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ROTJ is the best Star Wars film... discuss! — Page 4

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CatBus said:

Contentious or incomplete, but contentious is admittedly more fun.  Welcome aboard!

Thanks. I'm a HUGE Star Wars fan, so to coin a phrase, 'this is where the fun begins' :)

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imperialscum said:

Bingowings said:

By cheap storying telling I mean ticking off and clearing every possible hanging thread.

That never happens in real life and when it happens all in the last chapter it's clunky, unsophisticated and rubbish.

Now when you should provide some actual examples you seem to fail to do so. Instead of going on about the useless Ewok stuff half of your post, you should be providing examples of this. At this moment, I might remind you that SW and ESB have those kind of unrealistic scenarios too.

Bingowings said:

By by the numbers I mean almost everyone other than Mark and Ian just winging it.

Well Luke, Vader and Emperor character development is the main storyline of this film. Other stuff (such as Han and Leia) is secondary. And Ewoks (which seems to be your personal focus of the film) are irrelevant. You are actually contradicting yourself. You stated that Luke/Emperor stuff is good and on the other hand you say the film story is bad. How can it be bad if you stated that its core is good?

About Han and Liea. Well yes Ford wanted to avoid the film before they even started it and he didn't do his best. But more importantly, Lucas' completely exhausted Han and Leia character potential in ESB. So it was little left for ROTJ. All he could go for was this "love triangle" stuff.

minor note: Could you please improve your usage of paragraphs. It is hard for people to understand the main points and reply to your post. No offence. :)

Actual examples of what?

I've mentioned the stupid giant threat eraser, the lazy acting, the make do and mend recycling, the lack of directorial panache.

I don't like Return Of The Jedi much, get over it.

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Bingowings said:

Actual examples of what?

of this...

Bingowings said:

I've mentioned the stupid giant threat eraser, the lazy acting, the make do and mend recycling, the lack of directorial panache.


But never mind. I will satisfy myself with the general cliche when it comes to the crucial stuff. After all, I was given a very detailed insight of the irrelevant Ewoks stuff. :p

真実

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Look ere mush...

Ewoks are in the film so why not mention how crap they are?

My bag with them isn't the usual one of (they aren't Wookiees, they are cute merchandise etc) it's that they don't make narrative sense as presented in the film.

They don't live up to the potential of the idea which in my view is actually as sound as having a Jedi master who just happens to be a little green goblin thing who sometimes speaks backwards.

oh

and if i want to screw around with the conventions of paragraph protocol I

will so help me.

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 (Edited)

Bingowing, you can tone down the Ewok stuff now. :) If you haven't noticed I wasn't even discussing ROTJ. I was pointing out the silly way you present your opinion. You drop in some general cliche critique like "bad story, poor acting". And when one is expecting a detailed explanation to follow, you just leave it at that and instead go on and write a novel about Ewoks. Do you just attach that general cliche in attempt to make you opinion look better, more valid?

It was funny that the more I asked you to leave Ewoks and explain the "bad story, poor acting" thing, the more you went on about Ewoks.

真実

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If you think my observations aren't too original maybe it's because other people have noticed too and agree with me.

Not that it's important that anyone agrees with me, I mean my opinions are my opinions.

Just as your opinion that my choice of words is 'silly' is perfectly okay.

It's no skin off my rosey nose if you aren't impressed by my delivery my dear.

Return Of The Jedi is still a piss poor excuse for a third installment in the series.

It's not even that good as a sixth episode but it has some good moments.

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I honestly believe the Ewoks had the potential to be nasty little buggers in a fight. In the novelization, Leia's first impression of Wicket is tempered by the fact he's got a knife. Although the description is probably of Kenny Baker's costume, as he was going to do the scene before falling ill.

I thought this guy was kind of scary close up...

It kind of seems like the more scary looking Ewoks got nudged into the background as the film progresses. (George can be seen micro managing the Ewoks a bit in The Making of a Saga doc.) I was pretty surprised a lot of the action figures have knives when we didn't see them being used in the movie.

There's the possibility things were toned down in the final editing. There's still a shot of an Ewok brandishing a stormtrooper gun that made the final cut, and I think some of the unused Jedi footage in Battle for Endor has some of them shooting. Without knowing what was left on the cutting room floor, I can only speculate.

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NeverarGreat said:


About the Threepio thing, it could be that the Ewoks had a specific mythology involving the coming of a golden being that was preceded by the evil forces of darkness in their mechanical creatures, wearing the false armor of white.


There is a "canon" explanation for why the Ewoks worship Threepio ...

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Time_travel#The_Sooma.2FAlzar_incident

... but I ignore it (for reasons that are blatantly obvious).

