Movie review: Return of the Jedi

While watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, I feel a range of emotions: curiosity, intrigue, excitement, and overall entertainment. What I feel throughout most of Return of the Jedi is boredom.

The decision to make Leia Luke’s sister, instead of writing a different female Jedi character which earlier scripts hinted at, is unforgivably lazy.^[1] And the dialog and acting in that scene were straight up awful. “Somehow I’ve always known”? Really? Come on.

The commonly offered excuse is that ”it solves the love triangle between Luke, Leia, and Han.” Know what else would solve the love triangle? If Leia just chose one or the other. Or, rather, if the writers didn’t write themselves into a corner with the love triangle in the first place, because love triangles are really corny. I think the original Star Wars portrayed the love triangle in the most entertaining way – as the entire movie was novel – but by Empire, everybody had too much going on for that to continue to be a thing.

Luke has a lot going on in this movie too, and I don’t see why he would need a love interest in this story. But if they really wanted to kill the love triangle, couldn’t they have saved Oola and had her give Luke a kiss or something? Or, if Luke reunited with his twin sister, couldn’t his sister have had an attractive friend?

But instead of exploring any of those options, we have a “solution” that feels extremely awkward and makes all the romantic tension of the past two movies uncomfortable. We have excruciatingly corny dialog surrounding it. And worst of all, the possibilty of Luke reuniting with his badass Jedi twin sister is killed off.

Like its predecessors, this could have been a thrilling popcorn flick, with a space western-y duel between Boba Fett and [insert main character here], Luke reuniting with his Jedi sister and taking on Darth Vader, and more scenes of the rebellion in action. But instead, it drags, especially on the boring “silly primitive race thinks one of the main characters is a god” trope, which is horrible in any movie. The problem is really not the ewoks themselves, it’s that overdone trope. Endor, as an environment, just feels like an earth forest; it feels like the movie didn’t have the budget to portray a more alien planet. Watching the stormtroopers crash on their bikes is funny at first but gets old quickly, and the special effects are unconvincing, especially for a series known for its special effects.

While Return of the Jedi, for the most part, isn’t outright awful or offensive, it does feel like a downgrade from its predecessors, and many of the writing choices feel lazy and disappointing. When I watch this film, I can’t help but think of all the ways this could have been a better film, and that’s not a really fun experience.

Nevertheless, I’ll always be a Yub Nub truther.