It turns out that there’s actually a deleted scene from Jedi at the end- after Luke sees Obi Wan, Yoda, and Daddy Anakin come up from Jedi afterlife it clips away, but in the original version the souls of the Younglings come back and go after Ani’s butt like it was a piñata.
Wasn’t Buck Rogers kid’s stuff too?
Seriously, I do not understand how people can claim that the Star Wars series wasn’t always geared towards children. Enjoyable for adults, certainly, but come on!
Humans have gods that aren’t human. Witness Egyptian gods, Hindu gods, etc.
I would imagine that if a sixteen foot tall gold-plated metal bear showed up in a Stone Age village, there might have been a possibility that they would have worshipped it.
There’s a difference between ‘geared toward children’ and ‘enjoyable for children’. Consider, for example, The Little Mermaid and The Love Bug. The former is clearly aimed at juvenile audiences. The latter is aimed at general audiences. The Little Mermaid might well be enjoyable for adults (I don’t know, as I haven’t seen it), but it’s aimed at kids. The Love Bug is enjoyable for children, but I don’t think it was aimed at children. IMO, Star Wars fell into the ‘family entertainment’ slot, rather than the ‘juvenile audience’ slot. The first films were not juvenile-orientated until the teddy bear part of RotJ. The subsequent films have been aimed squarely at kids.
Yeah, but how many kids in 1976 knew about Buck Rogers, or the old serials that George Lucas was emulating? The cachet for Star Wars was, in many ways, nostalgic. It was made for Lucas’ peers, people who had been kids in the '50s and remembered the old serials fondly. Sure, this means it also appeals to kids, because the source material was aimed at kids, but I don’t think its accurate to say that kids were the primary audience. Lucas was counting on drawing in adults as much, or more, than children.
I guess this is the crux of our difference of opinion. I simply don’t see eps IV and V being that much closer to the ‘family entertainment’ side of the spectrum, nor do I think the presence of the ewoks makes RotJ squarely aimed at kids. In my real-life experience, grown ups who like the first two liked the third. The ones who didn’t (like my mom) thought the whole series was “kids’ stuff”.
How are Ewoks more cutesy than Jawas?
Why are the muppets in Jabba’s palace more child-geared than Master Yoda, The Jedi who talks like Grover and looks like a very aged Kermit the Frog?
(And I really don’t think Episode III was aimed at kids.)
I was (technically) a grown-up when RotJ came out. I liked the first two, but thought the third one fell down with the teddy bears.
The Jawas aren’t cute. They dont move cute, and all you see of them are their eyes. They’re more sinister-looking. Jawas were little people in robes, while Ewoks were people and muppets dressed in plush toys.
I saw Yoda as a crude attempt (but reasonable for the time) at creating a wizened old creature. I hated his voice, though. (And what was with that bit where he’s on Luke’s back? He’s moving slightly up and down, and going ‘Hmmmm… Hmmmm…’ Was he rubbing off on him?) The muppets in Jabba’s place – especially the rat-thing – reminded me of Fraggle Rock.
I haven’t seen it yet.
With the exception of his very early stuff, like THX 1138, literally everything that Lucas has put his hands on has been nostalgia driven. Star Wars = Buck Rogers, Indiana Jones = Swashbuckling Adventures (King Solomon’s Mines, Treasure of teh Sierra Madre, Terry and the Pirates?), American Graffiti was just pure nostalgia for his teen years, set in his hometown of Modesto. Radioland Murders = classic whodunit. He’s nothing if not derivative, although he certain excels at creating new worlds and most of his stuff has been refreshing and innovatively done, at least the first time in. But the most brilliant part is that his stuff usually strikes a cross-generational chord, resonating with both those two young to remember the originals and those who see his product through a nostalgic fog.
I wonder how much Lucas “gets” about how his audience sees him. He’s fairly reclusive, and most likely surrounded by sycophants. Yet, Ep III is (reportedly) a much better, darker work than the first two prequels. So he must get some feedback about things like Ewoks and Jar-Jar, right?
