The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition)

by Rinzler, J. W.

  TRUTH IN NUMBERS

  Indeed, at the box office, Return of the Jedi began by setting a new single-day record: the largest opening-day gross ever, $6,219,629, amassed from 1,002 screens in the United States and Canada (in about 820 theaters), breaking the $5,495,000 record of Star Trek, which had come out on 1,621 screens. The 1,340-seat Egyptian set a new house record of $44,722; with 1,525 seats, the Astoria Plaza in New York also set a house record of $40,630; a number of other house records were also surpassed. Variety noted that all of this was “particularly impressive considering the feat was achieved midweek as opposed to a weekend day.”

  Market polls indicated that the audience was about 60/40 male/female, with about 60 percent of attendees under 25; only about 2 percent were over 50. Additional research noted that more than 60 percent thought Jedi was better than Empire, whereas only about 50 percent thought it was better than Star Wars. Over 90 percent rated it very good/excellent and over 80 percent said they’d definitely recommend the film to their friends, which was fortunate, because Fox planned to add another 400 screens on June 24, and another 450 by July 15.

  For the week of May 25, Jedi ended up raking in $45,311,000, $30 million over the weekend, soaring past the old record of $25 million set by E.T. For the week of June 1, Jedi made another $30,585,000.

  “We didn’t in our wildest dreams anticipate this kind of reception,” says Ganis. Adds Tom Sherak, Fox’s new president of domestic distribution and marketing: “The totals are staggering.” Sherak had spent much of the weekend walking along the lines of movie theaters and sitting among audiences. “When you look at the people who came out of this picture, after standing in line for hours to see it, you don’t see anybody not smiling. I can’t tell you how many kids I heard asking daddy and mommy, ‘When can I see it again?’ ”

  That’s what Sherak wanted to hear, for repeat business would be a key to making Jedi one of the top grossers. But producer and distributor weren’t out of the woods. “No profit yet,” Kazanjian says. “Let me explain: There was advertising, which was over $10 million. And when you bring in a dollar at the box office, a dollar doesn’t come to the company; the theaters keep a certain proportion. However, I must say, after doing about $46 million the first week, we knew that we would make our money back shortly.”

  Jedi was also profiting in other media. Several Jedi books hit the bestseller lists, the storybook and novelization at number one in their respective categories. Lucasfilm had licensed the Disneyland Company to produce child-oriented records and tapes. Once the movie opened, worldwide requests for those products flooded the company, which hired more staff. “With Jedi everything has exploded so big that every sales record we’ve ever had was blown out of the sky,” says John R. Wood, general manager. “It’s the hottest thing that happened in the record industry in the last two years.” By mid-June, they’d sold more than three million Jedi-related items.

  Not every product was a success, however. “George was determined that there was going to be an Ewok [soft toy],” Roffman (who would become Lucas Licensing president in 1986) would say. “George had a baby girl and he wanted something that Amanda could play with from Star Wars. But it was a thankless task trying to convince licensees that Star Wars shouldn’t be just for boys. For Kenner, it was a complete anathema, because, being in the toy business, they understood gender differentiation very well. They were afraid that it would turn off the boys and that it really wouldn’t appeal to girls.”

  “Merchandisers were very reluctant to go along with it,” Lucas says. “I want my daughter to have one. That’s what I care about. Nobody else wants one, that’s fine with me. A lot of people are going to be offended by Ewoks. A lot of people say the films are just an excuse for merchandising: ‘Lucas decided to cash in on the teddy bear.’ Well, it’s not a great thing to cash in on, because there are lots of teddy bears marketed, so you don’t have anything that’s unique. If I were designing something original as a market item, I could do a lot better. Again, people tend to look at merchandising as an evil thing. But ultimately, a lot of fun things come out of it, and at the same time, it pays for the overhead of the company and everybody’s salary.”

  Ultimately Kenner agreed to do Ewok plush. “But their heart was never really in it and the product wasn’t very good,” Roffman adds.

