Return of the Jedi, or Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, to give it its full name, is the last in the original trilogy (or the "orig trig" as the kids call it), and stars Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Ian McDiarmid, and Frank Oz. Before the Lucas-ification, I'd have said it's arguably the weakest in the trilogy. Post-Lucasizing, I'd say it's definitely the weakest in the trilogy.
So the movie basically consists of two extended sequences. In the first, it's a heist/rescue op to recover Han Solo (Ford) from the clutches of the evil space-gangster-slug Pizza Jabba the Hutt (voiced by Larry Ward). This rescue op, undertaken to save one particular dude in the midst of a war with a superior enemy that could easily wipe out the rebellion if they got the leadership in one place, is completed by the leadership of the rebellion, all in one place. Princess/General Leia (Fisher) runs point, disguises herself as a bounty hunter, gets captured and put to work as a sex-slave-for-slugs (ew). Luke (Hamill) shows up and threatens Jabba with death should he refuse, gets captured and dumps into the "Rancor pit", escapes, gets recaptured, and very nearly gets thrown into a butthole in the sand, except for the intervention of now-General Lando Calrissian (Williams), who is working at Jabba's Hut as a...guard? And has been for long enough that no one questions him being on the slave barge? And it works. It just takes up the first third of the movie in something that has no particular stakes for the rest of the movie, except that Solo is back with the crew.
(Fun fact: Solo was only frozen in carbonite because Harrison Ford wasn't sure he wanted to do more of these movies, so this was the compromise to killing the character so that Lucas could dig up enough dirt, offer enough money, or kidnap Ford's mom or something so he'd come back. I'd say the movie would have been stronger if Solo had died, but I'm sure Lucas would have found a way to fuck that up, too.)
So then we get a brief interlude where Luke goes to the swamp planet, meets with Yoda (Oz) and the ghost of Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness, probably repeating "your grandkids will love it, your grandkids will love it" to himself), and then it's on to the next sequence, wherein the rebellion sends Luke, Leia, Han and their loveable animal & droid sidekicks down to a forest planet to blow up the MacGuffin Generators so that the rebellion ships can blow up the New Improved Death Star, because everything old is new again.
And obviously there's the Ewoks, but you know what, at this point who cares.
There's been a lot of ink spilled over the decades about the Ewoks making this movie too kid-focused and cheesy, but fucking seriously? These movies have always been children's movies. Actually, the storytelling in the orig trig is much weaker than actual children's programming that's come both before and after (The Rescuers came out the same year as New Hope). And that's fine, I love fantasy and space fantasy and so forth. But these movies only work if you don't think about them too hard, and then they went on to have such a huge, obsessive fandom that everyone thinks about them too hard, and we're left with questions like "where did the Ewoks get the dress that they gave to Leia after they found her?" and "if Vader is Luke & Leia's father and he's a magical space wizard, how did he literally torture Leia and never figure out who she was or that she was Force-sensitive or anything?" Or, hell, how about "why does Leia just roll with Vader being 'redeemed' when her interactions with him have all been hugely traumatic?"
The answer is: because no one ever thought these movies through in that way. They were made up as they went, with very little thought to backwards compatibility, but they were innovative in their own way and hugely influential. And rather than let it lie and soak up the accolades forever, Lucas, had to stick his sticky little fingers back in and give us this fucking monstrosity.
So yeah, Jedi is the weakest of the orig trig, but I think it's fairer to say that Empire is the only good one.
My Grade: D
Rewatch Value: IINSIAIFWT (if we were somehow able to see the 1983 version without the extra Lucas BS, I'd raise this to Low)
Next up: Star Wars: The Forces Awakens
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