Twenty-five years of Return of the Jedi
May. 25th, 2008 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerThe twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Wars didn't seem to get as much attention from Lucasfilm as the twentieth or even the thirtieth... or maybe, just perhaps, it got attention in the biggest way possible through the release of a new Star Wars movie. Likewise, Revenge of the Sith followed twenty-five years after The Empire Strikes Back... and right when I was thinking that it might matter just a little bit for me to set down my thoughts about the twenty-fifth anniversary of Return of the Jedi, news that some of the new Clone Wars series would bring Star Wars back to the movies cropped up. (For that matter too, there's an Indiana Jones movie out right now...) I still want to set down my thoughts, though, for all that I've managed to do something similar twice already.
I suppose Return of the Jedi was the first Star Wars movie I was aware was "on its way" instead of "already there," and yet, as I've admitted probably more times than is good for me, I didn't actually see it at the movies in 1983. In the years that followed right afterwards, though, I did draw some "fan comics" inspired in some bizarre way by the movie... and thinking back on them now, I can wonder if what particularly interested me about the movie at first was the space battle and "flying into the Death Star," and somehow even Darth Vader turning on the Emperor to save his son was just "something that happened to happen." Nevertheless, when a few years after that I saw a little piece in my family's newspaper's TV guide where a columnist complained about a TV showing of Return of the Jedi, I didn't quite care for it, preferring instead to think back to a capsule review in the newspaper's brief-lived "home video magazine supplement" where, I believe, the movie was called the best (just possibly even "by far the best") of the trilogy...
Unfortunately, there was a big online world out there where there was a fixed group opinion, and that opinion was to look well down on Return of the Jedi mostly, it seemed, because nobody liked the idea of fuzzy, stubby Ewoks defeating armoured stormtroopers. (I recall a "webzine" article where someone basically whined that the Return of the Jedi radio play, out at last, could have given Brian Daley the perfect chance to invoke a colony of primitive Wookiees to beat up the stormtroopers and explain that Chewbacca's technical knowledge was a special case...) Too, for all that Harrison Ford was on the record as having wished that Han Solo could have died in the movie, everyone seemed convinced that Lando and the Millennium Falcon had been blown up trying to escape the Death Star in some "lost cut" of the movie, and kept talking about how great that would have been, because it would have made the conclusion "less happy..."
It might have all weighed on me. I did spend just a little effort daydreaming about some hypothetical "Revenge of the Jedi" story treatment or novelization, and yet it was easy enough to proclaim that this element or that should be subtracted, but harder to think of things to add in their place... and yet, even as I also toyed just a little with some hypothetical "Balance of the Force" story treatment or novelization that would also shift things up in the new beginning to the saga (and yet, never quite as much as some were intent on doing), things were shifting inside me. I was beginning to get a sense that maybe Darth Vader's sacrifice did matter, was connected to the good man he had once been, and even that the endless mop-up operation of residual Imperial threats in the Expanded Universe wasn't as important as everyone seemed to think it to be... (Nowadays, though, I suppose I have to admit that an occasional thought about "a hypothetical beginning to the Expanded Universe" does ghost through my head, where Mara Jade serves as a demonstration that "redemption is possible for many people," and there's perhaps even a suggestion that "it's not always possible to 'sense the goodness' in someone, but the effort should be made anyway.")
Perhaps I was able to come to this new realization in part because complaints that "I demand that Vader do more to 'earn' his redemption!" were at first drowned out by complaining about the Ewoks. (Of course, I've managed at times to turn this around by speculating that Vader could be seen as being chained to the Dark Side by the crushing thought that nothing he could do could balance his sins, but that saving his son was in fact a product of casting aside thoughts about "how will this benefit me?" and just doing something for someone else.) In a way, viewing Luke's "true mission" as reaching and then saving his father removes any potential weight of "he didn't defeat the bad guys through his own unaided efforts" from him. And, perhaps, I've come to terms with the action returning to Tatooine and not any other place at the beginning of the movie with the thought that the planet should have a weight of history beyond just "launching Luke Skywalker into the galaxy and then being ignored." Luke's history, Anakin's history, and even Jabba the Hutt are more satisfyingly connected to me than when I first realised the links. So, too, have the new movies been in a sense necessary for me to understand just what Star Wars might be about, and how this is more satisfying than all those who've let minor details tear them apart. Of course, I'm sure there are those who saw things clearly with just three Star Wars movies and didn't really need the new movies... but I guess I'm not utterly oppressed by even that thought. Of course, in some ways I suppose I can admit that the Return of the Jedi novelization has been in some way sacrificed to this realization of mine. I used to kind of like how it emphasized a greater "grittiness" to the ground battle and a depth of characterization to many, and I was aware of how some others appreciated it for the same thing... but it did tend to present Darth Vader's redemption as something that came completely out of nowhere.
In rewatching Return of the Jedi just before its anniversary, I completed an experiment of watching first Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, then "flashing back" to The Phantom Menace and the other new movies and finally jumping forward. In some ways, I could pick up on the resonances I've seen others point out between Padme's attempt to reach Anakin and Luke's attempt to reach Vader, and I've wondered a little if both Luke and Leia picked up a different yet important insight from their mother, and even if her insight into her husband and her own feelings had to be somehow combined... At the same time, I was never quite sure if I was "permitting myself to be surprised" by how things were turning out, instead continuing to see the movies perhaps "holographically," where each part illuminates a total whole. The next time I watch the Star Wars movies (although I don't know when that will be), I'll probably go back to "numerical order" again. Still, it was an interesting idea for an experiment.