  “I’ll tell you what was totally successful about marketing the Ewoks: Letting our audience know that something special was coming and not revealing what,” Ganis would say. “Not revealing what that something special was until the appointed moment—and then bringing it on the scene. We successfully built the Ewoks into something that was going to be important to the saga and then we sprung it.”

  On Thursday, June 2, 1983, Twentieth Century-Fox ran three ads in the industry paper Variety to tout Jedi’s phenomenal success, from its record-breaking opening day on May 25, to the biggest one-day gross, to the biggest six-day gross ever.

  INTIMATE LOOKS

  Cast and crew had their own opinions about the film. “Watching Jedi was like finding your old high-school yearbook up in the attic,” says Hamill. “I couldn’t really relate to it. I really felt outside the whole thing. It was a sad feeling in a way, because it was a part of my life that’s now over.”

  “I’m glad I did all three of them,” Ford says. “I’m glad it brought itself to a natural conclusion. But three is enough for me. I was glad to see that costume for the last time. I don’t think it had a very successful ending, with that teddy bear picnic.”

  “I thought it was the weakest one,” Fisher would say.

  “Despite the relief, there were elements of sadness,” says Edlund. “We are, after all, at the end of an era here. It’s a finished job now. It’s the end of the trilogy and who knows what will be next? Or when?”

  “What George Lucas changed for Hollywood films is the amount of production value that could be jampacked into a film like Jedi—it was like nothing you’d ever seen before,” Farrar would say. “Once I could just watch it, it was very, very enjoyable. And the Ewoks—they’re small people in suits, and, okay, the fur maybe looks a certain way and the eyes don’t blink—but if they are part of a good story, you move past that. That’s what you learn working with someone like George: You’ve just got to tell a good story with good characters, and the Ewoks ended up being many kids’ favorite characters.”

  “I think Star Wars is the best of the three,” Mayhew says. “It has more dynamic special effects. Empire was a bit mediocre, but the one that I enjoyed working on most was Jedi, because there were so many characters. It was exciting and we knew that everything we did had to be up to the other two’s standards. Everybody made an effort to get it right. It was a lovely atmosphere.”

  “My preference is always the first one, because it had this rough Western-like wonderful feel to it,” Roger Christian would say. “But that whole bike chase sequence was amazing.”

  “I thought Jedi was getting back to the younger generation, really, with the Ewoks and all of that stuff,” Norman Reynolds would say. “I thought it was an entertaining film, a fun film of the genre, but probably, if I’m honest, I preferred the other two.”

  “Once I got into it, it was fun with all the forest stuff we were doing and the bike chase,” Muren says. “But I think I missed the humor in the film; the Ewoks, they seemed to come out of E.T., kind of as E.T. came out of Yoda. That’s always been my thought. The great thing about these films is you’re looking at results of real experts in about 12 different departments who’d all been working together for six or eight years. Jedi shows that it’s really the most polished of the films. All the energy could go into the shot design because we knew how to do it.”

  “Jedi had kind of that corny ending with the Ewoks dancing,” Rose Duignan would say. “But I loved all the stuff being revealed, because it truly was revealed to everybody.”

  “Jedi represents years and years and years of workmanship,” says Lucas. “And if one person is not doing their job,
it shows up on screen.”

  “The work on Jedi was amazing and it was great to see it on screen,” Bruce Nicholson would say. “But I was still critical of some of the work, and so some of it is painful to watch, actually. I see some of the flaws and it’s just like, Oh, man, I wish I could re-do that shot.”

  “I couldn’t believe I had worked on it, really,” Aggie Rodgers would say. “It was very amazing to me. The words are spoken by the actors, but, if I’m lucky, I’ve got clothes on them that might help express their character.”

  “I saw the film with some four-year-old children who I know,” Ian McDiarmid says. “They wouldn’t believe that I was the Emperor of the Universe. I said, ‘I’m Darth Vader’s boss,’ but they wouldn’t have any of it. Then, halfway through the movie they realized it must be true. At the end, they sat there looking stunned and wouldn’t speak to me. They wouldn’t come near me!”

