Review: Return of the Jedi (1983)

Return of the Jedi

Rating

Director

Richard Marquand

Screenplay

Lawrence Kasdan, George Lucas

Length

2h 11m

Starring

Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Sebastaian Shaw, Ian McDiarmid, Frank Oz, James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Alec Guinness, Kenny Baker

MPAA Rating

Review

A return to the material that made him rich, George Lucas’ third film in the original Star Wars trilogy comes another three years after its predecessor. Return of the Jedi brings back much of what worked from the prior films but introduced quite a bit that didn’t.

The film’s action opens aboard a large sand vehicle owned by crime lord Jabba the Hutt (voiced by Larry Ward) on the desert planet Tattooine. There, C3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) arrive as a peace offering to Jabba. Meanwhile, Leia (Carrier Fisher) shows up in disguise as a bounty hunter bringing in a captive Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew). Though they release Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from his carbonite prison, Leia is captured and turned into a slave girl for the corpulent Jabba. Lake Skywalker (Mark Hamill) then arrives to try and bargain for his friends’ release.

After this thrilling introduction, the existence of a second Death Star is revealed and the Rebel Alliance embarks on a mission to destroy it, first having to get past its energy shield controlled by a facility on the forest moon of Endor. Luke sets off to finish his training with a dying Yoda while the others embark on a mission to take out the shield generator with the help of the moon’s inhabitants, the Ewoks.

One thing the Star Wars saga has been great at is a terrific balance of action and drama that keeps the audience engaged from beginning to end. This is facilitated not just through the gorgeous production design, costuming, and visual effects but its beautiful original score by composing legend John Williams. That I didn’t reference him in my reviews of the prior two films seems criminal but his work comes to a brilliant conclusion in this outing.

After three films, the characters should feel lived in and Hamill, Fisher, and Ford are all performing at the top of their skill giving the director a solid foundation on which to build the dramatic narrative. It is Lucas who deserves much of the credit for the series’ successes, creating indelible characters and settings that audience have come to love. This time out, Lucas steps back in to co-write the screenplay with Empire Strikes Back scribe Lawrence Kasdan but that film’s director, Irvin Kirshner, decided not to helm the project. That task fell to Richard Marquand after several prominent directors, including Steven Spielberg, David Cronenberg, and David Lynch, turned it down. Marquand is a serviceable director but much of what works here was not of his making.

That said, he can’t be blamed for what doesn’t work. The film begins to feel a bit bloated by this third chapter and with the Ewoks feeling like a kid-friendly addition designed to goose merchandise sales, the propensity for the series to be more concerned for its marketing successes than its cinematic ones really came to the fore this time out. There’s a reason Mel Brooks’ 1975 Spaceballs succeeded so well at lampooning the rampant consumerism tied to these films.

Even with its excesses and weaknesses, Return of the Jedi is still a rousing success and an entertaining chapter in its own right. The story is brought to a terrific conclusion that would last for two decades before it would be tampered with by a never-satisfied Lucas. For those who got to see the original rendition before it was updated and redesigned, the memories will always be potent ones, which has enabled the series to endure for 40 years with one of the most rabid fanbases in pop culture history.