“Cha too ma laya conky, ya neema loka nyan:” Return of the Jedi Appreciation

| Ben Jarman |

By the light of a fire, Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, Chewy, R2D2, C3PO, and an Ewok smile and celebrate in an Endor forest after defeating the Empire.

Return of the Jedi plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, June 27th, through Tuesday, July 1st. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.


Before prequels and sequels, kids used to tell me Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars movie. I used to tell the same thing to adults just after the movie came out. Then I grew and my body cracked, forming a chip on my shoulder. Return of the Jedi was suddenly just a puppet show with effects doing the heavy lifting and everyone else going through the motions. The actors look bored, and, compared to the atmospheric lighting and camera work in The Empire Strikes Back, the cinematography in Return of the Jedi is downright uninspired. Maybe everyone involved was just hoping to cash some easy checks from merchandising. But why do kids love this movie, and why don’t adults have the same feeling? As the great Jabba the Hutt would say, “Cha too ma laya conky, ya neema loka nuan,” or “Soon you will learn to appreciate me,” in Basic (the English equivalent in Star Wars).

Before the final mission, Mon Mothma, dressed in white, addresses the rebels in a circular briefing room.

Return of the Jedi, by common Star Wars law, has to start with the opening crawl and the transition to a shot of space to establish location. The original film, A New Hope, starts this tradition, but goes beyond just showing a location. As the camera tracks down, a planet appears, then a larger planet, and finally a planet taking up the bottom of the frame. A ship flies into the shot from the upper right-hand corner, fleeing laser bolts. Then, the nose of a Star Destroyer invades the screen from the same angle—the source of the laser bolts. It keeps growing in size, filling up the screen while the ship it pursues shrinks into the depths of space. Eventually, the Star Destroyer takes up more of the screen than the largest planet. With this first shot of the original Star Wars film, audiences see the location, but also understand that the people in the first ship are in deep trouble.

At the beginning of A New Hope, a gigantic metallic spaceship chases a tinier ship towards a desert planet.

This shot was composed by the special effects team just like the opening shot in Return of the Jedi. The problem with the shot in Return of the Jedi is that it is just an establishing shot; it does not convey the feeling like the shot in A New Hope. The opening crawl ends and the camera tilts downward, first showing an incomplete, second Death Star in the distance and then another Star Destroyer cutting through the frame, much like the same-style ship in A New Hope. The Death Star is motionless and a shell of the original, a far cry from the space station Luke, Han, and Ben see after coming out of hyperspace in A New Hope

 At the beginning of Return of the Jedi, a gigantic metallic spaceship drops a tinier ship by a half-built Death Star.

The Star Destroyer is nothing different from the one in the original film. Audiences saw enemy ships in The Empire Strikes Back that shadowed this ship. The stakes should be high here, but the objects on the screen don’t represent the threat. After the end of The Empire Strikes Back, audiences should be fearing the worst for the heroes, but the opening of Return of the Jedi does not convey this feeling.

On a desert planet, blue and white R2D2 and golden C3PO walk towards Jabba the Hutt's cylindrical palace.

The fear shows up when the location changes to a familiar desert planet and the droid companions are seen wandering towards an odd building in the sandy dunes. Once inside the structure, the droids are quickly introduced to wave after wave of creatures that are hanging out with a character—a crime lord whispered about in the earlier films. This is Jabba the Hutt, gangster, host to a monster party, and current owner of hero, Han Solo.

On the inside of Jabba's shadowy palace, the droids are escorted under stone arches by green guards with pig heads.

This location is absolutely terrifying thanks to the special-effects team. There are creatures with three eyes, giant slugs on the ceiling, guards with pig faces, denizens with tentacles, and Jabba himself. This, combined with the moving shadows and colored glaze covering more than just the living, makes Jabba’s palace the last place anyone in the galaxy would visit, including kids thirsting for something scary, but not Freddy Krueger.

A band of colorful creatures, including a short blue pianist with large ears and blue trunk, entertains in Jabba's grim throne room.

As creative as the creatures look, the camera doesn’t do much for the introduction of Jabba. Once the droids are commanded to enter Jabba’s court, the film cuts to a medium shot of his royal excellence. The entire body of the Hutt is cut off by the borders of the frame. Instead of seeing the immensity of him, we get a shot of his head as if his first appearance is no big deal. Jabba’s wickedness rivals Darth Vader’s, but Darth Vader first appears from an exploding door, following his skeleton-like troopers entering through smoke and dead bodies. Vader’s bombastic entrance makes a fool out of Jabba even though audiences have heard about his evil ways across several films. 

