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Return of the Jedi - your opinion? — Page 2

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Gaffer Tape said:


That's what she said. ^_~

I'm very sorry, Mielr, but I couldn't resist.

Look at what you did! :-P

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Gaffer Tape looked at what he had wrought... and it was good.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Judge said:

...surely it's a little irrational to harbour such a strong dislike for a film based on one aspect? I'd be interested to know what you guys think of this.

 

While you may disagree with other people's thoughts regarding something as emotional as art, that doesn't make their reasons irrational.

Since you asked; Below are my thoughts.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/How-would-you-have-done-ROTJ/post/370539/#TopicPost370539
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Anchorhead said:

Judge said:

...surely it's a little irrational to harbour such a strong dislike for a film based on one aspect? I'd be interested to know what you guys think of this.

 

While you may disagree with other people's thoughts regarding something as emotional as art, that doesn't make their reasons irrational.  

Don't be so pretentious. Hating Return of the Jedi just because of the Ewoks is ridiculous.

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I would agree. If it was just the Ewoks, ROTJ would still be not as good as the others but it wouldn't receive quite as much flak. The problem is that the Ewoks are actually a manifestation of the larger problem ROTJ has, which is poor writing. Or rather, a poor conception of how the film plays out.

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While Jedi may have some of the best moments in Star Wars, it's always felt to me like a disgraceful let down.

ANH started the thing off with a real blast but ESB took everything to a higher level.

Better photography, better acting, better direction, more interesting story and character development, better score, and better special effects.

Jedi was a step backwards in almost every field.

I am reminded of the line attributed to Dolly Parton that "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap". It took a lot of effort too but it just looks, sounds and feels like something cheap and tacky (like when the same Cylon Raider would blow up sometimes three times in the same episode of old Galactica). I wanted to ignore the wobbly ugly mess because it was Star Wars (I'm a Doctor Who and Blake's 7 fan so I'm used to putting certain things to one side in my brain but those series usually had something interesting going on to cover the lack of money and glitter...this was a dodgy tale built of little more than dodgy glitter which must of cost a fortune but looked cheap).

Where the Star Wars galaxy seemed huge and complex in ANH and maybe more so in ESB. ROTJ reduced it down to a few planets and the Empire down to one fleet and a few old guys in funny hats.

Nothing has shaken my initial reaction of it being the contractual obligation film and if it wasn't for the charm of even the half hearted performances of the original cast and Ian McDiamid doing a lovely old git it would be just as awful as any of the PT films.

It marks the place where George got rid of anyone who would question his decisions and where Star Wars hit the skids.

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To be fair, while Lucas and co. definitely skimped on the sets, they more than made up for it in the visual effects. ROTJ was never really topped in that department until Independence Day came out a decade and a half later, with digital technology to boot. It was a spectacular film, but for different reasons than ANH and ESB, which had great locations and more than a few incredible sets. Of course, ESB still is the highpoint of the visuals, with great sets, locations and photography (Hoth, Carbon Freezing, Dagobah) as well as great visual effects sequences (Imperial Walkers and asteroid chase).

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zombie84 said:

To be fair, while Lucas and co. definitely skimped on the sets, they more than made up for it in the visual effects. ROTJ was never really topped in that department until Independence Day came out a decade and a half later, with digital technology to boot. It was a spectacular film, but for different reasons than ANH and ESB, which had great locations and more than a few incredible sets. Of course, ESB still is the highpoint of the visuals, with great sets, locations and photography (Hoth, Carbon Freezing, Dagobah) as well as great visual effects sequences (Imperial Walkers and asteroid chase).

The special effects were showy but often sloppy in execution to the point where they often detracted from the story.

When they were making ANH (back when it was just Star Wars) the sand crawler on the horizon was something they couldn't do as a detailed shot with the time and money available to them but that simple black shape is much more believable than the model shot of Jabba's barge with the badly animated out of scale single marker pen drawing on deck (the SE version is only a small improvement). It doesn't match the really well made physical location set/prop.

If they couldn't do it in a convincing way they shouldn't have bothered and just wiped to the barge already at the Sarlacc Pit.

With the first two films they really tried to get the effects right and when they made mistakes they were often difficult to spot on a first viewing so you were never thrown out of the story, I hated that barge shot in 1983.

Volume of effects is not the same as the story being served by effects.

With ROTJ they seemed to think if they shoved lots of stuff in motion on the screen people wouldn't notice A) the quality of the stuff and B) if the story was served by it and for the majority of viewers they were right.

