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Post #436012

Author
Bingowings
Parent topic
Who Felt Return Of The Jedi Was A Letdown At The Time?
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/436012/action/topic#436012
Date created
29-Aug-2010, 3:40 PM

I was thirteen when Return Of The Jedi came out and I was excited by much of the film but I remembered telling my father at the time that it wasn't as good the last one, it wasn't just the story either, it looked a little tatty, the plot and characters seemed to have lost their sparkle and depth. Han didn't seem like Han, Leia didn't seem like Leia.

I remember him suggesting that this was because I was getting older and therefore not as into this kids film series as I was when I was seven and ten. I think he failed to notice how excited I was about the prospect of going to see the film and how my eyes lit up with the clips and trailers on television before seeing the final result.

Then came the real kicker.

After ANH and ESB we were pretty sure that after a loooooog wait we'd get another episode but after ROTJ that was it...nothing.

Even if the PT had started three years later (and not sixteen) and it had been everything I had hoped for. I still wanted more Luke, Leia and Han. Their story wasn't over, it had just begun but with and after ROTJ it just kind of fizzled out

I'm forty now and all that time I've never seen ANH and ESB as kids films, family entertainment yes but not exclusively for children.

Star Wars was amazing for a seven year old (and my parents liked it too which was rather incredible at the time) but the characters and plot grew with ESB and it felt like this was going to be an ongoing story which would at least hold the same level of quality.

ROTJ (like the PT) jumps from moments where it's uncomfortably dark (in a good way) and full of action to being rather bland and playing like an older person's idea of what a child might like (in a bad way). Where as the first two seemed (from my child perspective) to be aimed at the child in my parents, ROTJ just seemed to be a typically patronising 'children's' story but with Jabba's tongue (that whole thing with Leia and Jabba felt more wrong than Leia being Luke's sister when I was thirteen).

That's what I felt then and I've never stopped feeling that way.

The line that stood out for me was Threepio's "Here we go again" which rather summed up my response to it.