 A medium shot of the giant slug of a gangster, Jabba the Hutt in his dim throne room.

While all of these comparisons make Return of the Jedi sound like a pretty lazy production, it is easy to forget the cinematic missteps once the special effects kick in. There are already large amounts of interesting monsters to take the mind off a lack of cinematic quality and the Jabba’s palace section of the film does not stop. There is a new creature band, Luke falls into a dungeon to battle a giant, the heroes are fed to a living pit while hovering from above in desert schooners, and all this is even without getting into the droid torture chamber. How many people really care about cinematography with these marvels of costuming and puppetry happening?

Dressed in black, Luke Skywalker jumps from one ship to another while avoiding a monster in a desert pit.

\With almost half the movie over and the Empire still very much in power, the trilogy needs to come to an end. As much as it makes many people cringe, the star wars are won by miniature bears. Think of the most violent creature you can imagine, but make them as cute as a teddy bear—that must have been the concept behind the Ewoks. They help our heroes overthrow the Empire, on location in the California Redwood Forest. Convincing or not, the Ewoks keep kids on the effects train after coming out of the speeder bike chase.

A little furry Ewok starts a speeder bike in the Endor forest.

As the film reaches its climax, three different stories are unfolding: the Ewoks try to shut down the shield around the new Death Star, the rebel fleet tries to storm the Death Star, and Luke fights Darth Vader on the Death Star. Here the filmmakers attempt to outdo themselves given the two perspectives at the end of The Empire Strikes Back (Leia and Lando trying to save Han, and Luke battling Vader). While there are more factions at the end of Return of the Jedi, one thread disappoints.

ith dramatic smoke and piping in the background, silhouettes of Luke and Darth Vader meet with red and blue lightsabers at the top of orange stairs.

The Cloud City at the end of The Empire Strikes Back contains purposefully meaningful architecture. It is a beautiful gas mining station, and the inside serves as a glorious backdrop for the battle between Luke and Vader. They start, in silhouette, in the carbon freezing chamber, move to a control room with a spiderweb window that Luke flies out of, and end with a shocking revelation while Luke is hanging from an antenna. The lines of the architecture complement the movement of the lightsabers, the colors of the different rooms reflect the tension of the fight, and each space has a function to propel the action along while still mining gas. This action is not mirrored in the Return of the Jedi duel.

Surrounded by grey and blue devices in the Emperor's throne room, Luke and Darth Vader duel with red and blue lightsabers

The battle in Return of the Jedi takes place only in the Emperor’s throne room. The Emperor had a spiderweb window to watch the star fleet battle taking place outside, an elevator, some steps that led to his throne, a couple of rafters, and some endless pits surrounding the elevator. The color stays that grayish blue that has always represented the Empire and the space is only functional as a throne room, not complementing the drama of the duel. Perhaps the space battle and the intense flight through the Death Star is all the magic that matters because Luke removing Vader’s mask on a nondescript gangplank isn’t going to do it visually when wrapping up this epic, father and son conflict.

In a metallic hanger in the Death Star, a worn-down Luke Skywalker looks at a beaten Darth Vader

But who cares if there is a janky Death Star in the background at the beginning of the film and who cares if the setting of the final lightsaber duel is in an enormous Erector Set. Return of the Jedi is meant to entertain and sell toys and it does that really well; plus all loose ends are tied up. It is disappointing to witness little documentary-style filmmaking as seen in A New Hope (George Lucas made several documentaries before he made the original Star Wars film and some of this craft shows up when documenting the droids randomly wandering through the Tatooine desert) or the classic cinema craft of The Empire Strikes Back, but the trilogy needed to end as a total escape and the special effects made this a reality. There are plenty of films (even other Star Wars films), that don’t look like Ingmar Bergman films, but these films don’t need to carry this quality to be appreciated. Return of the Jedi can be appreciated for the fun factor alone, with wild creatures and crisscrossing space ships. Kids rolled right along with this, hanging from trees like the Sarlacc pit was below or BMX biking like riding a speeder. Take out the film snobbery and the fantasy is real for anyone imagining this galaxy and its edge.


Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon

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