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Of Ewoks & Men: 25 Years of ROTJ
May. 28th, 2008 09:11 pmHard to believe it has been a quarter century since Leia's slave girl bikini, Jabba the Hutt (pre-Special Editions, ROTJ was the first time we ever saw him), Mon Mothma, the Sarlacc, speeder bikes, B-Wings, Ian McDiarmid's Emperor, Admiral "It's A Trap" Ackbar, the Imperial Royal Guard, and of course, the Ewoks, were added to the SW legend.
1983 may seem like a long time ago, but the build-up to ROTJ's unleashing seems like yesterday to me. There was a hype not matched, much less surpassed, until the time before TPM's release 16 years later. Everywhere from schoolyards to sf conventions to magazine letter columns to watercoolers there was speculation on what would befall our heroes. Who lives? Who dies? Would the Rebels triumph over the Empire? Was Darth Vader really Luke's dad? Who the hell was "the other" Yoda mentioned in TESB? Since ROTJ is the one SW film shot more in the U.S. than any of the others before or since, a cover name was necessary to keep nosy fans away from on-location shoots. Blue Harvest didn't fool everyone though; some fans were able to find the sail barge set in Yuma, AZ anyway.
Of course, ROTJ was originally Revenge of the Jedi and the late name change to Return confused everyone, including yours truly. It has become Hollywood lore that it was because Lucas and Co. decided Jedi don't seek revenge after all, although the truth is a little bit more complicated. I think the real story was Fox wanted a stronger title and pushed for Revenge while Lucas wanted it to be Return all along, and eventually he won out.
Since this was the pre-internet era, fans had limited access to spoilers and most fans were content to just wait until the movie came out. However, this all changed when Marvel Comics released its comics adaptation of ROTJ in early May. My local paper decided to splash the film's big spoiler about Luke and Leia's discovered kinship right in the front section where I could see it. I still have not forgiven The Miami Herald for doing that!
Determined not to get spoiled any more than I was from that premature revelation, I read only non-spoiler reviews of the film. Good thing I was distracted enough at a friend's end-of-the-school-year party to have missed the spoilers plastered all over Time's review of the film, which I was trying to read. When the same friend got to go to the film's local premiere--her dad was an executive at Burger King--all I wanted to know if it was any good.
Finally, after two failed attempts to see the film after its May 25 release, I got to see it on June 6, 1983. It was bittersweet to say the least. Sweet because it was of course an amazing film, but bitter because it was over for SW. Sure there had been talk of the possibility of more movies somewhere in the misty, far-flung future but back in '83, nobody knew for certain. I believed there would be more, but likely not for a long time.
In my eighth-grade world, ROTJ was the toast of the town. Everybody, it seemed, loved it. While I passed on the merchandise with the exceptions of the novelization and the comics adaptation, I basked in the last SW summer until 1999. The only cloud came from the fact I was for the first time aware that, gasp, there were critics and media types who didn't like it or anything else about SW. One mean magazine article sent me into a near Anakin-in-the-Tusken-camp tizzy. It was inconceivable at the time that anyone could hate SW. Why, it was un-American!
I came to perceive the naysayers as envious snobs who resented the films' success more than anything else. But several years later, I noticed that for some reason it became fashionable to treat ROTJ as the pinata of what was then just the SW trilogy. A movie most folks loved in 1983 all of a sudden was the worst of the series. It was too silly. There were too many close-ups. Han Solo was marginalized. Darth Vader got off too easy. Boba Fett shouldn't have died (Lucas admitted he underestimated the character's popularity). But the brunt of the bashing was aimed at the Ewoks. The haters thought the Ewoks were a cynical ploy to sell toys, nevermind the megatons of toys produced for the previous two SW films. They hated that the furry fellows kicked Impie butt with nothing but primitive weapons, even though it was clear in the previous two films the stormies couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat and the Imperial officer corps was made up of a lot of incompetent boobs ;).
The Ewoks were Lucas's Rousseauian noble savages and while I disagree philosophically with the idea there's something spiritually pure about a pre-modern way of existence, it simply plays out as the underdogs winning in the film. ANH was all about underdogs beating the odds stacked against them. If callow teenagers could do it, why not furry little guys?
ROTJ's real heart though is in Vader's redemption. A theme that resonates even more having seen Episodes I-III. Not only do the Jedi return through Luke's journey to knighthood, it is also the return of Anakin. In ANH and most of TESB, Vader is a pure baddie. ROTJ made him an object of pathos, a man whose power was an illusion because he was in reality a slave to the Emperor and to the Dark Side. Little wonder then that when I first saw ROTJ in the theater, Vader tossing the Emperor down the shaft got by far the biggest applause from the audience.
