I was about 30 years old when I found out that Return of the Jedi was supposed to suck. I had no idea. Everybody in my first grade class liked it. I don’t recall anyone during recess complaining about too many puppets or Ewoks. Nobody in the cafeteria cared about Boba Fett’s ignoble demise. There was nary a complaint out by the jungle gym about the movie’s pacing.
And, yeah, I’m not in the first grade anymore, but I’ve always looked at the original Star Wars trilogy as something for which you channel your inner prepubescent. That doesn’t mean that you stay frozen in that period or, God forbid, think that your elementary school years were the best time of your life. All it means is that you remember the person that you once were and you still like them and you retain an affinity for the things that excited their imagination. As long as you’re not one of those idiots who preaches that your childhood was better than anyone else’s, you’re good. Just stay grounded, I say. It ain’t that hard.
In 1978, Harlan Ellison wrote a great and blisteringly bad review of the original Star Wars movie (his article’s classic title: “Luke Skywalker is a Nerd and Darth Vader Sucks Runny Eggs”). I love it. And I love the movie that Ellison tears to pieces. Ellison slaughters it well. He can do it because Ellison was in his 40s at the time and he’d been around the block and across town when it came to outer space stories. Meanwhile, he’s maintained a lifelong affection for the pulp magazine stories of his own youth during the 1940s and has written eloquently about them. He’s helpless to his childhood imagination, too.
And if Harlan Ellison won’t badmouth Lamont Cranston and Boston Blackie then I ain’t talkin’ any shit about Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Darth Vader, either, no matter what he says. I dig the whole original Star Wars trilogy equally, including its final chapter. I won’t even try to guess how many times I’ve seen it. I’ll defend it all.
Boba Fett? Please. How many minutes total screen time in the original trilogy does this guy have? Two? Three? He had a cool bio in the official fan magazines, I sort of remember, and THAT’S the reason for the character’s renown. No one walking out of the theater in 1983 was talking about Boba Fett. His popularity is 100% retroactive. Throw him into the Sarlaac. I don’t care.
Puppets? Psh. The Dark Crystal had just come out the year before and, though it was only a modest success, it’s a good movie that set a new standard for how real and creepy puppets on film could be. If you ask me, Return of the Jedi merely follows up on that here. The freak show in Jabba the Hut’s palace tops the cantina scene from the first movie. When I was a kid, I had nightmares about it. It was a place where any sign of weakness had you marked as someone else’s prey. And no one would help you. In fact, they’d enjoy watching go down screaming as you get eaten by a monster.
Ewoks? If you ask me, the Jabba’s Palace scenes are so dark that director Richard Marquand (and producer overlord George Lucas) EARNS the cute little fuzzballs that infest that last third of the movie. Also, if you don’t understand that Star Wars movies are for kids, then you don’t understand Star Wars. The Ewoks here ARE little kids. They’re small, clumsy and gullible. Han Solo was our cool uncle. Luke Skywalker was what we wanted to become when we got a little older. And Ewoks were us RIGHT NOW, joining the fight, making a difference in our own primitive way. I am pro-Ewok.
The whole original trilogy is about growing up. Luke Skywalker goes from a farm boy with seemingly unattainable dreams to a sleek black-clad mystic who saves the universe. Han Solo goes from a fringe ne’er-do-well to a leadership position in the good fight against an evil force. Leia goes from a pampered princess to someone who can hold her own and get her hands dirty in trench warfare. Even the big, bad villain gets a redemption. It takes three movies to get there, but when you’re a kid, you’ve got time for that.
Turns out that as an adult, I’ve still got time for that. Because when an old Star Wars movie is on, time stops.