“Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi” turns 30 on Saturday, and it’s still looking good. So much so that George Lucas recently gave the nod to a sequel. But the J.J. Abrams-helmed “Episode VII” is still a couple years away, so in the meantime, let’s take a look at 30 reasons why “Jedi” still rocks all these years later.
1. Jabba the Hutt — The animators couldn’t quite get Jabba right in the 1997 “Star Wars” Special Edition or in 1999’s “The Phantom Menace.” They got him right the first time, way back in 1983, as this character we’d heard about for six years lived up to the hype with that first booming laugh.
2. Boushh negotiates with Jabba — We get a peek into how the underworld operates during the negotiation scene where the bounty hunter’s threat to kill everyone in the palace so impresses Jabba that he increases his offer by 10,000 credits. He praises Boushh (later revealed to be Leia): “This bounty hunter is my kind of scum.”
3. Oola — Forget Slave Leia. I’ll take this smokin’ hot Twi’lek dancer any day.
4. Slave Leia — Actually, I have 30 slots to fill, so there’s room for Slave Leia too.
5. The rancor monster — I will admit that the creatures in “Attack of the Clones’ “ Geonosis arena are pretty cool, but the rancor was the original “Star Wars” monster. And it was brought to life entirely with practical effects, a strong argument that sometimes the older, slower way yields the best results.
6. “Lapti Nek” — I love the cheesiness of this 1980s dance number translated into Huttese and belted out by a puppet. While the Special Edition’s “Jedi Rocks,” with its CGI Sy Snootles, may be technically superior, I have a soft spot for the original number.
7. “Tales from Jabba’s Palace” book — There was just something about Jabba’s palace that made one want to explore all those tunnels that led off screen. This 1996 collection of short stories from various creatures’ perspectives allows us to do just that as the authors brilliantly use cues from the movies as jumping-off points (for example, Bib Fortuna’s eagerness to see R2-D2’s message before Jabba does).
8. Pegs full of Jabba’s palace denizen action figures — God, it was good to be a kid in the 1980s, as KayBee Toys was filled with Gamorrean Guards, Ree Yeeses, Klaatus, Weequays and Bib Fortunas for two bucks apiece. I shoulda bought 100 of each of them; then again, the memories are priceless.
9. The battle at the Sarlacc Pit — This is a master class in editing and pacing. Unlike the prequels, which cut away from the action too often, we get the entire Sarlacc battle in one fell swoop, from Luke walking the plank to the Rebels flying away in the skiff. I still don’t know what Luke and Leia’s escape rope was attached to, but that’s just one small quibble.
10. The Sarlacc belches after eating Boba Fett — Considering that Fett escaped off-screen for further adventures, we got the best of both worlds: More Fett in the Expanded Universe, and a perfect burp joke that puts to shame the kaadu farting in Jar Jar’s face in “The Phantom Menace.”
11. Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine — He’s the guy that Darth Vader answers to. He’s the guy that runs the galaxy through fear. Whereas Jabba was the work of a whole team of designers and performers, there was a ton of pressure on McDiarmid to play the ultimate villain. He immediately joined the ranks of “Star Wars” icons, and I’m still quoting his lines every chance I get in increasingly exaggerated fashion (“Oh … I’m afraid … the deflector shield … will be quite operational … when your friends … arrive.”).
12. The scene of the Imperial forces lined up on the Death Star — The “Imperial March” plays, and the moment is effective shorthand for the tyrannical, efficient and frightening force the Rebels must defeat in order to restore liberty to the galaxy.
13. Yoda’s death scene — Yoda isn’t an actor; he’s just a puppet voiced and performed by Frank Oz. But you wouldn’t know it from this powerful scene.
14. Obi-Wan’s ghost talks to Luke — This is where we get all the answers: Is Vader really Luke’s father? If so, why did Obi-Wan lie? Who is the other Skywalker? Now that the prequels have been made, there’s no surprise factor for newcomers, but for a scene of two dudes sitting on a log and chatting, this was edge-of-your-seat stuff in 1983. And it’s even better in James Kahn’s novelization. Considering how much stuff the prequels threw slightly out of whack (including the novelization’s assertion that Obi-Wan and Owen Lars were brothers), it’s neat how spot-on this passage is on page 64 of the hardcover: “We fought … your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever — he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will …”
15. Aliens in the Rebel Alliance — Better late than never, Lucas finally shows that it’s not just humans who are oppressed by the Empire through alien rebels like Admiral Ackbar, Nien Nunb and — if you look closely in the background of the briefing scene — Prune Face. Plus many off-screen Bothans, of course.