  “I really did like Jedi, but only because I got to play God for a day, with little adoring furry creatures,” says Daniels. “And I got to put Harrison over a barbecue—little things like that which make the day worth living.”

  “George changed the whole landscape of effects again,” says Lawrence Kasdan. “I couldn’t believe what was now possible, how full the sky could be, how each ship could be doing different things. I think for the kids who followed all three movies—and they’re all so different—the through-line was very satisfying. There’s an enormous amount of poetry in the trilogy and that all comes from George. You have to set up a situation where poetry can happen; there is image after image throughout the three movies that are poetically beautiful and which act as visual metaphors. The satisfaction of the Vader story is enormous. I was satisfied with how that turned out.”

  “I do think the Star Wars saga carries a huge box of myth with it,” McQuarrie says. “That’s why people come back and back and back to see it, like going to an oasis when you’re traveling across the desert. Some people go back to church. There’s a depth of mystique and understanding there that is missing from people’s lives and always has been. Well, God has lost some of his power, so I think for a whole generation Star Wars is big.”

  “When Darth Vader is finally faced with this choice of watching his son die or destroying the Emperor, he destroys the Emperor,” Roffman would say. “And so the redemption part of it is that he showed that he still had good in him. On a symbolic and emotional level, it’s the idea that by doing this he has cleansed his soul and that’s something that is very appealing to people.”

  “The second time I saw Jedi I liked it,” Ralston says. “I was able to whoop and holler with the rest of them. I had a ball! Sure, we have complaints, but that doesn’t matter. So what if Darth Vader, who is Hitler incarnate, is forgiven for everything he has done in two seconds?”

  “I remember finishing the third one and it really had a sense of the end,” Hamill would add. “From the standpoint of Luke, you have a story that tells how he becomes this Jedi. And that’s the end of the story. It’s as if you have three movies that tell you how James Bond got his license to kill and, the moment he gets it, the movie is over. So part of me was saying, ‘I’m so glad I put this all behind me,’ but the other aspect was, ‘What about all the adventures Luke could have?’ ”

  Hamill as Luke and McDiarmid as the Emperor in the latter’s throne room, in another key set image.

  A photograph of a subway station in Rome was sent to Lucasfilm by the Fox agent as proof of the studio’s efforts to publicize the film in Italy, as evidenced by the large posters on display.

  An enhanced and airbrushed marketing campaign image from the space battle, used to publicize the film, composited together by ILM effects photographers Terry Chostner, Roberto McGrath, and Kerry Nordquist.

  INTERNATIONAL HOUSE

  A day before the UK release of Jedi, the Prowse interview with the Daily Mail was finally published, revealing that Vader takes off his mask and dies. Once again, Lucasfilm responded, this time with a letter written by its associate general counsel, under the guise of Robert Watts, addressed to Prowse’s agent, saying, once again, that if Prowse made one more foul-up, he’d be in breach of contract.

  “The article read as if the information had come from me,” Prowse would say. “In fact, the reporter put the words in my mouth. I didn’t learn the truth until I actually saw the finished film, at a preview four days before its opening.”

  “David Prowse was a big, nice man,” Ganis would say. “I never had anything but a good relationship with him. I believe that he had bad advice from his management and that advice manifested itself in him taking the heat for being difficult to work with; he was difficult to work with, but I think part of the reason for it was bad advice from his management.”

  To gear up for the UK release, as a onetime event in three theaters, Jedi played with Star Wars and Empire to full capacity. On Thursday, June 2, the film opened wide, including the Dominion, Odeon Marble Arch, and the Leicester Square in London. It proceeded to break 10 out of 12 one-day house records in key cities.

  Fox agent Ascanio Branca wired to Ganis: “The results seem to be in line percentage-wise with the American results, but I must add for everybody’s knowledge in the States, considering the state of the market in England and what has happened in the past year, these figures take on a special significance, as we have never historically seen numbers like these. Congratulations to George. I felt we were seeing the ultimate picture when we were in San Francisco. I was not wrong.”

