|
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is a 1983 science fantasy film directed by Richard Marquand. It was the third film to be released in the Star Wars saga, and the sixth and final in terms of internal chronology. Among fans, the title is sometimes abbreviated as "ROTJ".• In the epic conclusion to the saga, Luke Skywalker and friends travel to Tatooine to rescue their friend Han Solo from the vile Jabba the Hutt. The Empire prepares to crush the Rebellion with a more powerful Death Star, while the Rebel fleet mounts a massive attack on the space station. Luke Skywalker confronts his father, Darth Vader, in a final climactic duel before the evil Emperor. The film debuted on May 25, 1983, and was released on VHS and LaserDisc in this form multiple times during the 1980s and 90s. The film was re-released with changes in 1997, and this version was later released on VHS and Laserdisc as well, and finally on DVD in 2004. The original, unaltered version of the film was released as a new DVD set in September 2006.
Production Filming began on January 11, 1982 and ended on May 20, 1982. It was directed by Richard Marquand. Some reports have suggested that George Lucas was so heavily involved in the shooting of Return of the Jedi that he could be considered a second or a co-director. It is likely that he directed much of the second unit work personally as the shooting threatened to go over schedule and this is a function Lucas had willingly performed on previous occasions when he had only officially been producing a film. (i.e. Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, More American Graffiti). Lucas himself has only ever gone as far as admitting (in the documentary Empire of Dreams) that he had often to be on the set due to Marquand's relative inexperience with special effects. Comments by The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner on that film's DVD audio commentary track suggests that Lucas had a much larger role on the production of Return of the Jedi than is often thought. Commentators have noted the differences between Richard Marquand's direction style and Lucas' direction style and say that they're greatly dissimilar; arguing that Marquand was a much more orthodox director than Lucas, less interested in using light and creating space. For comparison purposes, one could consider Jabba's palace in this film and the Mos Eisley cantina in A New Hope. Jabba's throne room was a bigger set, but appears smaller onscreen because of the way it was shot. Marquand's other work, such as Eye of the Needle is, like much of Return of the Jedi more concerned with traditional midshot/dialogue/reaction shot sequences and rarely ventures into the very wide angles one associates with Lucas. Marquand also uses a more straightforward 'moving camera' style, whereas Lucas alternates between large, classical and abstract tableau compositions (often involving vertical lines) and a cinema verite approach to film, using hand-held cameras during action sequences. The screenplay was written by Lawrence Kasdan and Lucas (with uncredited contributions by David Webb Peoples and Marquand), based on Lucas' story. Howard Kazanjian served as producer. The film was originally titled Revenge of the Jedi. However, a few weeks before the film's premiere, George Lucas changed the title, stating revenge could not be used because Jedi do not seek revenge. Some speculate that George Lucas had planned to call the film Return of the Jedi all along, and only used "Revenge" as a means to throw off merchandise counterfeiters. However, the original teaser trailer for the film still carried this moniker. It has also been claimed that the original title of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was originally The Vengeance of Khan, and that the title was changed because of its similarity to Revenge of the Jedi. 20th Century Fox is said to have had to throw out a large chunk of PR material (posters, fliers and the likes) due to Lucas changing his mind last minute. The 2005 prequel trilogy film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith would later allude to the dismissed title of Return of the Jedi. The working title of the project was Blue Harvest and dubbed "Horror Beyond Imagination" to engender no interest whatsoever in the film. This would disguise what the production crew was really filming from fans and the prying eyes of the press. George Lucas had severed all his remaining ties to the Hollywood system out of a feeling of persecution after the success of The Empire Strikes Back and had become a truly independent filmmaker. According to producer Howard Kazanjian in the documentary Empire of Dreams, the fact that Lucasfilm is a non-union company made acquiring shooting locations more difficult and more expensive, even though A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back were mammoth hits. George Lucas included the scene in which Yoda confirms that Darth Vader is Luke's father because, after a discussion with a children's psychologist, he didn't want younger moviegoers to dismiss Vader's claim as a lie. Kenneth Colley (Admiral Piett) is the only actor to play the same Imperial officer in two Star Wars films. Originally, George Lucas did not plan for Piett to make a return. However, a large amount of fan mail convinced him otherwise; while they were filming the Tatooine scenes, he wrote a few lines of dialogue for Piett. This is the only film in the original trilogy in which Denis Lawson's name is spelled correctly in the ending credits. In the other films, his name is misspelled "Dennis". A legend among fans holds that Lando and the Millennium Falcon were originally