Return to Return of the Jedi
May. 3rd, 2023 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerSpecific plans for just how to “see a movie at the movies again” had shaped themselves in my mind for some time. After managing that, the impulse to go back to the movies and see the “fortieth anniversary re-release” of Return of the Jedi popped up much more all of a sudden. Not that long ago I’d been thinking more about how, at the end of last year, I’d at last got around to getting my family’s mid-1980s off-the-air videotape recording of the original Star Wars onto a recordable DVD, and how the commercial breaks we hadn’t yet been pausing through and the cuts for running time might have had their own small influence on me over the years. The restored sense that “seeing a movie at the movies” is, in fact, a different experience than watching it on even a largish TV could have made a difference there. So too, possibly, might have the caution that “Disney is just too all-encompassing a media company these days” being somewhat countered by fairly recent news. Beyond that, though, what really counted could have been the thought “by golly, the ‘Disney Space Movies’” (to borrow something from matril) “won’t be the last time I see something with the Star Wars name on it at the movies!”
I had, anyway, also been thinking of how I’m in a narrow age range where I’d known Return of the Jedi was approaching in 1983 (I even recall a period reference or two to “Revenge of the Jedi,” although the change of title didn’t mean all that much to me) but The Empire Strikes Back had been sort of just “there from the start” when I’d been taken to a re-release of the original Star Wars. That meant I’d been rather young at the time, which has some bearing on noticing certain debates about “how old should kids be before they first see Star Wars?” (and at least that seems saner to me than “what Star Wars movies should they be protected from?”) For Return of the Jedi I remember seeing a “making of” special on TV and, among the assorted publications I picked up that year, having the “Art of” book held at my town’s bookstore while my parents gave me a few dollars each week until I had enough to buy it, just perhaps to teach me something about patience and the value of money. However, actually going to see the movie itself never seemed to even come up, and nobody in my family remembers why. When recalling having been told The Empire Strikes Back would be too much for me, I also have impressions of being asked if I wanted to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There, I’d been the one to make a big deal of how the newspapers had said it was too violent.
For all of that, I have seen Return of the Jedi at the movies once before, in the “Special Edition” winter of 1997. That did happen to be around the low point of the movie’s reputation, though. In the face of that disdain from people my age and older, I did have a sort of inarticulate feeling that just getting offended by the movie and trying to find solace in spinoffs was in the end unsatisfying. That feeling might only have got stronger two years later, but in being lucky enough to come out of a slough of despond on happening on a first knot of other positive fans I did begin to reconfigure my thoughts to a clear feeling of “the main characters, and the fall-and-redemption narrative, are indeed actually what matters.” I know that still leaves me at the definite risk of blank stares or itemized lists of “obvious” affronts, but I suppose it also got to the point of “this six-movie saga is satisfying to me in itself” amounting to “this next extension in place of the Expanded Universe is as unnecessary to me in the end as its predecessor.”
I did have to cross the city line again to the same mutiplex I’d seen Suzume at, but this time I was directed to a larger screen. Selecting my seat in advance I’d had the impression things were filling up fast, but there didn’t seem quite as many people there as I’d supposed. There was a good mix of ages in the audience even so. It was something that the “20th Century Fox Fanfare” was still there, although I did notice the Lucasfilm logo wasn’t as colourful. This time around, I did have a sense of the “rescue from Jabba’s palace” feeling snappier than it might have seemed before. Towards the end of the movie, however, I did wonder if, for all that the spaceships were moving much better than they had in 1977, they seemed just a tiny bit slower than I’d thought they would. Those minor points aside, the movie was quite satisfying. I suppose I kept from dwelling on “the next time we saw those characters...” in part by wondering if I ever could take on the greater challenge of articulating why they also feel a bit underwhelming to me in the “Heir to the Empire” novels as well.