 

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I've never particularly disliked Jedi, and the dogfighting at the end rates above the RoTS opening sequence if you ask me. I totally dig the little furry guys defeating an entire legion of Palp's best troops, though it is best not to overanalyse the whole situation.

The Ewoks only got annoying with the release of Caravan of Courage and that other movie which mercifully eludes me right now. They became oversaturated on TV thanks to the cartoons and plush ads (remembering that back in the day the UK had like 4 or 5 TV channels)

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Do not underestimate the power of little furry guys, I've nothing against the idea just the toys-R-us execution.

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Funny thing is the Ewoks cartoon got a second season and Droids didn't. Any Ewok loathing back then never approached the levels of what happened with Mr. Binks.

There is a fan film called The Invisible Enemy that portrays Ewoks as the vicious little furry bastards they could have been. ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

Funny thing is the Ewoks cartoon got a second season and Droids didn't. Any Ewok loathing back then never approached the levels of what happened with Mr. Binks.

There is a fan film called The Invisible Enemy that portrays Ewoks as the vicious little furry bastards they could have been. ;)

It's a great laugh but I actually think adding a bit of ring modulation to the Ewoks voices could make them sound rather scary (in a 1970's Radiophonic Workshop sort of way).

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Recently came across an interview with Gary Kurtz. There’s a specific section from that interview that caught my eye, which I thought I’d share.

Gary Kurtz said:

The one story thread that got totally tossed out the window, which was really pretty important I think, was the one of Vader trying to convince Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor. That together they had enough power that they could do that, and it wasn’t him saying I want to take over the world and be the evil leader, it was that transition. It was Vader saying, “I’m looking again at what I’ve done and where my life has gone and who I’ve served and, very much in the Samurai tradition, and saying if I can join forces with my son, who is just as strong as I am, that maybe we can make some amends.”

Also found this:

Reconstructing Star Wars: Revenge of the Jedi

Not a perfect reconstruction — Fett’s expanded role, in particular, is iffy — but it hits many of the right thematic notes for me.

SW '77 is a pretty straightforward “black-vs-white” morality tale. Aside from Han, the heroes were perfectly virtuous, the villains umambiguously & unrepentantly evil. But with TESB, a potential game changer was introduced to the mythos with the revelation that Vader was Luke’s father. No longer was he just the ex-student who turned out the bad egg; he was the “good friend” Obi-Wan had waxed wistful for. And while an argument can be made that Vader’s interest in his son began and ended with Luke’s usefulness as a pawn, I got the sense by movie’s end that Vader felt a strong yearning to be a father to his newfound child. So where once was only clear-cut black & white now existed an element of gray. The ideal ROTJ would’ve taken that gray element and expanded upon it, cemented it as an intrinsic attribute of the SW Universe. I find that ideal ROTJ in the links above.

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DuracellEnergizer said:
Reconstructing Star Wars: Revenge of the Jedi
Not a perfect reconstruction — Fett’s expanded role, in particular, is iffy — but it hits many of the right thematic notes for me.

That was a great read. RoTJ always bugged/disappointed me somewhat, and the Kurtz revelations only cemented this further. In fact I think a lot of the people railing against the new trilogy (of which I’m occasionally one) are in denial about where the trend of crap storytelling and plotholes galore actually kicked in.

I’m guessing Dino De Laurentiis would’ve been pretty sore about the ‘sand devils’ stealing his thunder a mere year before Dune’s release!

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DuracellEnergizer said:

Recently came across an interview with Gary Kurtz. There’s a specific section from that interview that caught my eye, which I thought I’d share.

Gary Kurtz said:

The one story thread that got totally tossed out the window, which was really pretty important I think, was the one of Vader trying to convince Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor. That together they had enough power that they could do that, and it wasn’t him saying I want to take over the world and be the evil leader, it was that transition. It was Vader saying, “I’m looking again at what I’ve done and where my life has gone and who I’ve served and, very much in the Samurai tradition, and saying if I can join forces with my son, who is just as strong as I am, that maybe we can make some amends.”

Also found this:

Reconstructing Star Wars: Revenge of the Jedi

Not a perfect reconstruction — Fett’s expanded role, in particular, is iffy — but it hits many of the right thematic notes for me.

SW '77 is a pretty straightforward “black-vs-white” morality tale. Aside from Han, the heroes were perfectly virtuous, the villains umambiguously & unrepentantly evil. But with TESB, a potential game changer was introduced to the mythos with the revelation that Vader was Luke’s father. No longer was he just the ex-student who turned out the bad egg; he was the “good friend” Obi-Wan had waxed wistful for. And while an argument can be made that Vader’s interest in his son began and ended with Luke’s usefulness as a pawn, I got the sense by movie’s end that Vader felt a strong yearning to be a father to his newfound child. So where once was only clear-cut black & white now existed an element of gray. The ideal ROTJ would’ve taken that gray element and expanded upon it, cemented it as an intrinsic attribute of the SW Universe. I find that ideal ROTJ in the links above.