scripted to perish in the Death Star explosion. However, Lando was always intended to escape the Death Star surviving in the script's first draft (dated July 12 1981). The legend had been fueled by the fact that before the Death Star attack, Han tells Leia that he has a feeling he isn't going to see his ship again. The 1997 CD-ROM Star Wars: Behind the Magic confirms that the sequence showing the cremation of Vader's body/armour was directed by Lucas himself. This film, though rated "PG," contains brief nudity in the first part of the film, when Jabba's Twi'lek slave attempts to escape by pulling on the chain. She jerks upward, and her right breast flies up from the costume. (It should also be noted that the rating PG-13 did not exist until 1984). In the original script, when Obi-Wan Kenobi explains what happened to both Luke and Leia after their birth, the character we now know as Padmé was said to have survived and became a handmaiden to Bail Organa's wife, secretly raising Leia as her own child. She later died three or four years after the birth. However, this part was reportedly deleted to shorten the scene because Lucas did not think it was necessary for the plot at the time. George Lucas reportedly took over direction with Irvin Kershner's former assistant toward the end of production, reportedly because the actors weren't responding well to director Richard Marquand. The working relationship between George Lucas and Marquand was said to be bad, and that the main camera operator left the project because he felt Lucas was mistreating Marquand. In his audio commentary for the 2004 DVD Release, however, Lucas, insists that he and Marquand had a good working relationship and went so far as to praise Marquand for being a very nice guy who was good with actors. Harrison Ford suggested that Han Solo sacrifice his life to save his friends in order to give the film more emotional weight, but George Lucas disagreed with him. David Lynch, with a Best Director nomination for the 1980 film The Elephant Man was approached by Lucas to helm Return of the Jedi, but he declined and went on to direct Dune. George Lucas originally intended for his friend Steven Spielberg to direct the film. In the celebration scene on Coruscant, a person can be heard yelling "The son of the suns!" This is a reference to a line from the Journal of the Whills that was originally planned to precede the original Star Wars film. The line originally read "And in a time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as 'The Son of the Suns.'" Synopsis
Releases Return of the Jedi was released on May 25, 1983. With a massive worldwide marketing campaign, Star Wars series artist Drew Struzan created the iconic and distinctive images for the movie posters and other advertising. (In the film's release poster, Luke Skywalker is depicted holding a blue lightsaber - a lightsaber color that does not appear in the film. His new lightsaber is green - although it is blue in one trailer, suggesting the decision to make it green was taken late in production. In fact, the decision was made to make Luke's blade contrast with the blue sky of Tatooine and make it more visible during the skirmish at Carkoon.) Some of the early merchandise for the film bore the title "Revenge of the Jedi." At the time of its release, the film was advertised by simply its subtitle, despite its episode distinction. This was evident on release posters and merchandise. The film became commonly known by its subtitle, and is still often referred to by this in the present day. The film was re-released to theaters in 1985, and in 1997 for the Special Edition. Special Edition Along with the other two films of his original Trilogy, George Lucas issued a Special Edition of Return of the Jedi in 1997, making a number of changes and additions, which included the replacement of music from a scene at Jabba's palace as well as the closing scene. However, compared to the amount of changes in Hope and Empire, this has the least amount of changes because, as Lucas says in the audio commentary, the film is more emotionally driven than the others. DVD release Return of the Jedi was released on DVD in September 21, 2004. It was bundled with A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, along with a bonus disc in a boxed set. It was digitally restored and remastered, with more changes made by George Lucas, detailed in List of changes in Star Wars re-releases. The bonus disc included, according to the official site, "all-new bonus features, including the most comprehensive feature-length documentary ever produced on the Star Wars saga, and never-before-seen footage from the making of all three films." The DVD also featured English subtitles, Dolby Digital 5.1 EX surround sound, and commentaries by George Lucas, Ben Burtt, Dennis Muren, and Carrie Fisher. For the bonus disk, there were documentaries including Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy and several featurettes including The Legendary Creatures of Star Wars, The Birth of the Lightsaber, The Legacy of Star Wars. Also included were teasers, trailers, TV spots, still galleries, and several video game demos. With the release of Revenge of the Sith, which depicts how and why Anakin Skywalker turned to the dark side of the Force, George Lucas once again altered Return of the Jedi to strengthen the relationship between the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy. In Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker is played by Hayden Christensen. However, in the original and Special Edition version of Return of the Jedi, renowned British theatre actor Sebastian Shaw played both the