I suppose Return of the Jedi was the first Star Wars movie I was aware was "on its way" instead of "already there," and yet, as I've admitted probably more times than is good for me, I didn't actually see it at the movies in 1983. In the years that followed right afterwards, though, I did draw some "fan comics" inspired in some bizarre way by the movie... and thinking back on them now, I can wonder if what particularly interested me about the movie at first was the space battle and "flying into the Death Star," and somehow even Darth Vader turning on the Emperor to save his son was just "something that happened to happen." Nevertheless, when a few years after that I saw a little piece in my family's newspaper's TV guide where a columnist complained about a TV showing of Return of the Jedi, I didn't quite care for it, preferring instead to think back to a capsule review in the newspaper's brief-lived "home video magazine supplement" where, I believe, the movie was called the best (just possibly even "by far the best") of the trilogy...
Unfortunately, there was a big online world out there where there was a fixed group opinion, and that opinion was to look well down on Return of the Jedi mostly, it seemed, because nobody liked the idea of fuzzy, stubby Ewoks defeating armoured stormtroopers. (I recall a "webzine" article where someone basically whined that the Return of the Jedi radio play, out at last, could have given Brian Daley the perfect chance to invoke a colony of primitive Wookiees to beat up the stormtroopers and explain that Chewbacca's technical knowledge was a special case...) Too, for all that Harrison Ford was on the record as having wished that Han Solo could have died in the movie, everyone seemed convinced that Lando and the Millennium Falcon had been blown up trying to escape the Death Star in some "lost cut" of the movie, and kept talking about how great that would have been, because it would have made the conclusion "less happy..."
It might have all weighed on me. I did spend just a little effort daydreaming about some hypothetical "Revenge of the Jedi" story treatment or novelization, and yet it was easy enough to proclaim that this element or that should be subtracted, but harder to think of things to add in their place... and yet, even as I also toyed just a little with some hypothetical "Balance of the Force" story treatment or novelization that would also shift things up in the new beginning to the saga (and yet, never quite as much as some were intent on doing), things were shifting inside me. I was beginning to get a sense that maybe Darth Vader's sacrifice did matter, was connected to the good man he had once been, and even that the endless mop-up operation of residual Imperial threats in the Expanded Universe wasn't as important as everyone seemed to think it to be... (Nowadays, though, I suppose I have to admit that an occasional thought about "a hypothetical beginning to the Expanded Universe" does ghost through my head, where Mara Jade serves as a demonstration that "redemption is possible for many people," and there's perhaps even a suggestion that "it's not always possible to 'sense the goodness' in someone, but the effort should be made anyway.")
Perhaps I was able to come to this new realization in part because complaints that "I demand that Vader do more to 'earn' his redemption!" were at first drowned out by complaining about the Ewoks. (Of course, I've managed at times to turn this around by speculating that Vader could be seen as being chained to the Dark Side by the crushing thought that nothing he could do could balance his sins, but that saving his son was in fact a product of casting aside thoughts about "how will this benefit me?" and just doing something for someone else.) In a way, viewing Luke's "true mission" as reaching and then saving his father removes any potential weight of "he didn't defeat the bad guys through his own unaided efforts" from him. And, perhaps, I've come to terms with the action returning to Tatooine and not any other place at the beginning of the movie with the thought that the planet should have a weight of history beyond just "launching Luke Skywalker into the galaxy and then being ignored." Luke's history, Anakin's history, and even Jabba the Hutt are more satisfyingly connected to me than when I first realised the links. So, too, have the new movies been in a sense necessary for me to understand just what Star Wars might be about, and how this is more satisfying than all those who've let minor details tear them apart. Of course, I'm sure there are those who saw things clearly with just three Star Wars movies and didn't really need the new movies... but I guess I'm not utterly oppressed by even that thought. Of course, in some ways I suppose I can admit that the Return of the Jedi novelization has been in some way sacrificed to this realization of mine. I used to kind of like how it emphasized a greater "grittiness" to the ground battle and a depth of characterization to many, and I was aware of how some others appreciated it for the same thing... but it did tend to present Darth Vader's redemption as something that came completely out of nowhere.
In rewatching Return of the Jedi just before its anniversary, I completed an experiment of watching first Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, then "flashing back" to The Phantom Menace and the other new movies and finally jumping forward. In some ways, I could pick up on the resonances I've seen others point out between Padme's attempt to reach Anakin and Luke's attempt to reach Vader, and I've wondered a little if both Luke and Leia picked up a different yet important insight from their mother, and even if her insight into her husband and her own feelings had to be somehow combined... At the same time, I was never quite sure if I was "permitting myself to be surprised" by how things were turning out, instead continuing to see the movies perhaps "holographically," where each part illuminates a total whole. The next time I watch the Star Wars movies (although I don't know when that will be), I'll probably go back to "numerical order" again. Still, it was an interesting idea for an experiment.