This was an awesome post Duracell. You put my thoughts on ROTJ into words there. It just had so many missed opportunities. And the crazy thing to me is that most people say “Yeah, ewoks suck and Han was written poorly, but the Luke/Vader stuff is golden”. But it really isn’t. There are some really great isolated scenes (Luke rages on Vader, Vader saves Luke) but the writing is really over simplistic and hokey. Luke just blatantly says “There is good in you. Come to the light.” Vader then just says “Noooo, the dark side I must stick to.” It has no complexity. And as much as I love Ian McDiarmid eating up the scenery, I wanted something more like what we saw in the theatrical hologram scene in ESB, someone with a far more understated and subdued presence.

And shopping Maul made a great point about how people forget that the problems with Star Wars didn’t start with the sequel trilogy or even the prequel trilogy. They started all the way back in 1983. We are lucky to have two perfect movies from the whole saga. So when folks ask if I am a big Star Wars fan, I don’t even say “Nah, just an OT fan”, it’s something more like “I think the first two films are classics”.

Return of the Jedi: Remastered

Lord of the Rings: The Darth Rush Definitives

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It’s solidly in the middle of the pack for me. It’s certainly not a high point of the series, but there’s a lot more hand-wringing about it than I think is warranted. It’s fine.

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“It’s a good film, it just has a lot of problems.”

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I just watched it. I think we need to forget that the Ewok’s look like Teddy Bears. They are supposed to be dawrf Wookies. Yeah, they came out kind cute, but if you watch how they are played, there is no cuteness outside their appearance. They are tough little things, quite capable of fighting their own battles. Too much is made of their appearance. And many of them are the same actors who played the Ugnaughts and Jawas.

And frankly I don’t really see an issue with the story. Yes, Empire added a level of gray to the story, but I feel that all three put together make a nice tale of good and evil with a bit of gray in it. I think the gray carries through to the end. I think the entire tower sequence is exceptionally well written. And I didn’t really connect with Han’s story, either in TESB or ROTJ until I was old enough to experience love myself. Then his story make complete sense to me and I could relate to Han even more. I’ve always been more of a Han Solo fan than Luke Skywalker. I love the force and lightsabers, but I love the Falcon more. So Han saving Lando, dispatching Boba Fett, leading the Endor mission (and proving his leadership with his ideas and actions) are really the culmination of him coming back and saving the day in the First Death Star battle. The part with Leia completes the romance began when the two started bickering after Leia was rescued. I’ve never had a problem with ROTJ, but I do think it is the weakest of the original three, but simply because the other two are so magnificently done. I think a better director might have been able to pull some more out of it and bring it up to the level of the other two, but as we have seen since, with 9 more films, that is hard to do. I think Rogue One, The Last Jedi, and Solo come close, but don’t quite reach the stature of ROTJ. The conclusion to Vader and Palpatine’s stories are just too powerful and well done.

And as for Lucas changing the story along the way. Yeah, that does throw some quirks in, but as a long time fan of many written SF series, that is nothing new. I’ve seen glitches that would make a Star Wars fan’s head spin. So what we see in Star Wars is ignorable. I think the story glitches are as minor as all the visual glitches that are in the films.

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It reminds me that my main issue with the Vader’s plot in ROTJ is the line “I MUST obey my Master”, whereas he explicitly told his son (and his wife !) that he would rather like kill the Emperor and rule the galaxy himself. Just removing that line and leaving only “you don’t know the power of the dark side” would make things work better I guess.

It’s just a slight complain: I know ROTJ is not the same top quality as ANH and TESB and has many problems here and there, but it still is a very good movie (and still the third best SW in my opinion), as a SW and as a fantasy flick.

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MalàStrana said:

It reminds me that my main issue with the Vader’s plot in ROTJ is the line “I MUST obey my Master”, whereas he explicitly told his son (and his wife !) that he would rather like kill the Emperor and rule the galaxy himself. Just removing that line and leaving only “you don’t know the power of the dark side” would make things work better I guess.

It’s just a slight complain: I know ROTJ is not the same top quality as ANH and TESB and has many problems here and there, but it still is a very good movie (and still the third best SW in my opinion), as a SW and as a fantasy flick.

I actually think it’s interesting to note how differently he acts when the Emperor is around vs. when he isn’t.