Well, I think the Jawas are cute. Personal opinion and all that.
You should. I can’t promise you’ll like it, but I swear - it ain’t cutesy.
You want to get specific about what Smith did to bash Jedi in Clerks? The way I remember the scene it goes:
Randall: Which did you like better, Empire or Jedi?
Dante: Empire
Randall: Blasphemy
Dante: Empire had the better ending, it ended on such a down note . . . all Jedi had was a bunch of muppets.
Then they go on to debate what happened to the independent contractors aboard the second Death Star.
Remember that Dante is the whiny, annoyingly depressed character who liked ESB better only because it was darker, while Randall (who liked RotJ better) is the “cool” guy.
FWIW, I consider Jedi to be about equal to the other two movies. It has some annoying parts, but all three movies do IMO. I can’t explain why, but I’ve always hated the trash-compactor scene in Star Wars and the space-worm scene in ESB. It’s the aesthetic and spirit that holds the movies together, and I think it’s just as present in RotJ as it is in the first two.
I wasn’t be rude; I was being incredulous. I am even more so now.
Not one sentence of this post is true. I remember 1983. I was a full grown adult of 33 then.
RofJ hatred is not a recent phenomenon.
Only people too young to have been adults in 1983 could be someone who only learned about this via the Internet and Clerks.
Star Wars was not considered children’s fare. It was cross-generational, to be sure, and many parents happily brought their childen to see it, but it was in no sense a children’s movie.
The complaint at the time was that the Ewoks were too childish. Most adults who saw the film said so, and said so loudly.
Star Wars was considered to be adult, family, entertainment. So were the serials on which it was based and the other influences that are apparent in the movie.
Just because Kevin Smith had a conversation on RotJ in a cult film many years later does not cause the past to change retroactively. These discussions of RotJ took place in 1983. (And 1984 and 1985 and whenever anyone mentioned the movie.) People were hugely disappointed in RofJ. Unlike Episode III, which is doing wildly well in comparison to Eps I and II, RotJ did smaller box office than either of its predecessors, adjusted for inflation.
I’m sorry. I see from a previous post that you were only eight years old at the time. Let me put it bluntly. You don’t know what you are talking about. If that’s rude, then consider how rude it is for someone who was 8 to tell someone who was 33 what adults thought in 1983. You’re an adult now, though, and you really should know better.
No, Lucas does that. Digitally. 
Sad but true.
Does that mean that don Jaime is a figment of a computer’s imagination? 
The ending song in TPM does have one really cool redeeming feature: it’s the Emperor’s music from ROTJ, only up tempo and with a children’s chorus. Creeeepy!
I think the biggest structural weakness of Jedi is that the first third of it is just wrapping up the loose ends from Empire. The Return of the Jedi itself doesn’t start until the briefing scene.
There are a lot of other problems. People have pointed out the multitude of Muppets and the evil little Ewoks. And the stupidity of sending C3-PO along. But there’s more that bugs me.
Everything looked so damn clean. Now, Imperial vessels had always looked sparkling, but in ROTJ, so does the Rebel briefing room and the bridge of Ackbar’s ship. That just doesn’t fit. It looked like (gasp, horror) Star Trek.
The matte painitng of the Falcon in the landing bay was absolutely horrid. Talk about pathetic cost cutting. I even remember as a kid wondering why Lando was walking off towards that big painting of the Falcon. And really, please George, if you’re going to foreshadow the death of Lando and the Falcon, have the good graces to go through with it.
The whole story pulled too many punches. It was trying so hard to be both exciting and have a totally happy ending that it failed to do the former in search of the latter.
And I must join in the chorus regarding Harrison Ford. He was awful in Jedi, totally bored. He was playing Indiana Jones in Space, not Han Solo. Plus, he looked pretty terrible. Apparently, the carbonite freeze not only blinded him, it packed on about 50 pounds of fat AND resized his clothes to fit his new figure. That stuff is amazing.
The “we’re brother and sister!” stuff was handled horribly.
