Return of the Jedi, the final chapter in the trilogy that transformed sci-fi movies forever, is itself a rehash of the plot of A New Hope. That, as well as a few other less-than-inspired elements of the picture, make Jedi the weakest of the first triptych of films.
Released in May of 1983, Jedi was the culmination of the previous six years of Star Wars fever. I was about to turn three years old, so, again, I had no cultural awareness at the time outside of the contents of my own diaper. I would like to pretend, however, that I took my brother – who was about to turn 18 months – to the movie while explaining everything he missed in the first two episodes.
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In 1980, I would make my own much more low-key première onto the world stage two months and a few days after The Empire Strikes Back reignited Star Wars fever in movie theaters around the globe. I’m tempted to observe that I missed out on the feeling of anticipation that must have been palpable on the eve of the second installment of George Lucas’s blockbuster phenomenon rëentering the cultural zeitgeist. But I think I have a pretty good handle on what it was like. I’ve been through two additional Star Wars trilogy releases, both encompassing multiple years separating each new installment. And, of course, there’s the MCU, whose overlords have calculated with scientific precision the exact number of seconds between installments in order to achieve peak fan excitement.
Still, I feel like a baseball enthusiast who raves to an older fan about the greatness of a current favorite player. The older fan, the one with more historical perspective, only has to mention, in hushed tones, “That’s great, kid, but you never saw Mantle or DiMaggio swing a bat at the top of his game.” Part of the magic of the original trilogy lies in the fact that nothing like it had ever been done before in film history.
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When I wrote about Rogue One, the first of the Star Wars anthology films, one of my main takeaways about the picture was how much it broke from the previous movies in the Star Wars universe. It was thematically dense in a way we had never seen in a Star Wars movie, and it only tangentially relied on callbacks to the earlier films to connect us to the series. Much of the credit for that innovative feel was probably due to The Walt Disney Company (which now owns and produces all things Star Wars) introducing fresh blood into the franchise. Neither director Gareth Edwards nor writers Chris Weitz or Tony Gilroy had ever been involved with any Star Wars project prior to Rogue One. The new anthology entry, Solo: A Star Wars Story, is like the anti-Rogue One, but I don’t mean that in the strictly pejorative sense that you’re probably expecting.
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