Return of the Jedi is the Destruction of Star Wars

No.
That is an aesthetical critique. So are the things Birdwatcher has issue with.

How the film's logistics were handled is not a relevant aesthetic quality.

How Warhol went about planning "Soup Cans" is not an aesthetic quality.

You can, however, say that the repeating simplicity of just a soup can is crap art, and would rather the image be painted more in an impressionist style with fewer soup cans involved, and not in a grid pattern.
That's all aesthetic quality.

Imagining logistical variations does not allow for a reimagining of the aesthetic for judgement of the art because it is far too abstract and doesn't directly relate to the art itself in any presentable manner.

Imagining a property variation of the art itself, however, such as what kind of style of art it is, what tonality it has, what the composition is made of, etc..., is perfectly fine because it's directly related to the art itself and can be reimagined and shown.

You can't show me what more planned narrative cohesion by the people who made the film could have looked like in the Sequel Trilogy, anymore than I can show you what Star Wars could look like if Lucas was less esoteric as an artist.

I can show you what Luke using a lightsaber and fighting Darth Vader in A New Hope could have looked like, just as @Angelman can show me what the Sequel Trilogy could look like if Poe died off in TFA.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It’s funny how everyone brings up the MCU as a prime example of pre-planned storytelling, yet completely forget just how unplanned, improvised, rushed, and cobbled together Iron Man was. Not to mention there was no over-arching plan, directors were given plenty of free reign to change story direction and tweak planned elements etc. The only real plan was a purple guy gets some jewellery in the future to scare everyone.

Stat Wars is in no way planned any different to the MCU. People are confusing interconnectedness with planning.

 

Yeah. From what I can tell, MCU's "cohesion" amounts to simple product placement for other Marvel source materials that they intended to use.

"Wa-wakan-da? Wakanda?"

 

There's a podcast called "films to be buried with" and one of the guests was Joe Cornish. He described in that show how MCU was pretty much pulled in all sorts of directions while he and Edgar Wright worked on Ant Man. It was only after that episode that Feige was given any real autonomy or authority. Before that, the Marvel studios "story executives" were meddling in everything. And it wasn't to ensure that people stuck to any plan.

 

Here is that podcast.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2UuxtvfPFPsJyN82aVyKKC?si=viyy55tYTJCTsaoADFcsDw

 

A post of mine from here got DELETED for "Going against forum policy".

Wow

It has been a while since I have been on an online community. Things have sure changed and I wouldn't mind a private communicate with a FORUM MODERATOR explaining things to me. When I was active on online forums years ago, it was very relaxed and pretty much everything goes. You wouldn't get a post deleted or banned unless you were severely abusive, threatening or engaging in/promoting illegal activity. My post was NOT abusive according to internet standards years ago.

Forums should be where people can go to be exempt from restrictive social etiquette guidelines they have to abide by at home, with friends, at work, at school. Obviously within reason, but an internet forum should NOT be treated the same as real life interaction.

 

Hey, @mrx,

We are not those sites. We are nicer than most sites and name-calling isn't allowed; that way, everybody wins. See also the rules and regs linked above

 

Definitely.




I know that originally the "another" was intended to be someone else, but by ROTJ's development I think it's pretty clear that Leia is the subject.

Star Wars is about Hope. That should be clear at this point.

So here we have Luke in the Death Star throne room. He's probably gonna die. The Rebel fleet, engaged in conflict right outside the window behind Palpatine, is being picked off by a far larger force and the power of the Death Star's lasers. His friends on Endor are all but doomed, surrounded by the 501st and a huge enemy planetary fleet.

He has one hope: Leia, his twin, might continue the Jedi tradition and bring peace to the galaxy some day.

And then Vader squashes that hope by probing him and discovering her, threatening Luke with this ultimate, humiliating, and devastating defeat. It puts Luke into a sense of hopelessness and... likely fear. Hopelessness. The antithesis of what a Star Wars character is supposed to feel, usually.