16. Mon Mothma — For that matter, it’s nice to see a woman other than Leia who is a major part of the fight for liberty. With just one speech in the briefing scene, it’s clear that there’s a good reason why Mon Mothma is a respected leader.
17. The speeder bike chase — It makes the trench run in “A New Hope” look like a milk run by comparison.
18. Ewoks — “How I Met Your Mother” nicely outlined how the pro- and anti-Ewok camps break down along age lines. Since I was a kid during the original trilogy’s release, I fit the stereotype and fall firmly into the pro-Ewok camp …
19. Particularly the baby ewok — … so much so that I’m devoting two slots to the lovable furballs. …
20. It paves the way for the “Ewoks” cartoon — … OK, this will be the last Ewok entry, I promise. I loved the Saturday morning cartoon as a kid, and still think it holds up well. (The “Ewoks” comics — not so much. The “Ewoks” movies will have to be the subject of a future post, as it’s been a while since I’ve seen them.)
21. The shot of a bunch of TIE interceptors coming at the Falcon’s cockpit — The coolest single moment in the relentlessly cool final space battle.
22. A-wings and B-wings — The speedy A-wings and the uniquely designed B-wings (the body of which rotates around a stationary cockpit) made me hope as a kid that the Rebels would someday fill out the whole alphabet with snubfighters. (We already had X-wings and Y-wings, and the EU has since given us E-wings and V-wings.)
23. Lando gets to pilot the Millennium Falcon again — It’s a nice touch allowing Lando to not only pilot the beloved ship he lost to Han in a bet, but to do so in heroic fashion.
24. Leia tells Han “I know” — And this is an even better callback to “The Empire Strikes Back” as Han says “I love you” and Leia repeats his famous line before gunning down two stormtroopers.
25. The three-way final battle — “A New Hope’s” cutting between the trench run and Leia and Tarkin looking nervous seems pretty tame by comparison. And the four-way battle in “The Phantom Menace” is a bit too much. “Jedi” got it just right with non-stop action cutting between the forest fight, the space warfare and the lightsaber duel.
26. Vader’s death scene — Wouldn’t’cha know it? Luke was right all along and there was still good in Vader. The unmasking scene, in addition to being wonderfully acted by Sebastian Shaw and Mark Hamill, also works as a broader representation of how even the most powerfully evil of human beings are — at their core — just a pitiful human being like the rest of us.
27. Wedge gets to paint another Death Star icon on his X-wing — Part of the reason why there are so many books and comics out there is that the films themselves — although they go by quickly — care about the details. Wedge going 2-for-2 against Death Stars made him such a fan favorite (especially among those interested in the military aspect of the saga) that he carried an entire “X-wing” novel and comic series in the ’90s.
28. John Williams’ celebration music for the Special Edition — As with “Lapti Nek,” I have soft spot for the original “Yub-nub” celebration song. However, Williams’ 1997 finale song, along with the shots of celebrations throughout the galaxy, is so beautiful that it made me pick up the Special Edition soundtrack even though I had almost all the other music already.
29. It’s filled with imaginative concepts, yet leaves a lot in reserve — I used to salivate over the original vision for the film that had the Emperor’s throne room on a lava planet (nicely chronicled in 1998’s “Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays”). Lucas scaled that back to a Death Star throne room, but perhaps it always bugged him that he couldn’t get his entire vision into the original trilogy, thus inspiring him to make more “Star Wars” movies (including “Revenge of the Sith,” featuring the lava planet Mustafar). If so, that’s a good thing.
30. It completes the story, yet leaves room for more — “Jedi” is a satisfying final chapter as it wraps up Luke’s hero’s journey and the redemption of Anakin; kills off the Emperor, paving the way for the galaxy’s liberation; and gets Han and Leia together. And yet there was still so much more story to tell, and I’m grateful for that because we’ve gotten three decades of post-“Jedi” EU stories and we’ll soon get “Episode VII,” the ultimate story of Luke passing on what he has learned.
What are your favorite things about “Return of the Jedi?” Share your thoughts below.