And Ben Kenobi’s ghost was way to not-ghost-like. Ghosts sit down? In Empire, Ben appeared briefly, and seemed more to proclaim than discuss. In Jedi, he takes a seat and has a nice little chat. Stoooooopid.
But there’s a lot of good in Jedi, too. The space battle is still the best of the series. The lightsaber duel is pretty amazing, especially the long tracking shot below the throne after Luke “loses” it. That one shot, with the music, the pan, the dark clothes and bright swords – it gives me goosebumps everytime I see it. In fact, all of the stuff in the Throne Room has the feel and mood of Empire.
I loved the battle at the new DS in this movie. When I saw it in the theatre I was thrilled to finally see a serious space battle that was not some kind of glorified line up and shoot at each other or a one on one duel. Seeing capital ships going mano-y-mano at point blank like that gave me a thrill that not repeated until the beginning of RoS. THAT my friends…is a space battle!
Anybody else try rebuilding major fleet engagements in Xwing vs Tie Fighter when the editors came out or was it just me.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: No doubt Lucas loved the old serials when he was a kid (supposedly he tried to get the rights to do Flash Gordon, before coming up with Star Wars, given his apparent fetish for revising the past, I’ve no idea if that’s true or not), and at some point when he was in film school, rewatched them, only to discover that they weren’t as good as he remembered, what with the cardboard sets, wire supported rockets, and awkward dialog, so when it came time to do Star Wars, he set out to make a movie which recaptured the memories of those old films, and ditched the crappy sets, lousy effects, and, for the most part, the worst of the dialog. And, of course, he succeeded manificently. ESB, as well, harkened back to those older films (the original screenwriter Leigh Brackett was even from that era), and was a worthy successor to the first film. Of course, things went south, when Lucas decided that he knew best. So he hired a director he could bitchslap around and kept the screenwriter, who was in awe of him (not that he could have kept Ms. Brackett, her being dead and all, but he could have found someone better than Kasdan to do the script) and crapped out a movie.
Well, remember that the Star Wars universe seems to have pretty universal anti-gravity or lifting devices. Even if the Ewoks are stone age, someone probably traded them a few lifting devices just like we traded fish hooks to natives on Earth.
In a related vein, check out the Strat Wars screensaver – stage your own sci-fi space battles!
(I’ve got X-Wings and Colonial Vipers vs. TIE fighters and Cylons on mine 
)
First things first: Star Wars is a bunch of kids’ movies. They are based on Saturday matinee serials and the more sanitized fairy tales. They are completely bloodless and almost sexless. They had massive toy lines. Yes, they had an appeal beyond children, just like Pixar movies and Harry Potter novels, which both have a lot of adult fans. But they’re all still juvenile fare. Slapping the “family entertainment” label on any of them does not negate the fact that there will be an appeal first and foremost to children.
I’ve tried finding contemporary reviews of ROTJ from 1983. Gene Siskel is the most useful one from my standpoint. Siskel notes the appeal to children before continuing that it’s “more than a kiddie show.” There’s also this Mark Hamill quote: “It was meant to tell a story to children and fill a void.” Roger Ebert gave it four stars, hardly damning praise. Vincent Canby of the New York Times didn’t like the movie (or ESB from the tone of it), but not because it’s too childish. The Ewoks are barely mentioned in any of the reviews, so they’re not the culprits. That’s the most I’ve been able to find; all the other reviews date from the time of the special editions. Rotten Tomatoes’ review of the SE is 81%.
I remember some of the build-up to ROTJ. I saw Siskel and Ebert for the first time to learn more about it and was bored to tears. The warnings about Jabba being too intense came from Jim Brown of NBC’s Today Show. There were blurbs in magazines at the doctor’s office. There was my eighteen-year-old brother, who took me to see the movie and was wild about it, including the Ewoks. I’m sorry I’m you and your friends had such a bad time, Exapno. You may have a clearer memory than I do, and if you know of any contemporary reviews I missed that back you up, I’d like to read them. But you’ve certainly aren’t more mature.