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I will gladly take a universe filled with Ewoks any day over a universe filled with Gungans.

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That's the whole problem with ROTJ as it currently stands.

It doesn't feel like a proper story it feels like a spoof of pre-existing stories (and I don't just refer to the fourth wall shattering Tarzan call and the Emerald City reference).

You have Harrison pulling funny faces at the teddy bears, the quality of his gurning aside I understand the reasoning for it. Han doesn't see the little furry men as a threat but the pay off should be that he comes to a rude awakening and gets genuinely worried not only for himself but what these sharp toothed, sharp speared creatures have done to Leia. Instead he is cracking cheap jokes while they are getting ready to cook him. There' no realisation of the tension that comes from hubris gone horribly wrong.

In ANH the plan to rescue the Princess from her cell is made up on the fly and it goes wrong and they (including the droids) somehow wriggle themselves out of the situation with a mixture of plausible luck and decision making that makes sense. The whole Bespin experience is pretty much the same.

In ROTJ the plan to rescue Han from Jabba's palace, if it exists at all doesn't make sense.

It's not as if there was a clear plan that goes wrong creating new perils which have to be thought or intuited out of, the solution hinges on people being in the right places but somehow places they had no idea they would end up in (I don't think Artoo has latent Force powers so it's bleeding lucky he is put on the sail barge to fire the hidden lightsaber in Luke's direction).

Ben might not believe in luck but the whole situation is a mass of random and the leads have planned this for the length of time between the two films (looks like three years but they might have aged fast worrying about the details).

The same goes with the Ewok traps.

For a guy who in the SE and later the PT felt the need to show us almost every physical transition (ship lands, people get out, walk to door, people get into ship ship takes off again...yawn) Lucas shows no emotional transition from Leia being a responsible Rebel leader to rushing off to save Han (ESB Luke style).

At the end of ESB she is in the fleet and sending Lando and Chewie off to prepare the ground for a rescue.

Would it have hurt to have a bit of conflict in the Alliance council resulting in Leia going off to Tatooine and Mon Mothma being left in charge of the Rebels?

Leia is still a high ranking member of the Alliance and privy to secrets that Jabba could sell to the Empire.

The whole Han going from stoic loner to the guy who saves Luke in the trench and the frozen wastes of Hoth is driven by character conflict. It doesn't just pop up.

It would help sell the idea Leia is Luke's sibling if we see her do the sort of thing he did in the previous film (defy her superiors to rush off to save someone she is emotionally attached to). But no like Manikin Skywalker in the PT we aren't meant to see the characters develop anymore, now they just morph to serve the needs of the action sequences.

If once sequence illustrates everything that is cheap and nasty about ROTJ it's got to be the briefing scene.

A truly boring plastic set filled with people wearing recycled costumes and unconvincing masks, props wheeled in because they can be not because they make any sense (is Ackbar close to death or something as he has two medical droids in the room). we get no character moments from the pilots and the main character interactions are corn syrup (the two groups don't interact). It would be nice to know who these Bothans were before have my emotion chain yanked by Mon Mothma.

Compare that with the briefing in ANH, it's a realistic environment and it's just the leaders explaining to the pilots what they have to do, they voice concerns about the mission and Luke interacts with them. The main cast connect to the soon to be explody people. This helps us care for them when they get picked off. It's a bit of an info dump but feels like something a small military force might actually do on the eve of a last stand.

When the battle commences in Jedi the same awful plastic amphitheatre is re-used by a couple of people as some sort of video console.

You'd think if they were stuck for space they would have tactical displays come down from the ceiling and the room would be full of people coordinating the giant space battle on their giant spaceship. So in the end it just plays out as more set recycling.

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Now this is a bit better. Still I think these things are details and I disagree with most of it.

I mean I like Solo not being serious or scared when they were about to cook him. That's old Solo. I mean if he knew he was going to get killed he sure wasn't going down crying. He was going down in style. As for his rescue, I posted the probable plan in some other thread. It may be very fragile but this is a fantasy after all.

If you don't see any emotional transitions, it doesn't mean there aren't any. Ewoks traps, some props being reused and not seeing bothans before mentioned... I really couldn't care less about details like that. Actually just mentioning stuff without showing it in the film makes the whole film universe seem greater. Just like the "Kessel run" in ANH or "gundrak" in ESB.

真実

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Leia actually does rush off to find Luke when he vanishes on a recon mission early in the Marvel comic run. (That it was a rash and probably foolish decision is at least acknowledged.) George should have hired some of the writers.

Does Jabba know (or care) that Leia is a rebel leader? Good question...