Every so often I did get to thinking “fortieth anniversary re-releases” in 1983 would have seemed just a bit more peculiar back then, although I know that year marked King Kong’s fiftieth anniversary. I can have ambiguous thoughts about a “forty-fifth anniversary re-release” of The Empire Strikes Back seeming more likely than a “twentieth anniversary re-release” of Revenge of the Sith, and a “fiftieth anniversary re-release” of A New Hope seeming more likely than a “twenty-fifth anniversary re-release” of Attack of the Clones. In any case this particular experiment might be testing the waters for “more new Star Wars movies at last.” As I’ve already said, in that seeming unnecessary to me I’m already a bit detached in advance.
matril) “won’t be the last time I see something with the Star Wars name on it at the movies!”I had, anyway, also been thinking of how I’m in a narrow age range where I’d known Return of the Jedi was approaching in 1983 (I even recall a period reference or two to “Revenge of the Jedi,” although the change of title didn’t mean all that much to me) but The Empire Strikes Back had been sort of just “there from the start” when I’d been taken to a re-release of the original Star Wars. That meant I’d been rather young at the time, which has some bearing on noticing certain debates about “how old should kids be before they first see Star Wars?” (and at least that seems saner to me than “what Star Wars movies should they be protected from?”) For Return of the Jedi I remember seeing a “making of” special on TV and, among the assorted publications I picked up that year, having the “Art of” book held at my town’s bookstore while my parents gave me a few dollars each week until I had enough to buy it, just perhaps to teach me something about patience and the value of money. However, actually going to see the movie itself never seemed to even come up, and nobody in my family remembers why. When recalling having been told The Empire Strikes Back would be too much for me, I also have impressions of being asked if I wanted to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There, I’d been the one to make a big deal of how the newspapers had said it was too violent.
For all of that, I have seen Return of the Jedi at the movies once before, in the “Special Edition” winter of 1997. That did happen to be around the low point of the movie’s reputation, though. In the face of that disdain from people my age and older, I did have a sort of inarticulate feeling that just getting offended by the movie and trying to find solace in spinoffs was in the end unsatisfying. That feeling might only have got stronger two years later, but in being lucky enough to come out of a slough of despond on happening on a first knot of other positive fans I did begin to reconfigure my thoughts to a clear feeling of “the main characters, and the fall-and-redemption narrative, are indeed actually what matters.” I know that still leaves me at the definite risk of blank stares or itemized lists of “obvious” affronts, but I suppose it also got to the point of “this six-movie saga is satisfying to me in itself” amounting to “this next extension in place of the Expanded Universe is as unnecessary to me in the end as its predecessor.”
I did have to cross the city line again to the same mutiplex I’d seen Suzume at, but this time I was directed to a larger screen. Selecting my seat in advance I’d had the impression things were filling up fast, but there didn’t seem quite as many people there as I’d supposed. There was a good mix of ages in the audience even so. It was something that the “20th Century Fox Fanfare” was still there, although I did notice the Lucasfilm logo wasn’t as colourful. This time around, I did have a sense of the “rescue from Jabba’s palace” feeling snappier than it might have seemed before. Towards the end of the movie, however, I did wonder if, for all that the spaceships were moving much better than they had in 1977, they seemed just a tiny bit slower than I’d thought they would. Those minor points aside, the movie was quite satisfying. I suppose I kept from dwelling on “the next time we saw those characters...” in part by wondering if I ever could take on the greater challenge of articulating why they also feel a bit underwhelming to me in the “Heir to the Empire” novels as well.
Every so often I did get to thinking “fortieth anniversary re-releases” in 1983 would have seemed just a bit more peculiar back then, although I know that year marked King Kong’s fiftieth anniversary. I can have ambiguous thoughts about a “forty-fifth anniversary re-release” of The Empire Strikes Back seeming more likely than a “twentieth anniversary re-release” of Revenge of the Sith, and a “fiftieth anniversary re-release” of A New Hope seeming more likely than a “twenty-fifth anniversary re-release” of Attack of the Clones. In any case this particular experiment might be testing the waters for “more new Star Wars movies at last.” As I’ve already said, in that seeming unnecessary to me I’m already a bit detached in advance.