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Anyone hate Return of the Jedi? — Page 4

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S_Matt said:

My challenge to those who don't buy Vader being Luke's father is to actually come up with a good argument against it

It's well documented in articles, interviews, web sites, & books that Vader wasn't Luke's father prior to Empire.  To suggest otherwise is either revisionism or baiting.

In Lucas' original script (vision), Luke is in his 60s, Annikin is 18, and Darth Vader (first name, last name) is just a military general - not a Jedi, not a Sith. Three wholly separate and unrelated characters.

 

and you'll have to do better than..."George Lucas never intended".

People are free to dig or not dig the story as it was changed by Lucas in 1980, but to suggest that it was always his intention is incorrect.

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/

http://starwarz.com/starkiller/2010/05/the-origins-of-star-wars-the-evolution-of-a-space-saga/

 

 

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Anchorhead said:

It's well documented in articles, interviews, web sites, & books that Vader wasn't Luke's father prior to Empire.  To suggest otherwise is either revisionism or baiting. 

 

And the fact that Lucas changed his mind about it matters... how, exactly?

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Anchorhead said:

S_Matt said:

My challenge to those who don't buy Vader being Luke's father is to actually come up with a good argument against it

It's well documented in articles, interviews, web sites, & books that Vader wasn't Luke's father prior to Empire.  To suggest otherwise is either revisionism or baiting.

In Lucas' original script (vision), Luke is in his 60s, Annikin is 18, and Darth Vader (first name, last name) is just a military general - not a Jedi, not a Sith. Three wholly separate and unrelated characters.

 

and you'll have to do better than..."George Lucas never intended".

People are free to dig or not dig the story as it was changed by Lucas in 1980, but to suggest that it was always his intention is incorrect.

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/

http://starwarz.com/starkiller/2010/05/the-origins-of-star-wars-the-evolution-of-a-space-saga/

 

 

I agreed with S_Matt about this, not from the point of view of what was or wasn't originally intended but whether it works for the climax of a fantasy story. I added a qualifier:

doubleKO said:

The only thing I can think of to justify that attitude would be if they had access to George's intentions ahead of time (I don't know if that was or wasn't possible with whatever material was available to the public at the time).

*edit* By intentions, I mean to NOT have Vader as Luke's father.

Is this you Anchorhead? Did you know that it was not planned before you saw Empire?

*and THEN back to Jedi dammit! There's an ESB reveal thread for you here S_Matt.

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S_Matt said:

Anchorhead said:

It's well documented in articles, interviews, web sites, & books that Vader wasn't Luke's father prior to Empire.  To suggest otherwise is either revisionism or baiting. 

 

And the fact that Lucas changed his mind about it matters... how, exactly?

Could FriendsSpeak BE any more annoying?

So that I'm absolutely clear on this, Matt -  I've answered your baiting. You'll have to move on to someone else now.

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^ Hoping I'm not included here. I am genuinely curious to know if you knew about the originally intended story before you saw Empire, and if that is part of the reason you don't buy into it.

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doubleKO said:

I am genuinely curious to know if you knew about the originally intended story before you saw Empire, and if that is part of the reason you don't buy into it.

I know I am NOT him, but I can tell you my Friends and I went and saw Empire on release weekend and we are huge Fans, just friggin LOVED the movies, we were kids LOL, collected trading cards, comics, toys, etc., and I believe no one knew of this then, so to all of us, this is what it was, but I suppose now knowing it makes the movies wrong, which I find absurd, so what if GL changed his mind, I am pretty sure other Directors have done this to, the public at that time was shocked to find out Vader was Luke's Father, and it was GREAT! I can still remember the look on ALL our faces sitting there and hearing this, good times.

I will say though, if he or anyone knew this before seeing Empire, I SURE would love to see this proof.

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doubleKO said:

I agreed with S_Matt about this, not from the point of view of what was or wasn't originally intended but whether it works for the climax of a fantasy story.

I think if the change had been handled differently it would have worked better (at least for me).  It's still deep enough in Empire and worked well enough.  By the time Return was released the series had lost a lot of its harshness. 

In Star Wars we had burned bodies, mass murder (Alderaan), torture, severed arms lying on the floor, untrustworthy hired pilot, etc. Those elements were either castrated or g-rated as the series progressed and I think that hurt the OT overall.  There was real danger in Star Wars.  The lack of of any real danger in Return made me want to walk out of the theater in 1983.

