That Bad, Huh?

Okay, folks, here we are at the fourth entry in my reverse-order rewatch of the eleven Star Wars movies: Return of the Jedi. To give a little context, 16-year-old me left the theater in 1983 extremely disappointed with this one on opening day. Luke and Leia are siblings? Darth Vader is a weird-looking bald guy under his mask, in heavy pancake makeup? Han Solo basically does nothing right in the entire movie? Teddy bears? Are you fucking kidding me -- teddy bears?!?

In the years since then, I've come to consider Luke's moment of triumph in this film to be one of the greatest scenes in movie history. And the line, "I am a Jedi, like my father before me," may be my favorite piece of dialogue in any movie ever. But wow, do I still squirm at some of the stuff in this film.

So how is it as a follow-on to the next three episodes in the saga?

Let me tell you, maybe it's just me, but I don't think ROTJ benefits from being viewed directly after The Force Awakens and the other two Disney sequels. And it's not just that virtually every aspect of filmmaking advanced so significantly in the 30 years between the end of the OT and the debut of the ST. The plain fact is, the Disney films are simply better structured than this one is, and all three of the OT leads put in better, more nuanced performances in the later movies than they did in ROTJ -- and were given better dialogue to deliver as well.

Whew. Well, with that said, here are some interesting things I noticed or had reconfirmed this time around.

• When Artoo and Threepio are approaching Jabba's palace, Threepio keeps going on about how scared Artoo would be if he'd heard half the things Threepio has about Jabba. Artoo's response is a series of  quivering, trembling bleeps that I always previously considered a kind of dumb attempt to make Artoo seem skittish and easily spooked by Threepio's greater knowledge. But this time I realized that actually, Artoo knows tons more about Jabba than Threepio. He remembers everything that happened on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace, as well as everything that happened with the Hutts during the Clone Wars series. He's not scared by what Threepio says -- he's mocking him with those beeps. He's basically saying, "Oh no! I'm so frightened, Threepio! What ever will we do???" Threepio is the one who's terrified, and although he tries to get Artoo to agree with him, the astromech has complete faith in Luke's plan from start to finish.
• Rogue One Mon Mothma greatly improves ROTJ Mon Mothma, whom I used to find absolutely insipid.
• With the revelations in the sequels about Leia's Jedi powers, the fact that she has memories of her mother and Luke does not kind of implies that her Force abilities are inherently greater than Luke's. I used to hate the fact that Revenge of the Sith committed the apparent continuity error of having Padmé die without Leia meeting her. Now I think the implications of that are pretty damn awesome.
• Andy Serkis' performance as Snoke in the Throne Room sequence of TLJ is fantastically reminiscent of Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine delivering the same sorts of taunts to Luke at the end of ROTJ.
• Force Ghost Hayden Christensen > Force Ghost Sebastian Shaw. I never felt even a remote connection to the spectral Anakin Skywalker showing up at the end next to Obi-Wan and Yoda,  because I had no investment in Shaw's one-scene portrayal of Anakin before his death. Putting Hayden in the final scene instead does a couple of things for me: first, it brings a much greater sense of resolution relative to the prequels, and second, Anakin's visible youth is a bit of a poke at Old Ben and Yoda, who are now eternally locked in their aged, proven-wrong forms, while Anakin has returned to his true self.

Next up ... The Empire Strikes Back!