by Edward Gross
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Audiences, he notes, were forced to wait three long years to find out if Darth Vader was, in fact, Luke’s father. As a result, the expectation was that the truth would be revealed in some big, dramatic fashion.
RAY MORTON
But instead, Yoda confirms that Vader is Luke’s dad with a brief, almost offhand “Yeah, he’s your dad” statement. There’s no buildup, no big dramatic reveal. It feels as if the writers couldn’t wait to get the whole matter over with as quickly as possible so that they could move on to the Ewoks. Then there’s also the fact that the identity of “another” is revealed in the same let’s-get-this-over-with-as-quickly-as-possible manner. Yoda mentions there’s another Skywalker, Luke asks Ben who it is, Ben tells him it’s his sister. That’s it. The revelation that the sister is actually Leia is presented even more lamely. There’s no investigation, no dramatic discovery. Instead, Luke simply “senses” it, which is the worst kind of fantasy-writing cheat. As I mentioned previously, Luke’s sister was never meant to be Leia—as originally conceived, the sister was supposed to be an entirely different character who Luke would meet and train in some future episode. It was only in the writing of the final drafts of Jedi that Lucas decided the sister would be Leia. One presumes he did this to provide a neat wrap-up to the Luke/Leia/Han love triangle (an earlier idea was to give Luke a girlfriend, who would presumably cause him to lose interest in Leia) and also to provide some sort of resolution to the “another” concept, which—after receiving such a big buildup in Empire—ultimately didn’t come into play in Jedi.
I’ve never liked the idea of Luke and Leia being siblings. First of all, it’s lazy. Lucas introduced the idea of another Skywalker, a concept with tremendous dramatic import and potential, in Empire, but obviously didn’t have a clear idea of what he was going to do with it. Since he ultimately decided to do nothing with it, one wishes he had just dropped the notion entirely, because to just fob the whole idea off onto an existing character feels like he just wasn’t trying very hard. Also, as many jokesters have pointed out, making Luke and Leia siblings retroactively adds an incestuous undertone to their flirtations in the first two movies. And that’s really creepy. It was then, it still is now, and the whole idea casts an uncomfortable pall over some key scenes in the earlier films. I didn’t like it when I first saw the movie and to this day I still wish Lucas hadn’t done it.
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The script in many instances fails to properly service the regular characters, none of whom are written with the same sort of depth and complexity as they were in Empire; in fact, many of those characterizations are inconsistent with how they had been previously presented.
RAY MORTON
Luke is the protagonist of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. His role in Jedi is more inconsistent. He makes an impressive entrance into the film with a confident display of his newfound Jedi powers and is the driving force through the remainder of the rescue sequence. In the second act, however, Luke becomes just a passive recipient of exposition in the Dagobah scene and then a tag-along in the Endor section of the film. He returns to the lead position in the throne room sequence, but as soon as he rejects the dark side, Luke stops being the protagonist once and for all. He is reduced to a passive supporting character in the redemption segment, in which Vader is the protagonist. Luke is often described as saving Vader in the end of Jedi, but he does not—Vader saves himself. Luke is simply the catalyst that prompts Vader’s turnaround and then later serves as a sounding board when Vader/Anakin confirms that he has reformed. While it’s good that Jedi allows Luke to complete his arc, even if only in truncated fashion, it’s a shame he wasn’t allowed to drive the action of film consistently from beginning to end, as a strong protagonist always should.
PETER HOLMSTROM
(cohost, The Rebel & the Rogue podcast)
The thing you have to remember is, Star Wars was always meant to be Vietnam in space. George Lucas has said so many times. You see his first draft for Star Wars, it’s there—and I think part of the reason he says “I only got 30–40 percent of what I wanted” from Star Wars is that. It became a story of good versus evil, which isn’t what he wanted. He finally sets up the conflict in Empire, and you see the theme first emphasized in Return of the Jedi.
Luke’s arc in that film is one of the great arcs in cinema history. It’s beautiful. He starts as a hero—literally a swashbuckling hero, saving the day; but then the crux comes during the scene at Dagobah, where both his previous mentors tell him he must do the thing he was told never to do. “A Jedi only uses the Force for defense, never for attack.” Yoda’s own words from Empire. But here, Yoda and Obi-Wan tell him no—tell him the only way to be a Jedi is to murder his father and the Emperor by any means necessary. In other words, saying, “To do good, you must do something evil.”
Luke struggles with this through the whole movie—knows it’s wrong, even if everyone around him says it’s right. Then, in one of the most brilliant moments in film history—a moment mirrored in cinema greats like Citizen Kane, The Searchers, Batman v. Superman, Schindler’s List—Luke gives in to anger, defeats Vader, and has him at his mercy, moments away from slashing through him. And then Luke stares down at his gloved hand, then to a shot of Vader’s robot stump of a hand Luke just cut off—and in that moment, Luke has a pure reflection of what he has just become. It’s a moment where a mirror is shoved right up in the character’s face, and they are forced to see that they’ve become the monster they have so longed to destroy. It’s beautiful. Luke throws his lightsaber away and embraces a path that neither the Emperor nor Yoda set out for him—and that’s what makes him the best of us all.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER
(author, Star Wars novelization and the sequel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye)
Darth Vader was a terrific character until he was redeemed. It’s like, you know, Hitler’s on his deathbed and he says, “I’m sorry,” and all is forgiven? I couldn’t get past that.
RAY MORTON
Vader’s character changes significantly in Return of the Jedi. In Empire, Vader was a dynamic, complex personality—a ruthless, ambitious actor full of secrets who would let nothing stand in his way as he schemed to overthrow his master and seize the ultimate power in the galaxy. In Return of the Jedi, Vader is … a lapdog. Whereas Vader was the main villain in Empire, in Jedi he is once again a henchman as he was in Star Wars. In that first film, Vader was at least a feisty henchman, willing to argue with Tarkin and give the Grand Moff a hard time if they disagreed. In Jedi, that fire is gone and Vader is obedient to the Emperor to the point of obsequiousness. This Vader doesn’t seem capable of questioning his boss, much less of plotting to overthrow him. He appears to have lost the ambition that drove him in Empire, as well as his intense, determined nature. Jedi’s Vader isn’t even very ruthless: the dark angel who tortured and Force-choked people left and right in Star Wars and Empire doesn’t crush a single larynx in Episode VI. He doesn’t do much else either. Apart from intimidating Moff Jerjerrod in the opening sequence, Vader spends most of the movie just passively standing and saying, “Yes, my master,” whenever the Emperor croaks out some pronouncement. He only jumps into action at the very end of the movie when he jumps in to stop Luke from killing the Emperor.
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In early drafts of the screenplay, the Emperor was actually aware of Vader’s desire to depose him and of his attempt to enlist Luke to help him do so. Angry, the Emperor lets Vader know that he is aware of this treachery and that Vader is on thin ice with him. He treats Vader badly—removing him from vital assignments, mocking him, and assigning a condescending Moff Jerjerrod to serve as his minder. At one point, Vader pushes back and the Emperor Force-chokes him, reminding Vader which one of them is the more powerful.
RAY MORTON
It’s not clear why Vader was de-balled so significantly in Jedi, but it seems likely that Lucas feared that audiences might not accept Vader’s transformation into a good guy if he spent th
e bulk of the film running around being evil and killing people. Whether that would have been the case or not is hard to know, but what is certain is that the Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi is a much less formidable (and, frankly, less interesting) character than the Vader of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.
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When Vader is redeemed by saving Luke from the Emperor, and is dying on the Death Star, Luke removes his helmet to reveal the kindly face of Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker—which came as a shock to David Prowse in particular.
DAVID PROWSE
(on-set actor, “Darth Vader”)
I hated it. I thought it was the worst possible thing they could have done to me, as far as the movies were concerned. I had terrible problems with them all throughout the movies. They overdubbed my voice without telling me. It was all very underhanded. They gave me false dialogue in the second movie, which I thought was stupid. There was no need for the secrecy. It wasn’t as though I was going to go around blabbing things to the press. Then they decided to unmask somebody else, without telling me, without even discussing it with me. I really thought that was the dirtiest of tricks. They tried to film it all before I started work on the movie, so I wouldn’t know what was going on. The only reason I found out about it was because one of the reporters from a newspaper in Britain asked if I knew that they were killing me off in this movie. I said, “You must be joking! They won’t kill Darth Vader off!” And he said, “Not only are they killing you off, they’re killing you off in another studio and using another actor so that you don’t know what’s going on in the movie!” All these decisions came right from the top, right from Lucas.
IRVIN KERSHNER
I would never have shown the face of Darth Vader. When that helmet was put on his head in Empire, it was about a half-second blink. I wanted to show that there was a human being in there and that there was something wrong with that human being, but nothing more. The audience had to imagine what the face looked like. When they showed just an ordinary man lying there talking with a couple of little marks on his head, I felt it was a cheat. I would not have done that.
RAY MORTON
And then there’s Leia. In Star Wars and Empire, Princess Leia is a feisty, determined leader of the rebellion. In Jedi, she is no longer a leader—for reasons never made clear, the character of Mon Mothma assumes Leia’s role in the Alliance’s ruling hierarchy, reducing the Princess to Han Solo’s sidekick. Leia also loses her feistiness, which has been replaced by … nothing. Leia is a very vague character in Jedi—it’s not clear what she is thinking or feeling at any point in the movie. Carrie Fisher is on record saying she didn’t recognize the character anymore when she read the screenplay and couldn’t figure out how to play her.
Han has lost all of the complexity he was given in Episode V. He’s not only one-dimensional in Jedi, but he also seems to have lost quite a few IQ points. Apart from a brief shuttle ride, Han Solo, the greatest daredevil pilot in the galaxy, doesn’t even do any flying in the film, thus robbing the character of the one area in which he is guaranteed to shine. Harrison Ford famously wanted Solo to die in Jedi—to make a noble sacrifice of some sort in order to complete Han’s arc from selfish loner to selfless hero—but Lucas didn’t want Solo to die, because he felt audiences wouldn’t accept it, so Han lived and Ford responded by unenthusiastically phoning in his performance. Beyond “Someone who loves you,” the reverse “I love you/I know,” and some brief kissy-face at the end, the romance between Han and Leia is not only not developed in Jedi, it is barely acknowledged. And with Han returning at the beginning of the story, there isn’t much for Lando to do in Jedi. After taking part in the opening rescue, he is shunted off to the Millennium Falcon for the rest of the movie for what is basically an extended cameo. Why Lando, whose piloting skills have never been established, would be chosen to lead an aerial attack instead of experienced pilot Han Solo is never explained.
After stealing the show in Empire, Yoda is inexplicably killed off in Jedi following an appearance in only one scene. In Empire, he’s approximately eight hundred years old and hale and healthy. A few weeks later in Jedi, he is suddenly old, sick, and dying. What happened? What happened is that Yoda wasn’t originally supposed to appear in the movie at all. As previously noted, Lucas’s original notion was for Luke to have returned to Dagobah and completed his training between films. Without on-screen training to be done, there was no role for Yoda to play. However, Richard Marquand insisted he appear, assuming (correctly) that audiences would want to see more of the diminutive Jedi Master after his film-stealing appearance in The Empire Strikes Back. In some early drafts, Yoda was still alive and made an appearance at the end of the movie; in others, he died off-screen. He was finally killed off in Jedi when Lawrence Kasdan insisted one of the principals had to die in order to convince audiences that the stakes in Jedi were for real. Had Yoda died making some noble sacrifice, that might have worked, but to just have him catch a cold and croak feels like a waste of an incredible and beloved character.
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While some people disliked the additions to the Rebel Alliance, the new additions of Mon Mothma, Admiral Ackbar, and General Crix Madine would become fixtures in the iconic Star Wars Expanded Universe for many years to come.
CAROLINE BLAKISTON
(actress, “Mon Mothma,” Return of the Jedi)
I was in a television series working in Manchester. When they needed to make the costume that I am wearing as Mon Mothma, they came to Manchester to do a costume fitting in the hotel where I was staying. I was told to keep that a secret. I couldn’t tell anybody about the design. We even discussed my hairdo, but in the end my own short red hair was used. They thought it was just fine. I had no idea what a Bothan was—then I discovered later, of course. I didn’t understand the story, I didn’t know the story. I had just a page with my lines. Everything was secret and I had to sign for that. So I learned what I had to learn and I went to the studio and they told me my lines had changed. I had to learn new lines, which was difficult as the language that was used is not the language we speak. After a day and a half there was the intimidating big scene with Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and all the extras and the film crew. I worked in that studio many times because during the sixties and seventies many series like The Avengers were made there.
TIM ROSE
(on-set actor, “Admiral Ackbar,” Return of the Jedi)
I was already working in Phil Tippett’s workshop at ILM designing animatronics for the characters of Jedi. I knew that when preproduction was finished I would be going to England to perform Sy Snootles and Salacious Crumb. We were never given copies of the script for reasons of secrecy, so I had no idea who Admiral Ackbar was. I had done a lot of the design work for his close-up version and when I asked Phil who he was he said, “Oh, he’s just another background character that appears later in the movie.” So I asked if I could perform him, as I was familiar with his controls, and Phil said okay. It was as simple as that.
As the film entered into its final days of production, John Williams set to work on the final chapter of this trilogy of the Star Wars franchise.
JOE KRAEMER
(composer, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Jack Reacher)
The completion of the final film in the original trilogy would not have been the same without John Williams returning to write the score. For this film, he created new themes for Jabba the Hutt, the Ewoks, and the Emperor, as well as the tender “brother-and-sister” love theme for Luke and Leia. This score was recorded in Studio One at Abbey Road studios in London, the same studio where John Williams would return nearly twenty years later to record the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
Returning themes from earlier Star Wars films included the Main Theme, the Force Theme, “The Imperial March,” Yoda’s Theme, Han and Leia’s Theme, “The Rebel Fanfare,” and action music from the “Attack on the Death Star,” as well as the “TIE Fighter Battle” from the Death Star escape sequence. Despite h
aving more music recorded for the film, the soundtrack LP was actually the shortest of the first three films, being a single disc made up mostly of concert arrangements of the new themes rather than underscore from the film itself. Of the album’s eleven tracks, only five were from the actual score, with the rest being at least partly made up of material specially written and recorded just for the LP.
One of the most charming scenes in the movie also had one of the highlights of the score—the sequence where C-3PO tells the Ewoks the story of the Star Wars trilogy. Williams took the opportunity to create a medley using many of the themes from the series for a small woodwind ensemble and percussion, and it solidifies the fairy-tale quality the films and scores had achieved by this point in pop culture.
Williams had adapted the score to the original Star Wars for symphony orchestra for use in concerts around the world, and one of the changes he made in doing so was to add a very short timpani roll to the opening chord. This finally made its way onto a soundtrack album with Return of the Jedi, although in the film, the “Main Title” was actually the recording made for The Empire Strikes Back, since it started without the percussion roll. This was the last of the scores John Williams recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra until he returned in 1999 to record The Phantom Menace.
