Me and my friends were all 11 - 12 when the 1st one came out and we did all sorts of 1970’a - `1980’s nerdy things like taking cassette players into the theater and taping the movies, having nerdy schoolyard conversations that had sentences like “what if George Lucas dies in a plane crash before he finishes the sequel?” and then after TESB we had that same conversation again.
I saw RotJ with my dad on opening weekend. I had gotten enough info about the movie before it came out that I knew what to expect from the story line. My dad and I went to these like other fathers and sons go to ball games.
When I left the theater all I could think was “I waited six years for that?”There’s a fine movie in there lost amid a horrible execution. I saw this one several times in the theaters and it’s got moments but not enough to bring it to the level that it needs to be at. The whole affair felt recycled and phoned in.
I’ve read a fair amount of threads here about RotJ edits and peoples feeling about them and I do wonder how many people here have read Rinzlers’ book on it. I realize it’s Lucasfilm sanctioned and people may be wary of historical revisionism but there’s a lot in that book where things are detailed about the people on the movie being aghast at what is going on. Ralph McQuarrie does pre-production art but refuses to draw teddy bears, for one thing and they very clearly spell out that Lucas had a kid and he wanted to be able to take that kid into a toy store and buy a Star Wars teddy bear. There are parts of the constitution of this movie where the quality control was thrown under the bus to make a real kids movie and that’s the big thing that haunts it. There’s the whole dark will he or won’t he patricide thing that’s playing off against burp jokes and killer (BUT CUTE) teddy bears. It’s a movie that can’t make up it’s mind as to what it wants to be - at least The Phantom Menace is consistent in that regard.
I should get off my backside and read those books, although I do admit to a slight concern about revisionism.
Lucas and Marquand seem to have dug their heels in with RoTJ and resisted anything that might take it away from being a kids’ film. In doing so I think they over-compensated. Even the supposedly ‘dark stuff’ is played through a childishly simplistic lens (if you get angry that’s the bad side, if you be nice that’s the good side). I think JK Rowling proved that you can grow/mature a saga and take your audience with you.
By the way I think your ‘fine movie lost amid horrible execution’ observation is pretty much an apt description of every SW film since TESB…