Yep.
Lucas really went for the “merchandising first” focus in this one. He went with the cuddly Ewoks so he could sell a billion teddy bears for Christmas.
However, ROTJ looks like “The Godfather” compared to the prequels.
The only thing that could have made ROTJ worse is if CGI was able to create a planet full of Jar Jar Binks. I suspect if this were the case, Luke and gang would have helped the empire blow that planet to smithereens.
But when the fuzzy bears started beating the empire with sticks and rocks it was embarrassing, the empire has a death star, and is pummeled by fuzzy little bears that mutter “Yub yub”. I hated it as a kid, and I still hate it now. Even as a kid, I knew it was a money grab for Lucas and nothing more.
I’m not much of a sci-fi person, but the first two SW films I enjoyed a bunch, especially the first one, i was in awe of the space scenes in the first Star Wars. And they still hold up pretty well 35 years later.
One thing I read was that Lucas has “ruined” ANH with retro-fitted scenes with CGI, both in the cantina and with Jabba, scenes that were never in the original. And apparently, since he owns the movies, the only way you can buy the movies now is with the new scenes injected into the old movie. It looks horrid. Thanks, George, you ego maniacal asshole!
Ewoks did not defeat The Empire, they didn’t even defeat legions of Stormtroopers.
They provided a brief but critical distraction that allowed Han and Leia to get into the shield generator facility. Shield generator goes boom, Alliance defeats the Empire in the space battle.
It worked because the Ewoks were cuddly teddy bears that The Empire had written off as being of no threat and because of a major tactical flaw by the Imperial troops: they were stupid enough to engage the Ewoks rather than defensively holding the generator facility. For them to send manpower away from the facility in order to retaliate against the Ewoks was stupid but not implausibly stupid- not implausible especially considering they viewed the Ewoks as no threat (easy to assume “Hey, we’ll send some men out to kill the teddy bears and our men will be right back since killing teddy bears is easy”).
Nothing in the movie suggests the Ewoks would have triumphed even if the Rebels didn’t destroy the Death Star, nothing in the movie suggests the Ewoks got Han and Leia into the shield generator facility by way of superior Ewok force overpowering the Imperial troops.
P.S. I would just like to say that I am happy that no one in this Thread has thrown out the common “just a bunch of Muppets” dismissive line. First of all, The Jim Henson Company wasn’t involved in the movie (Frank Oz as performer for Yoda was hired independently) and second of all and most importantly I hate seeing the word “Muppet” used as an insult!!! Anyone who uses the word Muppet as an insult has no appreciation for Jim Henson’s genius and his valuable contribution to the arts and entertainment!
So, it restores a bit of my faith in humanity to see that no one here is going with that kind of rhetoric.
I saw this movie with a date when it was first released in 1983. My assessment then remains the same now: The first part of the film where they rescue Han from Jabba the Hut was by far the best and most entertaining part but, after that, things settled down considerably as they wrapped up all the plot lines from the previous movies. I also caught an obvious Vietnam metaphor in the film with the Ewoks thwarting the Empire’s high tech weapons with primitive technology. However, in retrospect, I do agree they were a little too cute for my tastes. It would’ve been better if they’d gone with the original plan for them to be Wookies.
All in all, I still liked it better than the three prequels which could’ve been great but were a massive missed opportunity.
I always saw it as the Ethipoians fighting Italy
Wookies were the idea before Wookies were Wookies.
The idea was always primatives vs. high tech and it was an idea Lucas had in the very beginning before making the first movie. He realized this sequence wouldn’t make it into the first movie- and he didn’t know whether or not he’d be able to make sequels- but Lucas still really loved his Wookies. He decided he’d put a Wookie into the first movie just in case there’d be no sequels, just in case the first movie was his only opportunity to have a Wookie.