For me, the change didn't work.  For a most others, it worked well and still does.

 

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doubleKO said:

^ Hoping I'm not included here. I am genuinely curious to know if you knew about the originally intended story before you saw Empire, and if that is part of the reason you don't buy into it.

If you mean the original scripts - no, I did not.  That stuff wasn't readily available the way it is now.

I just didn't care for it from a story-shrinking and universe-shrinking point of view.  My dislike of it was strictly from a fan of the original film point of view. What spoke to me in 1977 was being done away with.

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Anchorhead said:

doubleKO said:

I agreed with S_Matt about this, not from the point of view of what was or wasn't originally intended but whether it works for the climax of a fantasy story.

I think if the change had been handled differently it would have worked better (at least for me).  It's still deep enough in Empire and worked well enough.  By the time Return was released the series had lost a lot of its harshness. 

In Star Wars we had burned bodies, mass murder (Alderaan), torture, severed arms lying on the floor, untrustworthy hired pilot, etc. Those elements were either castrated or g-rated as the series progressed and I think that hurt the OT overall.  There was real danger in Star Wars.  The lack of of any real danger in Return made me want to walk out of the theater in 1983.

For me, the change didn't work.  For a most others, it worked well and still does.

 

 

I take your points.

Personal perception of the movies does depend on the chronological order that you experienced them in aswell as the age that you had at that point in time.

I do envy you for having been there at the beginning!

I did not see SW in 77' but I saw it back to back with ESB in 81'(aged 6).To this day ,the best cinematic experience ever(coupled with Superman 1and 2 back to back not long after).

SW blew my socks off and ESB made sure that they stayed blown off!!--LOL!

So personally for me SW and ESB are inextricably intertwined.

As for Jedi:

We had the Rancour eating a gamorean guard,Jabba being strangled by Leia, Implied murder of Botham spies,Ewoks being killed(Ok not on any grand scale),the death of Yoda which is as touching as anything seen in any of the 3 films and the bad guy ultimately dying (both Vader and Palpatine).

So there is stuff there.

 

 

 

 

I saw Star Wars in 1977. Many, many, many times. For 3 years it was just Star Wars...period. I saw it in good theaters, cheap theaters and drive-ins with those clunky metal speakers you hang on your window. The screen and sound quality never subtracted from the excitement. I can watch the original cut right now, over 30 years later, on some beat up VHS tape and enjoy it. It's the story that makes this movie. Nothing? else.

kurtb8474 1 week ago

http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=SkAZxd-5Hp8


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Anchorhead said:

So that I'm absolutely clear on this, Matt -  I've answered your baiting. You'll have to move on to someone else now.

Apologies if I caused offense. I was being obnoxious, so I apologise.

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danny_boy said:

As for Jedi:

We had the Rancour eating a gamorean guard,Jabba being strangled by Leia, Implied murder of Botham spies,Ewoks being killed(Ok not on any grand scale),the death of Yoda which is as touching as anything seen in any of the 3 films and the bad guy ultimately dying (both Vader and Palpatine).

So there is stuff there.

I do have to agree with Anchorhead that the films did kind of shift in tone and that kind of does hurt the continuity of something intended to be a single story split into different chapters.

 

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S_Matt said:

danny_boy said:

As for Jedi:

We had the Rancour eating a gamorean guard,Jabba being strangled by Leia, Implied murder of Botham spies,Ewoks being killed(Ok not on any grand scale),the death of Yoda which is as touching as anything seen in any of the 3 films and the bad guy ultimately dying (both Vader and Palpatine).

So there is stuff there.

I do have to agree with Anchorhead that the films did kind of shift in tone and that kind of does hurt the continuity of something intended to be a single story split into different chapters.

 

 

It is a tough question to address.

I saw Jedi when it opened in may 83'.

I then went to watch all 3 films in one evening in August 83'.

That was here in cambridge, UK. I understand that US audiences had to wait until 1985 before they showed all 3 films together .

Again , in terms of personal cinematic experiences,nothing else comes close.

Even then at the age of 9 I could detect those shifts in tone.

But in my opinion those shifts complement each other adding enough diversity ,both aesthetically and tonally to keep you interested.

In my opinion,The Lord Of The Rings or The Matrix trilogies have no where near as much variety(I like those trilogies too BTW!)--probably because they were filmed at the same time.

