Thursday, January 16, 2014

Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) review



(8/10)

This last installment of the original Star Wars trilogy is very entertaining with great original effects, some very well done dialogue, and a great bit of emotion from the performers. However, this one feels less serious as compared to its predecessors.

PLOT:After Han Solo is frozen in carbonite and given to alien gangster, Jabba the Hutt, newly-trained Jedi Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) plans to trade Jabba his droids, C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) for Solo's life. However, Jabba takes the droids without releasing Solo. Soon after, Leia (Carrie Fisher) sneaks in undercover as a bounty hunter and ends up getting captured herself. Young Skywalker is forced to break into Jabba's palace and rescue Leia, Solo, Chewbacca, and the droids. After the group reunites, they have to worry about the newly-rebuilt Death Star, targetting the rebel base on the forest moon of Endor. Aside from that, Luke has to, as told by Yoda (Frank Oz), confront Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones) and defeat him along with his master, the evil Emperor (Ian McDiarmid). Luke must learn the Jedi way of overcoming hate and being strong to truly become a Jedi master, all the while saving the galaxy from the Imperial Empire. It's a great plot executed greatly.



ACTING:The performances in this film are very good. They're almost better than the work done in this film's predecessor. The best performances would have to be from Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, David Prowse and James Earl Jones as Darth Vader, Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor, Frank Oz as Yoda, Tim Rose as Admiral Ackbar, and Toby Philpott as Jabba the Hutt. I really liked the speech between Hamill, McDiarmid, and Jones in the final scenes, as well as the speech between Oz and Hamill earlier on in the film. All of these performances are very well done overall, with only a couple falling performances, like that of Billy Dee Williams as Lando. He didn't seem to act as well in this one.

SCORE:The score in this Star Wars film actually has to be my favorite out of the old trilogy's. The score here appeared to be John Williams' best of the old trilogy. More harmony and ensemble-like pieces enhanced the emotion way more than any of the previous films' scores did.

EFFECTS:The effects in this film (that weren't added in for the new trilogy edition) were really cool and well done for their time, as well as fairly realistic. The effects of Jabba and his crew of creatures like Bib Fortuna and the Rancor looked fairly cool for the time being. Also, the Ewoks and speeder effects on Endor looked pretty decent too. I really like what they did with all of the explosions in this one. They seemed way more hyped-up than usual. The new effects, however, of the new Anakin, the band in Jabba's palace, and the alternate ending made the film feel more fake and not as authentic as it originally did. The alternate ending itself was pretty okay, but it just didn't feel the same.



OTHER CONTENT:This film was a very good ending to the original trilogy, but it wasn't as well crafted as its predecessor, with more entertainment value than cinematic excellence. I found myself entertained throughout the whole thing, but the stops in the middle with intelligent dialogue and meaningful moments seem a little too far out of place as compared to the rest of the film. It seems that this second sequel adds more action to substitute for the meaningful, true cinematic charm. The film, nevertheless, is a fitting end to the trilogy, putting a good feeling in the viewers perspective.

OVERALL,a great Star Wars film with a great plot, very good performances with some falling, more emotional score, cool original effects with okay new effects, plenty of entertaining moments, and intelligent dialogue, however, the dialogue and cinematic charm the film's predecessor had is replaced with entertainment value.

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