Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
What is it ? : We pick up the story having been told that the Empire is building a newer, better Death Star, which we see Darth Vader arrive at, motivating the commander of the construction to speed up the work as the Emperor himself is going to be arriving soon.
Meanwhile on Tatooine, we see R2-D2 and C-3PO arriving at a large palace, which turns out to belong to Jabba the Hutt, R2 projects a hologram of Luke to Jabba, telling him he wants Han Solo back, and we see Han still frozen in Carbonite on display on Jabbas wall. Luke gifts the droids to Jabba as a sign of good faith, but Jabba refuses to lose his prize. The droids are put into service, with C-3PO becoming Jabba's latest translator.
Later a bounty hunter, Boussh, brings in Chewbacca, and after threatening Jabba with a thermal detonator, gets a good price for the Wookiee who is thrown into a Jail Cell as one of the guards drops his mask revealing himself to be Lando Calrissian.
One of Jabba's slaves refuses his advances, and is dropped into a chamber below the throne room, which contains a massive monster, the Rancor.
Later that night, Boussh sneaks into the throne room as everyone sleeps, and unfreezes Han, and reveals themself to be Princess Leia, but it is a trap and they are both caught, with Han thrown into the cell with Chewbacca, but he is temporarily blind due to the freezing.
Luke arrives at the palace to demand the release of his friends, but he is also dropped into the Rancor pit, but using his Jedi abilities he defeats the creature.
To be executed, Jabba takes Han, Luke and Chewbacca out into the desert to a large creature which will eat them over a thousand years of pain, the Sarlaac. But it is all a plan by Luke, and R2-D2 now acting as a bartender for Jabba fires Lukes Lightsaber into his hand, and between him and Lando they battle the guards. But Leia, now dressed as a slave to Jabba, uses her chains to throttle him, and they all escape as the Sail barge explodes.
Luke agrees to meet them all later, as he has a promise to keep, and he returns to Yoda, who is dying of old age. Yoda tells him that it is true that Vader is his father, and that he must defeat him to become a Jedi, before passing away and fading into the force.
The force ghost of Ben Kenobi appears, and fills Luke in, that Vader killed all that was Anakin Skywalker, so what he told Luke was kinda true, and reveals to Luke that he has a twin sister, and Luke realises it's Leia.
He returns to the Rebel fleet, where they are preparing an attack on the Death Star, to coincide with the Emperors visit, to destroy the super weapon and kill him. The construction of the Death Star is protected by a shield generated on a nearby moon, so Luke, Leia, Han and Chewbacca will take out the shield, while Lando takes the Falcon to lead an attack into the superstructure of the Death Star to destroy it's main reactor.
The Emperor arrives at the Death Star, and asks Vader to wait on his command ship, but Vader senses Luke arriving and returns to report it to The Emperor.
The heroes land on the forest moon, and encounter some Imperial Scout Troopers, entering a chase through the trees on fast moving speeder bikes, but Leia is seperated from the rest and encounters the natives of this world, the small teddy bear-like Ewoks. The rest of the group search for her, but are caught, and are prepared to be eaten by the Ewoks, but Luke uses the force, and C-3PO's golden visage which resembles an Ewok god, to befriend the creatures, who reveal they know a secret entrance to the Imperial Shield generator.
Luke realises that Vader can sense him, so tells Leia of their relationship and that if he fails it's up to her. Han encounters Leia and she is emotional after her talk with Luke, and he assumes that she loves Luke and not him.
Luke hands himself into Vader, and is taken to Palpatine aboard the Death Star, who reveals this is all a trap of his planning to capture Luke and destroy the Rebellion.
The Ewoks show the heroes the rear entrance to the Shield Generator, and as they plant explosives, they are caught by prepared Imperial forces.
The Rebel fleet led by Lando and the Millennium Falcon emerge from Hyperspace to attack the Death Star, but when he realises the Empire is jamming their sensors ability to detect whether the shields are up or down, he orders them to abort the attack as they would just collide with the shields. And aboard the command cruiser, Admiral Ackbar detects the Imperial Fleet moving to engage them, and declares that "it's a trap!"
The Emperor attempts to enrage Luke to strike at him, telling him his friends are about to die, but Luke initially remains calm, but does grab his lightsaber to attack, only to be blocked by Vader and the two begin to duel.
On the surface, the Ewoks lead an attack on the Imperial forces and free Han, Leia and Chewbacca, and a ground battle begins between the primitive ewoks and the technological might of the Empire.