Filming the SW films separately actually helped.

Mark Hamill's performances as Luke are quite distinct from film to film reflecting the predicament and evolution of the character.

Does Elijah Wood's Frodo or Keanu Reeve's Neo have the same variety in their respective character's arc?

In my opinion no,but that is my opinion!

p.s

I thought it was quite cool seeing Neo get blinded and Frodo being intoxicated by the ring's power.

But Luke's journey is more engrossing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw Star Wars in 1977. Many, many, many times. For 3 years it was just Star Wars...period. I saw it in good theaters, cheap theaters and drive-ins with those clunky metal speakers you hang on your window. The screen and sound quality never subtracted from the excitement. I can watch the original cut right now, over 30 years later, on some beat up VHS tape and enjoy it. It's the story that makes this movie. Nothing? else.

kurtb8474 1 week ago

http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=SkAZxd-5Hp8


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Surprisingly enough, I've actually been enjoying Return MORE the past couple of times I watched it than I maybe ever have.  That's not to say that I still don't think it's the weakest link of the trilogy, as I have since the first time I saw them when I was 9, but I do enjoy it.

I'm sure most people here know exactly what bugs me about ROTJ the most:  the completely ridiculous, time-wasting, irrelevent to the plot Jabba the Hutt sequence at the beginning.  Even then I still don't find it painful to watch, but I do shake my head at it.  If they had found just ONE significant way to relate it to the plot of the rest of the movie, it might have been justified.  But, no, it's just a huge half hour of one plot, and then we suddenly shift gears and have an hour and a half of a new, unrelated plot.

The Ewoks don't bother me.  I actually really like them, and I cringe at the thought of it having been Wookiees instead.  But I don't know if that's just because of the terrible Wookiee battle in ROTS, which was the point of the film where I entered a coma... on two separate theatrical viewings!  But to get back to the point, I find the Ewoks entertaining and even somewhat plausible.

What I don't find as plausible is the idea of the subterfuge the Rebels took.  Obviously the plan was to keep unnoticed until their strike on the shield generator, which was why they were so intent on killing any Imperial who saw them.  But it does seem a bit unrealistic to me that no other Imperials would notice that a dozen of their troops are no longer calling in or that there were wrecked speeders all over the landscape.  That should have ruined their element of surprise right then and there.  But then again, since it was all just a trap to begin with, I suppose it's okay.

The middle section does drag a bit, but the final act makes up for it.  It's Luke's story, plain and simple, and that's where the film really, finally shines, and it's probably the only part of the film that begins to measure up to the precedents set in the previous two movies.

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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S_Matt said:

I do have to agree with Anchorhead that the films did kind of shift in tone and that kind of does hurt the continuity of something intended to be a single story split into different chapters.

I also think (as some have already touched on) that opinions on that tonal shift may be directly related to age when first seen.  By the time Return was released, I was 21 years old, had my own house, had started my career in earnest, and was living with the girl who would eventually become my wife.

I was an entirely different person from the 15-year-old kid I was when Star Wars was first released.  Sitting in the theater in 1977, I was moved by the mystery, the darkness, and vastness of story in Star Wars - the seriousness of the story.

As a young adult six years later, I had zero interest in the shrunken story, shrunken universe, the shift towards children's film, or with the softening of the characters.  That's why I wanted to walk out of the theater.  I felt very let down.  It no longer resembled the story that had moved me all those years earlier. 

The people here who first saw return when they were 6 - 10 years old may not have felt that shift as much.  One main reason was the fact that the film was largely geared toward them.  By default, they would almost certainly be more accepting of it.

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The tone is all over the place in ROTJ (and the PT).

There is still some pretty disturbing content in there when you think about it (what is Jabba doing with that tongue that Threepio can't bear to watch?) but it's mixed in with toilet humour, really broad slapstick and fourth wall shattering obvious references to Tarzan and The Wizard Of Oz (the other films riffed classic tropes but never so up front).

