May 25 is a really special day for geekdom. It’s the date that the original Star Wars film was released in 1977 and it’s also Towel Day for Douglas Adams fans. On May 25, 1983, Star Wars fans packed theaters to see Return of the Jedi, the last new Star Wars film to hit theaters until May 19, 1999, when The Phantom Menace opened. That means that for 30 years, Star Wars fans have had to put up with Ewoks, Jabba the Hutt and Princess Leia’s gold bikini (but no one’s complaining about that last one).
Return of the Jedi is set immediately just months after The Empire Strikes Back, and opens with a slow first act on Tatooine. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca have to rescue Han Solo from the hands of the evil Jabba the Hutt. During the battle, George Lucas made one of the worst mistakes of the original trilogy - killing Boba Fett off. (Although, we all know he survived the sarlacc.)
Considering the bleakness that took over ESB, ROTJ was made to be a little lighter, which is why we get cute and cuddly little Ewoks in the forest battle on Endor’s moon. Hey, at least they didn’t look as stupid as the Gungans.
ROTJ is the only original trilogy film in which Industrial Light & Magic got to put on an extended show of models attacking each other in the epic space battle. Revenge of the Sith opens with an epic battle in space, too, but the organic feel of the models in ROTJ make the fight over Endor infinitely better.
Even as a Star Wars geek my whole life, I always thought that having the Empire build a second Death Star was a bit of a cop-out. I mean, they really couldn’t think of a new superweapon to use to kill the Rebels?
The film was directed by the late Richard Marquand, whose son, James, recently spoke with the BBC.
ROTJ is nowhere near as good as ESB, but it was a great end. The original version is much better than the Special Edition, with its stupid song in Jabba’s palace and I’m still annoyed that “Yub Yub” was cut. It made $475 million around the world when it was released.
Lucasfilm, which is now owned by Disney, isn’t really doing anything to celebrate the anniversary, although they are hosting Celebration Europe in Germany this year. They’re also releasing a behind the scenes book in October.
We now know that ROTJ isn’t the end of Star Wars, since Episode VII is set for 2015. Well, they can’t do any worse than Ewoks.
image: Amazon
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