That's some pretty strong motivation, if you ask me.

 

Not meaning to be pedantic, but just more...well...let's let Lucas be what he is.
I think it was more the case that originally the "another" was intended to be -----
To beeee.....


Cheers,
Jayson

 

nah, I don't think Return of the jedi ruins Star Wars, it's just hard to please everyone, every good movie will have its haters and it just so happens that some of the haters make youtube videos about it

 

I don’t know about you guys, but I LOVE the OT. Including, TROJ. This film was a great way, in my opinion, to end of the OT films. This is just my opinion. I can see why some say that they don’t like this film. I enjoyed this film because it showed the final success of the rebellion and how they defeated the Empire. The Civil War was nearly over from there. Also, I just loved that final battle at the end on the death star. We have symbolism where Vader gets his hand cut off by Luke. And the ending of indecision within Anakin Skywalker. After Darth kills the Emperor, he redeemed himself as the chosen one a killed Darth Vader, saving Anakin. Sadly, Anakin was killed, but we see his force ghost during the celebration on the forrest moon of Endor, well, along with some of the other ghosts. This is just my opinion. I happen to like TROJ, but I understand and respect people who say otherwise.

 

One of the major conclusions I've been reaching as of late is that RotJ is the beginning of where the franchise really started to embrace its commercialism versus embrace the essence of the story itself. Much of that has been concluded as a result of my listening to Gary Kurtz talk about the film today and why he left production of RotJ to go work on The Dark Crystal.

I actually go over this a bit concerning modern media:

Much of the emphasis on commercial value, by the way, only seems to hurt the movies of the franchise. Hurt the story, I should clarify. Not hurt financially, of course, because we live in a "don't ask questions, just consume product and get hyped for next product" culture right now. However, there's a short-term gain versus a long-term gain to consider here. I think Disney is interested in the short-term gain. The long-term gain begs the question if Star Wars will be looked upon as fondly as it is today when all the kids today become the adults of tomorrow...

I think there's been quite a few good Star Wars books written in the past, but it's like movies are (ironically) poison to Star Wars stories. They're fun roller coaster rides, to be sure, but they're terrible stories. It's the new normal: movies are now theme park experiences. You get on, you experience a thrill, you get off and you move onto the next ride.

This is, by the way, why the franchise inflated characters like Boba Fett and Darth Maul even though they hardly talk at all and spend a great deal of time just sitting idly in the background. They "look cool" and so people in charge of the franchise take notice of that and exploit those characters commercially by throwing them into everything and everything. Lucas makes Fett a clone based another guy wearing the same armor because it's popular. Extraordinarily coincidental is the fact that a popular toy-selling franchise then goes on to make one of its most popular toys the same character who the entire clone army is was based. It's not even tongue-in-cheek. The story was driven by commercial exploitation. It's also why C-3PO was *gasp* built by young Darth Vader! What a twist! And R2D2 is the queen's own personal astromech droid?! Amazing!!

And I know who all these characters are! It's like the film is catering to me in all it's storytelling! Time to pat myself on the back *pat, pat*.

Now, I go so far as to say TESB started this train with one sentence:

"No, I am your father!"

Shocking, to be sure, and Luke's reaction is justified in TESB. However, in RotJ, Luke should have developed some hindsight. Isn't it strange he never told Leia about that soon after he was saved? Isn't it stranger that he didn't travel to Degobah to ask Yoda if this was even true?

So, now we have The Mandalorian which is a show that exists solely because there was a character with cool-looking armor walking around in TESB and that character sold a lot of toys to children in the past. Now Darth Maul has essentially been resurrected and has reams of dialogue written for his parts in Rebels. It's strange to think how the entire franchise which is assumed to be story-driven is actually driven by toy sales.

An excellent example of how this mindset has harmed good storytelling is what happened with Rogue One.