 

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I do always find it odd the assertion that kids will love  ROTJ and then grow out of it, or even Anchorhead's comment that kids won't notice the tonal shift as much since ROTJ was more focused towards them.  At 9, I always found ROTJ to be a lesser film than the previous two.  It always felt lighter and fluffier.  It always felt somewhat tired to me.  That's obviously not a judgment.  I just always found it interesting.  What's also interesting to me is that I always thought I was the only person who found Empire the superior film of the two.  All of my friends growing up thought ROTJ was the best of the trilogy, and it was only when I started posting here that I found others that agreed with me.  I guess that just means I was one of the few children who wasn't put off by the darker elements.  Or maybe that 9 is just getting so close to the dividing line that it becomes a bit blurry.  There were certainly film franchises I saw when I was younger (4-6) where I was put off by an installment I felt was darker and scarier.

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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As a thirteen year old I thought ROTJ looked a bit cheap and a rushed job, only the space battle and the Emperor seemed fresh to me and they were kind of spoiled by the unnecessary hang over of the Death Star and the Emperor not being as spooky as he seemed in that brief hologram scene in ESB (I love the old git Emperor but he isn't anywhere near as cool and interesting as the spooky chimp eyed ghost I first saw.).

While many of the creatures in Jabba's court were new, many were the Cantina aliens and the ESB bounty hunters wearing the same clothes and did Jabba have to live on Tatooine?

The fast ticking off of all the plot points Han still in carbonite unfrozen before our eyes, Jabba killed, Boba Fett killed, love triangle...untriangled, Yoda dead, Emperor dead, Vader dead, Empire defeated (all in one film) and then the declaration that there wouldn't be another film in 1986 was a real kick in the teeth after the first two films and the long waits between them speculating what was going to happen next and what the Episodes One and Nine were going to be like.

My best advice to any adult reading here is never promise something to a child you can not deliver.

They will remember.

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Gaffer Tape said:

I do always find it odd the assertion that kids will love  ROTJ and then grow out of it, or even Anchorhead's comment that kids won't notice the tonal shift as much since ROTJ was more focused towards them.  At 9, I always found ROTJ to be a lesser film than the previous two.  It always felt lighter and fluffier.  It always felt somewhat tired to me.  That's obviously not a judgment.  I just always found it interesting.  What's also interesting to me is that I always thought I was the only person who found Empire the superior film of the two.  All of my friends growing up thought ROTJ was the best of the trilogy, and it was only when I started posting here that I found others that agreed with me.  I guess that just means I was one of the few children who wasn't put off by the darker elements.  Or maybe that 9 is just getting so close to the dividing line that it becomes a bit blurry.  There were certainly film franchises I saw when I was younger (4-6) where I was put off by an installment I felt was darker and scarier.

 Gaffer, I think I have stated here before my total love for Jedi in '83 as a 10 year old, and also how turned off I was at ESB in '80 as a 7 year old kid.

I remember walking out of ESB totally shocked at the dark turn the sequel took.  I didn't hate it because it was still SW, but it was my least favorite til around high school.

I remember walking out of Jedi on cloud nine.  I can still remember driving home with 2 older brothers just thinking that was better then the original.  I remember being utterly obssessed with the Jabba sequence, as I remember watching the PBS special that summer on how they created Jabba and all the creatures.  I loved the Obiwan/Luke talk on Dagobah as it was magical to me to see Obiwan almost as a person summing up the last 6 years of our lives.  The ending was great too, and never thought about more SW movies as that was closure to me.  I can't remember even thinking back then about prequels or a sequel trilogy, as that part of my life was over.

When I changed was I believe I was in 11th grade during Presidents Day Weekend and SciFi played the trilogy.  Watched SW and still loved it, watch ESB....and it was like a total revelation of how fucking great this movie is and what was I thinking?  Then  Jedi came on and it started to hit me of all the stuff people complain about. 

And nothing about the movies have changed since I was in highschool  :)

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Gaffer Tape said:

I do always find it odd the assertion that kids will love  ROTJ and then grow out of it, or even Anchorhead's comment that kids won't notice the tonal shift as much since ROTJ was more focused towards them.  At 9, I always found ROTJ to be a lesser film than the previous two.  It always felt lighter and fluffier.  It always felt somewhat tired to me. 

That's why you're here, man.  ;-) 

 

 

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Jeez Gaffer, you must have been a pretty serious 9 year old :) Thanks for the post. Also dark_jedi and danny_boy for contributing to the thread. All valuable input.

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TV's Frink said:

doubleKO said:

^ Ratings out of four balls, please.

I like this new guy.  He's already using OT.com off-topic memes.

So do I. His avatar is baller.

Peters ftw.

"Well here's a big bag of rock salt" - Patton Oswalt