STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI: SPECIAL EDITION
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(20th Century Fox) Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Ian McDiarmid, voices of Anthony Daniels, James Earl Jones, Frank Oz. Screenplay: Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas. Producer: Howard Kazanjian. Director: Richard Marquand. MPAA Rating: PG (violence) Running Time: 130 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw
I'll admit that I was surprised when I heard of plans for the Special Edition of STAR WARS, and not because I thought of the original film as inviolate. I just wasn't sure why George Lucas would feel the need to make STAR WARS "the way (he) really wanted to make it," since it seemed as though he had already done it. It was called RETURN OF THE JEDI. Yes, I know Lucas didn't direct JEDI -- the way Steven Spielberg didn't direct POLTERGEIST -- but it was clearly an amped-up version of the original film, with all the things Lucas couldn't do the first time around. The climactic dog-fight was more complex, the destruction of the Death Star more spectacular...even Jabba the Hutt finally made it on-screen. After the moody second act of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RETURN OF THE JEDI was a return to the playful adventure of STAR WARS, only with six years' worth of ancillary revenue burning a hole in Lucas' pocket.
Unfortunately, RETURN OF THE JEDI turned out to be an example of what happened when film-makers became conscious of what ancillary revenue could be. The introduction of the cuddly, teddy-bear primitives called the Ewoks has long been reviled by STAR WARS aficionados as an obvious bow to commercial interests, but they were only the most obvious example. Entire sets in JEDI seemed to have been designed around features for an action play-set -- Jabba's palace with trap door and Rancor cage! Endor forest with catapult launcher! -- and many moments of comic relief were so utterly goofy that it was had to imagine they weren't designed for an audience under 12. In my comments on the STAR WARS: SPECIAL EDITION, I noted that the original film never could have worked if Lucas had been aware of the merchandising potential, because its innocence would have been compromised. RETURN OF THE JEDI, I think, is proof of that. STAR WARS was made for the kid in all of us; JEDI was made for kids.
That doesn't make JEDI a bad film; it would take a concerted effort for one mediocre film to spoil the goodwill of two great ones. JEDI provides a necessary sense of resolution with the rescue of Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, as well as answers to questions about the Skywalker family tree. Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas' script does take advantage of our familiarity with the characters, playing with C-3PO's sense of dignity and propriety when Luke levitates him in a show of "god-like" power to intimidate the Ewoks, and making Chewbacca's reunion with the thawed-out Han Solo a reunion between a boy and his loyal puppy. The speeder bike chase on Endor is tremendously impressive, a dizzying piece of action film-making which still out-classes most of the attempts at chases scenes you'll see in contemporary films. There are plenty of satisfying moments in RETURN OF THE JEDI, even if most of them come from the pleasure of visiting once again with old friends.
If there is anything the SPECIAL EDITION emphasizes, however, it is that JEDI is much longer than it needs to be. Among the new scenes are a re-tooled version of the musical number performed by Sy Snootles in Jabba's lair -- the once-puppeteered Snootles is now a computer-generated Snootles -- is a ridiculous piece of technical flash which looks like it belongs in a 3-D feature at Disneyland. Worse still, it slows down a film which got repetitive even in its original incarnation. The simultaneous battles on the surface of Endor's moon and in the sky above go on for an awfully long time, all the while inter-cut with the taunting of the Emperor (Ian McDiarmid) as he tries to woo Luke to the Dark Side of the Force. It is those scenes on the Death Star which grow particularly insufferable; if I were Luke, and I knew all it took was going over to the Dark Side to get the Emperor to shut up his incessant yammering...well, just call me Darth Vader Jr. By the time Vader has his moment of redemption, revealing himself to be something resembling Ray Milland in pancake makeup, the effect is undercut by a desire just to see the whole thing wrapped up already.
There is one very effective addition to this SPECIAL EDITION, an extension of the epilogue which shows celebration on several different worlds after the defeat of the Empire in addition to the celebration in the Ewok village. When one of those scenes shows a massive statue being toppled, it's hard not to think of Lucas turning the STAR WARS trilogy into a grand metaphor for the defeat of Communism, with the galaxy made safe once again for private enterprise. The film industry was certainly made safe for private enterprise after the massive success of the STAR WARS films. RETURN OF THE JEDI might have been the first glimpse at the down-side of that victory.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 happy Endors: 6.
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