In space, the Death Star fires, destroying one of the Rebel capital ships, so they begin to more closely skirmish with the Imperial fleet, which is more numerous and more powerful than their fleet, but does stop the Death Star sniping and destroying their vessels with a single shot.
Luke hides from Vader, and tells him he won't fight his father, as he can sense the good in him, but Vader reads Lukes thoughts, and tells him that if he will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps his sister will.
Enraged, and filled with the Dark Side, Luke attacks Vader, defeating the mighty Sith Lord, and reducing him to a wheezing weak old man, before realising that his own journey to becoming like his father has begun as he notices Vaders cybernetic hand and his own.
On the surface, even though the Ewoks have taken serious casualties, they are used to the large hostile creatures on the forest moon, and use their traps against the Imperial walkers, leading to the Rebels gaining access to the shield generator again, this time planting their explosives and destroying the shield.
Lando detects the shield is down, and leads the Rebels into the Death Star to target its main reactor.
Luke declares that he is a Jedi, like his father, but the Emperor strikes him down with Force Lightning, torturing him with the electricity. Vader looks at his son in pain, and lashes out at the Emperor, who turns the lightning on Vader, but is thrown into the core of the the Death Stars reactor.
Vader collapses, hate was keeping the wreck of a man going, and with that gone and the additional damage from the force lightning, he is breathing his last. But before he dies, he gets Luke to remove his helmet so he can look at his son with his own eyes, and tells him to tell his sister he was right.
Luke steals a shuttle and flees the Death Star, just in time, as Lando lands the killing shot on the Death Stars main reactor, and has to flee back out of the superstructure as the station explodes around him.
Luke takes his fathers body down to the forest moon and cremates him, before joining his friends. Han tells Leia that he understands she's chosen Luke, and he won't get in the way, but she tells him that Luke is her brother and kisses him, and Lukes looks off from the celebrations to see the ghosts of Yoda, Ben Kenobi and his father watching on proudly.
As across the galaxy people celebrate the fall of the Emperor and the Galactic Empire. . . .
High Points : Many people see this as the weakest of the Original Trilogy, and while I accept that the Ewoks aren't great, and some of the story is just patched together to just to tie everything together, I love this movie.
Depending on the day, sometimes this is my favourite, and it's definitely the one I consider the most watchable, as I can rewatch the battle of Endor over and over again. I love space battles in my Star Wars, and this is the BEST space battle in any Star Wars movie (Rogue One comes a close second).
And in many ways it's the perfect format for a Star Wars RPG adventure, we get them tidying up from the last adventure (fixing your ship, etc, or in this case rescuing a captured team mate), then they are briefed on the story this time, they encounter some local colour, which proves vital in the final battle against the Empire.
Low Points : The "from a certain point of view" speech by Obi-Wan is just bad storytelling, just an excuse as to why the Vader being Luke's dad doesn't match up with comments on Lukes dad from the first movie. For Leia being Lukes sister, there were far too many passionate kisses in the first two movies, just showing more signs that Lucas had no idea where the story was going when he was making the first movies, he certainly didn't have them all plotted out.
And the Ewoks, while they were just created to be cuter, more marketable, Wookiees (with their names just being a rearranged Wok-E), they're quite a cool addition to the story, and I'm not as down on them as most. Even the heroes underestimate them, and they're quite savage (as they're obviously about to eat the heroes at one point, and the abundance of Stormtrooper armour after the battle, with no bodies or prisoners on display, should make it clear what all that meat they're cooking actually is).
So what do you really think ? : I love this movie, it continues to feel part of an expansive universe, and while you can pick faults, especially as it is in a bit of a rush to tie everything together into a cohesive plot. The movie is action packed, fun, and just really enjoyable, so I find I just don't care about any problems and just have a great time watching it.
Final Words : So in 1983, the Star Wars movies were over, we'd seen the last one. Then in 2005, the Star Wars movies were over, and we'd seen the last one, and more recently, in 2019, the Star Wars movies were over, and we'd seen the last one.
I'm absolutely overjoyed at seeing new Star Wars, but somehow the first time always sticks with you, so this feels like the end of the Star Wars Trilogy, and it ended on a high note.
And with that, I've now reviewed every Star Wars movie released in the cinemas (because here in the UK, even the Ewok movies were release in cinemas) . . .
Until the next one that is.
Score : 9.5/10
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