dying Anakin Skywalker and his ghost. In the DVD release, Anakin's ghost has become a young man, played by Hayden Christensen. In addition to this, several comical alien band members have been inserted into Jabba's throne room. Changes such as these have drawn considerable fan criticism directed at George Lucas, and incited more vehement cases of the reactionary criticism known as Lucas bashing. The set was reissued in December 2005 as part of a three-disc "limited edition" boxed set that did not feature the bonus disc. All three films in the original Star Wars Trilogy have since been released, individually, on DVD, each compiled with its theatrical release cut as well as the 2004 DVD special edition. These versions were only available from September 12, 2006 to December 31, 2006. Although the 2004 version in these set all feature an audio commentary, no other special features were included to commemorate the original cuts. As well as this over complaints arouse about the quality of the DVD transfer, speculating that they were simply copied from Laserdisc versions of the trilogy compared to new high definition transfers Reaction The film grossed $US 475 million worldwide.• Return of the Jedi is considered by many critics and fans to be the weakest film of the original trilogy. Some indication of public opinion can be gleaned by its relatively modest ranking in the Internet Movie Database's Top 250 films list; as of October 2006, it ranked Contemporary critics were largely complimentary. In 1983, Roger Ebert gave the film a four-star rating, and James Kendrick of Q Network Film Desk described Return of the Jedi as "a magnificent experience". The film was also featured on the May 23, 1983 TIME cover issue (where it was labelled "Star Wars III"), with the reviewer Gerald Clarke saying that while it was not as exciting as the first Star Wars film, it was "better and more satisfying" than The Empire Strikes Back, now considered by most as the best of the original trilogy. At the 1984 Academy Awards, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston, and Phil Tippett won the Special achievement award for visual effects. Norman Reynolds, Fred Hole, James L. Schoppe, and Michael Ford received the nomination for Best art direction/set decoration. Ben Burtt received the nomination for Best effects, sound effects editing. John Williams received the nomination for Best music, original score. Ben Burtt, Gary Summers, Randy Thom, and Tony Dawe received the nomination for Best sound. While the action set pieces — particularly the speeder bike chase on the Endor moon, the space battle between Rebel and Imperial pilots, and Luke Skywalker's duel against Darth Vader — are well-regarded, the ground battle between the Ewoks and the Stormtroopers remains a bone of contention. A large number of fans believe George Lucas pushed the "cutesy" factor with the Ewoks with many accusing Lucas of adding them only for their merchandising value. Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss (who performed in Lucas' film American Graffiti) was quoted multiple times over the years that Lucas had revealed his idea for the Star Wars saga to many of Graffiti's cast and crew during filming (some four years before the original film was released), including making specific mention of a species of small, furry, teddy bear-like creatures called Wookiees (later changed to Ewoks when Wookiees evolved into a different species) who defeat the evil Empire. Fans are also divided on the likelihood of an extremely primitive race of small creatures could defeat an armed ground force comprised of the Empire's best troops. Some fans were also disappointed at the quick demise of Boba Fett in the Sarlacc Pit after offering only a brief glimpse of his abilities. He was later brought back in the Star Wars Expanded Universe due to fan demand and the amount of stories that could be written about him. As of 2006, the character is still alive in the Expanded Universe. Cast
Novelization The novelization of Return of the Jedi was written by James Kahn. It contains many scenes that were deleted from the final cut, but certain assertions have been superseded by the prequel trilogy. For example, Kahn writes that Owen Lars is the brother of Obi-Wan Kenobi while in Episode II he is shown to be the stepbrother of Anakin Skywalker. Also, here the Force ghost of Obi-Wan reveals that he was able to hide Luke and Leia from Anakin because he did not know that his wife was pregnant when he "left", presumably when he became Vader. In Episode III, Anakin does know about Padmé's pregnancy, but one may infer that Vader will believe the baby (not twins) to be dead, along with his wife. Also in the novelization is that, Obi-Wan took Padmé and baby Leia to Alderaan after the birth of the twins. Han Solo makes reference to Luke Skywalker's initial impression of the Millennium Falcon, calling it "the fastest hunk of junk in the fleet." However, in the film, Solo refers to it simply as "the fastest ship in the fleet." Another facet of the story which was made more clear in the novel was the confusion which overtook the Imperial forces upon the death of Palpatine, who ceased to be the guiding will animating the Empire. It also further supports the events depicted in all post-Return of the Jedi fiction. Radio drama A radio drama adaptation of the film was written by Brian Daley and was produced for and broadcast on National Public Radio in 1996. The first two Star Wars movies were adapted for National Public Radio in the early 1980s, but it was not until 1996 that a radio version of Return of the Jedi was heard. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |