Yotsuya (great thread by the way), do you happen to know the extent to which Lucas employed Joseph Campbell throughout the OT? Gary Kurtz claims it wasn’t such a huge factor until further into the series. I ask this because I couldn’t help but reflect on our back and forth re ROTJ. I’m not familiar with Campbell so this is pure speculation, but it seems to me that Lucas leaned more heavily on the mythical aspects of the story in ROTJ where he’d been relying on more ‘logical’ cues in the previous films. For example Yoda says Luke has to face Darth Vader in order to become a Jedi, but I feel that someone like Kershner would have had Yoda (or Obi Wan) preface it with the need for a Jedi to ‘face his deepest fear’ or something similar in order to contextualise/ground the idea (the prequels seem to attempt it with ‘Jedi trials’). Even Luke’s final battle (as I’ve been moaning about for some time!) seems to be more broadly metaphorical/symbolic than practical in terms of actually being of help to the rebel cause. I’ve also seen Lucas describe the Ewoks as the mythical ‘creature on the side of the road’, which was of course achieved with Yoda in TESB but realised with significantly more blatant cuteness in ROTJ. There’s even the moment where Luke says “I can’t go on alone”, clearly marking that point in the journey, whereas Obi Wan’s death and Luke’s being left alone in ANH were more or less written on the run.

It seems to me that Campbell/mythology was a factor in SW/TESB - along with westerns and Flash Gordon and all the other stuff mentioned in this thread - but may have taken a more blatant hold in ROTJ. Or am I, as Leia would say, “imagining things”?