I think he's too stoned out of his mind to think of Leia as anything but a replacement for Oola.

Complaining about recycled costumes in Jedi seems pointless, since ESB recycles costumes from SW, and cantina extras wear spacesuits that were in everything from Ray Harryhausen's First Men in the Moon to Doctor Who.

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I'd imagine it would be in Fett's best interest to highlight the potential profits from asking a few questions.

Surely the Imperials have their own bounty on Leia and Luke which Jabba would be wise to cash in on rather than just sticking his tongue up... I can't bare to type.

The spacesuits weren't from Doctor Who they were from the RAF (the same place Doctor Who got them from).

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imperialscum said:

 or "gundrak" in ESB.

 Gundrak sounds better actually. 

I mean I like Solo not being serious or scared when they were about to cook him. That's old Solo. I mean if he knew he was going to get killed he sure wasn't going down crying. He was going down in style.

But he isn't meant to be old Han anymore.

He is in love with Leia, he is fighting for a cause (if they don't get out of this situation not only will he and his friends be eaten but the Empire will win). It wrecks the tension of the scene and the Ewoks remain cute teddy bears and not the scary hero eating creatures we need them to be in that moment before they become galactic heroes themselves.

If you don't see any emotional transitions, it doesn't mean there aren't any. Ewoks traps, some props being reused and not seeing bothans before mentioned... I really couldn't care less about details like that. Actually just mentioning stuff without showing it in the film makes the whole film universe seem greater.

As a bit of added fluff it's not a problem but it's clearly meant to be a emotional note played here and why should I care any more that Bothans died than anyone else?

It's 'silly'.

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I am left wondering why the heck Fett is still hanging around. How long did it take to deliver Han to Jabba anyway? Lucas has claimed to not understand the Boba Fett mystique, yet he brings him back for no real story reason except to kill him off.

Bossk and Dengar were inexplicably brought back too, but ended up on the cutting room floor. Is the bounty hunting business in some sort of recession, reducing these scum to sponging off Jabba's party buffet? ;)

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Dengar and Bossk are still in the film, clearly all the good Bounty hunters operate out of one room.

Which makes more sense than the awful droid torture scene or Yoda going from slight cough to lying down and dying in the middle of a conversation.

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I admit I have tried to defend the whole Han rescue making sense before but truthfully, it just doesn't. It's a contrived mess just thought up in 5 mins so as to get all the main protagonists back on screen. As if Lucas was thinking that's what the audience would want to see. One thing that hasn't been pointed out (I assume) is how comes Fett didnt recognise Lando? Now I know he had his guards uniform on but the majority of his face was still discernable? Hadn't he clocked him at various points and thought, 'hang on, he looks kinda familiar? ESB Fett was portrayed as a cunning, intelligent bounty hunter. If I was Fett, when it all kicked off I would've just said see ya. I got paid for Solo and this ain't my beef. Pretty sure there are other gangsters out there to work for. It's like if you work in a bank and it gets robbed, what do you do? Try to be a hero? No, if your smart you do f*** all and try to get out of there if the opportunity presents itself. No rather than that we're led to believe that instead of just being out for himself, through some kind of blind loyalty to his gangster sub contractor that's never been established, he gets involved. And so we get the premature, comical death of one of the best parts of ESB. 

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Bingowings said:

"In ROTJ the plan to rescue Han from Jabba's palace, if it exists at all doesn't make sense"

To address some of the supposed weaknesses of the rescue plot (In a side note, compared to some our recent geek mega blockbusters TDKR, Star Trek, and any Marvel film that feature truely insane scripts, the plotting in ROTJ is like a meticulously reasoned logic puzzle) I offer the following:

The team plan is... Lando goes in to scope out the joint (He may have been there for weeks, who knows, it isn't important). He gives Leia and Luke the low down and they hit on the clever idea of Leia going in disguised as a bounty hunter with Chewie as irresistable bait for Jabba. She'll free han, Lando in his guard disguise will free Chewie and with the droids in tow they'll all make a quiet exit in the dead of night.  They all agree but Luke plans to wait as backup incase anything in this deadly situation and VERY risky plan goes wrong.

Which indeed it does!

Luke guesses that he might be searched for arms on his way in to the palace before getting anywhere near Jabba so he has already hidden his Saber inside R2 (Assuming wrongly, that he'll be able to get it if talking to Jabba doesn't work). Unfortunately R2 has been assigned to the sail barge so Luke realises he needs to improvise and tries to grab a blaster before falling into the Rancor pit.  Then when they are taken to the Sarlacc pit R2 and Luke improvise again, R2 sees his chance to get Luke the saber. Luke gives him the nod. He gives Lando the nod that he's gonna try a rescue. Lando nods back... the gang all pull together and the rest is history.