ROTJ is ultimately about redemption, reconciliation, and reunification. A lot of trilogies have been made over the years, but few have wrapped things up as well thematically as ROTJ did. To quote Clerks II, there's only one Return and it's of the Jedi.
1983 may seem like a long time ago, but the build-up to ROTJ's unleashing seems like yesterday to me. There was a hype not matched, much less surpassed, until the time before TPM's release 16 years later. Everywhere from schoolyards to sf conventions to magazine letter columns to watercoolers there was speculation on what would befall our heroes. Who lives? Who dies? Would the Rebels triumph over the Empire? Was Darth Vader really Luke's dad? Who the hell was "the other" Yoda mentioned in TESB? Since ROTJ is the one SW film shot more in the U.S. than any of the others before or since, a cover name was necessary to keep nosy fans away from on-location shoots. Blue Harvest didn't fool everyone though; some fans were able to find the sail barge set in Yuma, AZ anyway.
Of course, ROTJ was originally Revenge of the Jedi and the late name change to Return confused everyone, including yours truly. It has become Hollywood lore that it was because Lucas and Co. decided Jedi don't seek revenge after all, although the truth is a little bit more complicated. I think the real story was Fox wanted a stronger title and pushed for Revenge while Lucas wanted it to be Return all along, and eventually he won out.
Since this was the pre-internet era, fans had limited access to spoilers and most fans were content to just wait until the movie came out. However, this all changed when Marvel Comics released its comics adaptation of ROTJ in early May. My local paper decided to splash the film's big spoiler about Luke and Leia's discovered kinship right in the front section where I could see it. I still have not forgiven The Miami Herald for doing that!
Determined not to get spoiled any more than I was from that premature revelation, I read only non-spoiler reviews of the film. Good thing I was distracted enough at a friend's end-of-the-school-year party to have missed the spoilers plastered all over Time's review of the film, which I was trying to read. When the same friend got to go to the film's local premiere--her dad was an executive at Burger King--all I wanted to know if it was any good.
Finally, after two failed attempts to see the film after its May 25 release, I got to see it on June 6, 1983. It was bittersweet to say the least. Sweet because it was of course an amazing film, but bitter because it was over for SW. Sure there had been talk of the possibility of more movies somewhere in the misty, far-flung future but back in '83, nobody knew for certain. I believed there would be more, but likely not for a long time.
In my eighth-grade world, ROTJ was the toast of the town. Everybody, it seemed, loved it. While I passed on the merchandise with the exceptions of the novelization and the comics adaptation, I basked in the last SW summer until 1999. The only cloud came from the fact I was for the first time aware that, gasp, there were critics and media types who didn't like it or anything else about SW. One mean magazine article sent me into a near Anakin-in-the-Tusken-camp tizzy. It was inconceivable at the time that anyone could hate SW. Why, it was un-American!
I came to perceive the naysayers as envious snobs who resented the films' success more than anything else. But several years later, I noticed that for some reason it became fashionable to treat ROTJ as the pinata of what was then just the SW trilogy. A movie most folks loved in 1983 all of a sudden was the worst of the series. It was too silly. There were too many close-ups. Han Solo was marginalized. Darth Vader got off too easy. Boba Fett shouldn't have died (Lucas admitted he underestimated the character's popularity). But the brunt of the bashing was aimed at the Ewoks. The haters thought the Ewoks were a cynical ploy to sell toys, nevermind the megatons of toys produced for the previous two SW films. They hated that the furry fellows kicked Impie butt with nothing but primitive weapons, even though it was clear in the previous two films the stormies couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat and the Imperial officer corps was made up of a lot of incompetent boobs ;).
The Ewoks were Lucas's Rousseauian noble savages and while I disagree philosophically with the idea there's something spiritually pure about a pre-modern way of existence, it simply plays out as the underdogs winning in the film. ANH was all about underdogs beating the odds stacked against them. If callow teenagers could do it, why not furry little guys?
ROTJ's real heart though is in Vader's redemption. A theme that resonates even more having seen Episodes I-III. Not only do the Jedi return through Luke's journey to knighthood, it is also the return of Anakin. In ANH and most of TESB, Vader is a pure baddie. ROTJ made him an object of pathos, a man whose power was an illusion because he was in reality a slave to the Emperor and to the Dark Side. Little wonder then that when I first saw ROTJ in the theater, Vader tossing the Emperor down the shaft got by far the biggest applause from the audience.
ROTJ is ultimately about redemption, reconciliation, and reunification. A lot of trilogies have been made over the years, but few have wrapped things up as well thematically as ROTJ did. To quote Clerks II, there's only one Return and it's of the Jedi.