I wonder how many people who saw Rogue One, for instance, read the book

Jyn's character is expanded upon and fleshed out in ways the movie never explains. Through the book you greatly understand her motives, where she developed her skill-set, and why she is so important to the ongoing mission. The movie cuts out so many parts of the book that are utterly and painstakingly important to how readers relate to the characters. There have been interviews with director, Gareth Edwards, where he had intended to make the story something expansive--that would have turned Star Wars into something completely outside the box that folks regularly consider "Star Wars" to be. And what did Disney do with that? They gave it a factory treatment, essentially turning the story into just another Disney-fied theme park "experience" rather than allow the artists to tell whatever tale they wanted and intended to tell.

Rogue One was a brilliant opportunity to make Star Wars become like Frank Herbert's Dune--to exist as more than another consumer product, like Coca-Cola, or McDonald's, or Wal-Mart. It was a chance to make Star Wars a franchise that had a resounding REALITY to it, worth exploring philosophically. Rogue One could have led to other artists using the medium to explore other trains of artistic thought as well. That is all being eaten up by the factory process. The machine that is Disney. Star Wars is still and, I fear, will always be just another consumer product. People like Gareth Edwards have tried to escape those chains, but failed in the process. The Disney machine, the Empire, is far too powerful.

 

Return of the Jedi is my favourite Star Wars movie. I think it was a wonderful ending to the trilogy and of course, like any movie, it probably could have been better, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

Same here. ROTJ is my fav SW film because of the way it wrapped up all of the prior films so well. Just an all around good ending. Then we had the ST which was good. But I always think back to ROTJ as the perfect ending to SW.

 

Yeah, I get the critiques. I would have done it differently, but the destruction of SW? That's a little far. It could have been done beautifully and it was oh so close. It was filled with flaws, but the love I have for these characters and their (sometimes) tragedies - like I cannot say it was the destruction of SW. It gave us more Yoda and Ahoksa and Rex and all of this. A community. Honestly, I wish they got rid of TPM and did two parts of the AOTC with flashbacks to Qui-Gon. That way Anakin's fall would have been more believable and sadder.

I love the conflict and we did get that. Maybe it's preference. I love that Vader stops Luke from killing Palp. I've always wondered why.

--- Double Post Merged, May 4, 2021 ---

We all want to redirect many of these films, but I completely agree. No one is as frustrated by SW as SW fans

 

Gary kurtz said he decided not to produce jedi cuz he thought it was too action oriented and not as character driven. he wasn't happy with the 2nd death star and felt it was lazy and wanted a more bitter sweet ending where han dies and luke goes off on his own instead of the happily ever after ending lucas wanted. lawrence kasdan wanted the same thing as kurtz too, but lucas got his way.

 

I will give a perspective of someone who saw it in 1983, and NOBODY saw the ending coming. Because 99% of movies follow the logical Hollywood conclusion, everyone thought that Luke would kill Vader and The Emperor. Nobody knew how it would happen, but we thought it would happen because that's the way movies always end. Many people in 1983 were also confused as to why Luke was so bent on redeeming his father, so nobody saw Vader saving Luke either.

I have may problems with ROTJ as I feel the pacing is it's biggest flaw compared to ANH and ESB that move perfectly for 2 hours. But Lucas does not get enough respect for that ending because he didn't follow the typical Hollywood troupe. He essentially knew that fans were so trained from years of movies and TV to think one way, he had the freedom to craft an ending that was truly original (even in today's blockbusters). When The Emperor is blasting Luke with lightning, you started to wonder where this ending was going? The Hollywood movie ending part of your brain thought Han, Lando or Leia would save the day in some spectacular way and they would all live happily ever after. There was another part of our brain that just didn't see Vader throwing the Emperor in the shaft after he was the main baddie for 3 movies.

It's brilliant and refreshing that Lucas didn't cave to the Hollywood ending, and we should have seen it coming since ESB does not have a typical movie ending back in 1980. Again, I'm critical of certain things in ROTJ that could have been executed better, but that ending has an emotional meaning about father/son used in some crazy Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie. As I grow older, I more and more appreciate the ending ROTJ.