  “Ascanio Branca was this great little Italian guy living in London and very British in his own way, just zooming around and doing absolutely everything to make the premier a perfect one and to make the business perfect,” Ganis would say. “Ascanio was a good man.”

  Jedi would go on to make over $10 million the first eight weeks in the UK. By June 7, in the United States, Jedi had earned over $70 million in 12 days and continued to dominate the box office, despite the entry of three new competitors. Meanwhile, all over the world, country by country, territory by territory, people were now waking up to Jedi.

  Marquand, Kazanjian, and Anthony Daniels flew to Japan for a week of publicity in advance of Jedi’s opening. Advance sales of tickets there, with no advertising, turned out to be “astronomical,” according to Ganis, with more than 123,000 purchased; Octopussy had advertised for one month and sold only 39,000 tickets. Jedi would rake in over $7 million its first three weeks in Japan.

  A Soviet critic A. Lyutin, of the TASS news agency, compared President Reagan’s military policies with those of Darth Vader, leader of the cinematic “Empire of cosmic gangsters […] terrorizing the inhabitants of the universe.” He then referred specifically to Reagan’s proposal for deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system in space. “If this madness is realized, Star Wars could change from escapist fantasy to a sinister, ruinous, and suicidal reality.”

  Ironically, a week before, President Reagan had invited Lucas to Camp David to show him Jedi. Still in Honolulu, Lucas had turned the job over to Kazanjian. The film was viewed in the White House screening room. Michael Deaver, White House chief of staff, was present with his top lieutenants. “After the screening and praise, Michael Deaver asked if we would like to stay for the second film,” Kazanjian would say. “Of course, we accepted. Deaver handed me a bag of popcorn and offered soda and coffee. The film was War Games and that certainly did not go over well with the audience.”

  As the Lucasfilm coffers rapidly filled, an estimated final cost for Jedi was determined by the end of June—$43,348,502, with major costs broken down as follows:

  • US production: $17,510,224

  • UK production: $15,153,505

  • ILM: $9,999,773

  • Principal actors: $1,992,709

  • Supporting cast: $891,700

  • Camera crew: $635,082

  • Makeup/hair: $2,234,940

  • Construction: $5,909,976

  • Legal and professional: $23,752

&
nbsp; • Insurance: $809,078

  • Sprocket Systems (editorial and sound): $343,700, including rentals, equipment, Foley, and other staff

  Around June 15, Lucas received his $1 million fee as executive producer, plus $25,000 for writing; his percentage of gross receipts would come much later. On July 23, the film’s final cost was lowered by about $500,000 due to savings on SAG pensions, payroll taxes, lower Sprockets bills, laboratory costs paid by Fox—and “Kazanjian’s talents as producer!” as Kazanjian himself joked in his memo. Another $200,000 would be shaved to arrive at $42,675,038.

  Because the visual effects work was done at Lucas’s own facility, Kazanjian estimated that the film would have cost $50 million if anyone else had tried to make it. Since Star Wars, Lucas had initiated a system of employee profit sharing and Jedi would be no different (even Prowse would participate). But one financial maneuver came back to haunt Lucasfilm. “So now at the end of the picture I’ve come in on budget and the finance executives want to see the totals,” Kazanjian would say. “I give it to them and then I get it back—and they’ve added $3 million. I said, ‘What is this?’ ”

  The answer was: the money certain finance executives had lost in speculating on the English pound before production began. Kazanjian continues: “I said, ‘No way. I didn’t spend that money. I’m not going to George and say I was $3 million over budget.’ ‘Yes, you have to do it, because we bought the pounds,’ et cetera, et cetera. So what was my next step? I went to George and said, ‘They’ve added $3 million.’ And that’s when George blew up. The next thing we knew, they’d lost their jobs.”

  The one-sheet teaser poster, adapted for Spanish-language territories, with final art by Drew Struzan (the US version had sported the title “Revenge of the Jedi,” and became an instant collector’s item after the title change).