Return of the Jedi

Awwww man! It's game time! Look at that! Luke is back, sporting a newly enhanced hand, and an entire case of whoop-ass in his system! Such is the setting for Return of the Jedi. This film closes it all, answers all the questions (well...sort of) and marks the end of the Galactic Empire. I would consider this spoiling it, but the title kind of says it all.

Now this may not be the best film in the series, although I think they original trilogy is all good, it certainly shows how far they had come in terms of special effects by 1983. There is just a lot of cool stuff going on throughout the movie, but I'll get into that later. The acting is all as good as it can get in a Sci-fi/fantasy film, but I will point out that Ian McDiarmid (who plays the Emperor) did a fantastic job. He is a classically trained actor, and he hits the beats every time in this film. Remember, this is the first time he is seen in the Star Wars series (at least when you consider the original release and not the special edition).

So the story of this film has to tie everything together. How does it do? Well, I'd say it does fairly well, in that all the characters kind of do their thing (as always) and the main characters (Luke and Vader) resolve their differences in a mature way. I love the duel. It's maybe not as epic as Empire Strikes Back, but it does the job well. It is the original trilogy, after all, and crazy choreography isn't all there yet.

So otherwise, I like that Han and Leia finally work things out with Luke, and by that I mean Leia finds out that Luke is her brother (I JUST MADE OUT WITH HIM!!!). Thanks a lot Yoda for dying and Obi-Wan for breaking the news so late. So Luke meets the emperor, he fights his daddy in a viscious battle and chops off one of his robo-hands. Emperor shocks Luke for back-talking his old ass, and his daddy-o tosses the bag of wrinkles down an inconveniently placed shaft to the core of the Second Deathstar. Again, gotta love the engineers working for the empire!

So story aside, I said the visual effects were good, as evident in this chase scene in the forest. BADASS! Using a steady cam that takes one frame a second, walking through the forest with said camera, then playing it back at 24fps. Kick ass!

The battle of the Death Star II is amazing, more ships, more explosions (suck on that Micheal Bay, Lucas was here first!) Again, all visuals were well polished from where they started back in 1977.

There is one major problem I have with the film. Ready for this? Meet the grand army that defeats the Empire in the film:

Fuck these guys. Seriously. The cutesy character thing is something that a lot of Star Wars fans, including myself, groan over. But I'll get more into that when we discuss the Prequels.

So that's that, this film was the conclusion of the series, and I think that it had some much that had to happen in it that it's kind of stuck being epic. By that I mean, if this were a four part series, I'd call this the weakest film, but since all the crazy things happen in this, it kind of saves the film's ass.

Overall, I'd give this movie an A-.

~ JC