Or putting it simply (To quote Bingowings comment about the merits of ANH), they...

"Somehow wriggle themselves out of the situation with a mixture of plausible luck and decision making that makes sense"

I rest my case your honor.

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Bingowings said:

Dengar and Bossk are still in the film, clearly all the good Bounty hunters operate out of one room.

Which makes more sense than the awful droid torture scene or Yoda going from slight cough to lying down and dying in the middle of a conversation.

Yeah it was a little too convenient wasnt it. Hobbling around, gets in to bed, says yeah Vaders your father and by the way you've got a sibling, dead. 

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So Luke is trusting on Lando being on the skiff, Leia being chained next to Jabba, and Artoo being on the sail barge with Threepio.

None of these decisions he has any say in.

If we saw Lando paying Fett to turn a blind eye now and then and maybe Artoo reprogram 9D9 to get her to put him on the barge it might make some sense but then what about the Rancor?

The only reason they are out in the open is because Luke killed Jabba's other pit monster so was he pretending to be in peril back then?

Was it like American Wrestling (genuinely dangerous but mostly staged)? Did Leia allow herself to get captured on orally interfered with deliberately? How did they know for sure that Jabba wouldn't kill them all on the spot?

He doesn't seem as influenced by the Force as Bib Fortuna.

In ANH they Luke has a clear plan, which Han has doubts about and when it goes wrong they wig it with a mixture of skill and plausible good fortune.

There is no plan here it's all insane luck.

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What you guys are doing now is just nitpicking on minor stuff. That's like going after "Han bounty" thing in ESB. Why didn't Han pay Jabba in 3 years? And why the hell did he decide to pay him after 3 years when Jabba wasn't after the money anyway. After 3 years Jabba was after making an example of him to regain his pride and reputation. There is no way Jabba would leave an impression a petty smuggler can make a fool out of him. I mean just how did Han expect Jabba to let him go with a payment?

真実

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Hey, it's me. said:

I admit I have tried to defend the whole Han rescue making sense before but truthfully, it just doesn't. It's a contrived mess just thought up in 5 mins so as to get all the main protagonists back on screen. As if Lucas was thinking that's what the audience would want to see. One thing that hasn't been pointed out (I assume) is how comes Fett didnt recognise Lando? Now I know he had his guards uniform on but the majority of his face was still discernable? Hadn't he clocked him at various points and thought, 'hang on, he looks kinda familiar? ESB Fett was portrayed as a cunning, intelligent bounty hunter. If I was Fett, when it all kicked off I would've just said see ya. I got paid for Solo and this ain't my beef. Pretty sure there are other gangsters out there to work for. It's like if you work in a bank and it gets robbed, what do you do? Try to be a hero? No, if your smart you do f*** all and try to get out of there if the opportunity presents itself. No rather than that we're led to believe that instead of just being out for himself, through some kind of blind loyalty to his gangster sub contractor that's never been established, he gets involved. And so we get the premature, comical death of one of the best parts of ESB. 

You don't think Boba Fett would see any benefit in saving the life of the HUGELY WEALTHY AND POWERFULL Jabba?????

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We saw him make attempts to pay Jabba twice (once on Yavin after saving Leia) and once after Hoth.

He declares his intension to do so on Bespin too and refers to being constantly tracked by Jabba's men.

He is also be tracked by the Empire so they can get to Luke via his friends (that's how Fett gets paid twice for the same job).

Clearly Jabba is more keen on making an example of Solo than getting his money back so it's one of the few plot points of ROTJ that make sense.

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Bingowings said:

So Luke is trusting on Lando being on the skiff, Leia being chained next to Jabba, and Artoo being on the sail barge with Threepio.

None of these decisions he has any say in.

If we saw Lando paying Fett to turn a blind eye now and then and maybe Artoo reprogram 9D9 to get her to put him on the barge it might make some sense but then what about the Rancor?

The only reason they are out in the open is because Luke killed Jabba's other pit monster so was he pretending to be in peril back then?

Was it like American Wrestling (genuinely dangerous but mostly staged)? Did Leia allow herself to get captured on orally interfered with deliberately? How did they know for sure that Jabba wouldn't kill them all on the spot?

He doesn't seem as influenced by the Force as Bib Fortuna.

In ANH they Luke has a clear plan, which Han has doubts about but they do wig it with a mixture of skill and plausible good fortune.

There is no plan here it's all insane luck.

Re-read my post. I'm not suggesting Luke DID KNOW they would be on the skiff etc he improvised!

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