'Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi

By Joseph Gelmis | STAFF WRITER

May 18, 1980

Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) carries the Jedi master Yoda on his back while undergoing his Jedi training in a scene from "The Empire Strikes Back." (Lucasfilm LTD.)

"Return of the Jedi" (PG). Incomparable special effects, some dazzling action sequences and amusing furry critters are the main event in this concluding film of the initial "Star Wars" trilogy. The actors seem more like comic-strip characters than ever. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams. At area theaters.

The longest cliff-hanger in movie history ends today with "Return of the Jedi." Some say Han Solo was freeze-dried at the end of "The Empire Strikes Back" because actor Harrison Ford was threatening not to do another sequel. Whatever the reason, here it is three years later, the players have returned, the curtain parts, the adventure continues where it left off and goes on to conclude the "Star Wars" trilogy.

Muppet-like creatures have the most important and interesting roles in "Jedi." The subterranean domain of the outlaw king Jabba the Hutt, a comic-repulsive mammoth slug, is like a Muppet nightmare version of "Fellini's Satyricon." The jungle planet of the primitive Ewoks, a cuddly teddy bear tribe invaded by galactic stormtroopers, is like a Muppet version of "Winnie the Pooh" set during the Vietnam War.

One may carp, gripe, quibble with "Jedi," but Lucasfilm's special effects subsidiary, Industrial Light and Magic, is in a class by itself as creator of screen magic. And when it is good as it is in two sequences, early and late in the action "Jedi" is peerless escapist fantasy.

Those two memorably exciting passages are a fight aboard a desert skiff skimming over the golden sands of Tatooine planet while Jabba the Hutt's sailbarge cruises alongside; and a chase aboard pursuit hovercycles wailing like banshees as they zoom through the giant redwood forests of the jungle planet Endor.

The actors appear as exhausted as we feel by the end of the movie. Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia)-- has lost a lot of weight and her face, nearly gaunt, makes her look 20 years older than she was six years ago. Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) looks even older. Gravity is resculpting Hamill's face, which was rebuilt by plastic surgery after a crash between "Star Wars" and "Empire." Harrison Ford (Han Solo) holds up best, since he was already in his late 30s when the trilogy started and hasn't altered significantly.

The changes wrought by time might have been used for poignance: To show that the comic-strip characters are human after all. But the innovative freshness of "Star Wars" and the improvisations of "Empire" give way in "Jedi" to rigidly schematic dialogue and performances. The furry characters have all the fun.

Hamill sounds stuck in a groove, repeating dialogue about the good side vs. the bad side of the Force. Ford spends much of the time reprising his most familiar lines ("I've got a bad feeling about this") from the other movies or playing straight man to Fisher. He tells her he loves her and she says, "I know."

When Ford said, "I know," to Fisher's "I love you," moments before Solo was frozen in "Empire Strikes Back," it was a show-stopper laugh. The wise-guy response, invented on the set by Ford, succinctly expressed the character he was playing. Now, doing variations of the theme, it's a clever reference, glibly arch you might even call it architectural. It's part of the balancing act of concluding the trilogy. It's self-consciously schematic, connecting bits and pieces of the three films.

The same structural self-consciousness afflicts the genealogical exposition, abrupt disclosures of kinship and clearing up of contradictory and misleading statements from earlier movies. The flow and individuality of "Jedi" are sacrificed to closing the circle, making the trilogy actually parts four, five and six of a projected triple trilogy fit together neatly. "Star Wars" stood alone. "Empire" and "Jedi" are dependent, parts of a grand design. That diminishes their separate impact.

Directed with panache by Richard Marquand, "Jedi" was filmed under the supervision of "Star Wars" creator George Lucas. If and when the first three parts of "Star Wars" are made, they will have a totally different feel, look, style, less like a comic strip, according to Lucas.

Having sat next to precocious 4-year-old boy who writhed in pain much of the time, I'd advise parents that "Jedi" may be too overwhelming for small children.

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