Once he created Chewbacca he ended up losing Wookies for the whole planned “primatives vs. high tech” sequence. He made Chewbacca technologically advanced therefore Wookies couldn’t stand in as the primatives. He had to create new primatives in order for it to work. Once the character of Chewbacca was written into the first movie Wookies were completely off the table for the Battle of Endor.
The Ewoks were going to eat Han and Luke. They are badass!
Clearly, Lucas’s intention. And finding out she almost got it on with her own brother really gives it a special place in the genius closet— I’m tingling all over just thinking about it, sweating and panting in the throes of artistic appreciation.
Return of the Jedi Redux. Let’s fix it from the getgo.
The plot outline:
- Han gets rescued/Jabba gets killed.
B) ???
iii - Darth Vader gets redeemed/the Emperor gets killed.
I’m all ferklempt. Your topic: So, what happens in B? Suppose there wasn’t a second Death Star? I guess they needed a space battle in there somewhere (I blame Howard Hughes’ “Hell’s Angels” for this). Discuss!
A 42 minute Philly Dance Party segment would fit B from your list.
This is the part that failed for me. Once you’ve participated in the blowing up of a planet and other untold atrocities, you don’t get to redeem yourself by throwing some old dude into a reactor and giving your (one-handed) kid a big ole hug. If anything, we should have seen millions of glowy Alderans kicking Darth’s ass.
And let’s be honest – a person who could blow up a planet just to test a doomsday weapon isn’t the kind of sentimentalist who is going to get all soppy when his kid shows up to save the day.
One Wookie who is capable of flying a spacecraft does not mean that he had to have come from a technologically advanced culture. He could have been one of the rare Wookies that got off his homeworld and learned spacecraft. I’m thinking of a character like Queequeg in Moby Dick, who took off from his home island on a whaling ship and became a highly skilled member of the crew.
I rather enjoyed ROTJ - it’s not Oscar material but it’s not so bad. I think the changes need to make it a great movie were few:
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Something other than the Death Star 2.0 - But some high value target. Perhaps the suncrusher would have been appropriate here.
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Keep the Wookies instead of the Ewoks. I actually disagree that this would have caused problems with Chewie being a starship pilot. Perhaps the Wookies are like the Amish in that they advocate a “in harmony with nature” lifestyle and eschew technology. Chewie is an outcast for ditching his traditions and going into space. It would have provided some much-needed character development for the walking rug.
I don’t know about this. The ewoks destroy several AT-STs, one with the two logs crashing into either side, one by tripping it up with rolling logs, one by swinging on a jungle vine to jump into the cockpit (granted, Chewie helped). These are the walkers that were shown in Empire to absolutely crush a fortified rebel stronghold (plus some AT-ATs). That was just ridiculous.
Plus there’s a scene where the ewoks surprise some Stormtroopers by jumping out of the bushes, and then beat them down with sticks. Realistically, that stormtrooper armor means the teddy bears could have beat on them for hours and then the troopers would have just stood up and shot them, no damage but some scuffs.
It would have been fine with the sneaky stealth like at the beginning, but once a legion shows up, it got ridiculous how effective the Ewoks were against the troopers. It really cemented the “stormtroopers suck as soldiers” meme.
As I grow older the movies lose a lot of their appeal. Soon I will just have left the nostalgia. The movies still entertain me, but the fact that they are kinda of dumb, the dialogue is cheesy and it is so full of tropey tropes wears on me a little bit more each time I watch it.
It’s funny because my wife and I decided to watch Temple of Doom for like the first time in 20 years, because we both recall thinking it was a great movie we just haven’t gotten around to seeing in a a long time. So we start it up and we are almost immediately met with Kate Capshaws’ ditzy cartoonish lounge singer character, a slapstick search for some antidote and a diamond, and an escape from a crashing plane in a life raft down a snow slope and then over a cliff. Now I understand that the movie is a riff on the Saturday morning serials from the 50s, but my older self is wondering why I ever thought this was good. Sorry for the sidebar.
Profit!
True but irrelevant - Tarkin was dead at this point. Vader wasn’t even the boss then.