Return Of The Jedi: "The First Prequel"

Ha! Perfect quote. And thank you.


O, RLY? A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

What's also interesting is how the movie, just prior to that moment, is described by Lucas as "disjointed". Yet, in the major battle scene between the Gungans and the Battle Droids, you have a sort of "meta" clash between those mechanically-jointed ant-men and the organic, fluidic tadpole people. The film's very aesthetic clashing in that whole section is well-symbolised by Jar Jar doing battle with the Battle Droid that gets attached to his leg. "Get off! Get off!"

I love your phrasing: "montagic might". What a keeper! The one thing that Lucas undeniably excels at is the big conceptual stuff, followed by the intercutting cojones to pull off his grand ideas in the editing stage. Even as Lucas laments in the grainy dark that he may have "gone too far in a few places", you can detect a tinge of nervous pride. Even a kind of wry amusement. He had every intention of developing an explosive and truly insane finale. 

Indeed, every Star Wars movie has a fantastic, visceral, and gripping final act. If Acts I and II are sometimes a bit cautious and restrained, all that caution and restraint is thrown into the wood chipper and set on fire in Act III. The crazy, plate-juggling climax to TPM was bound to astound and surprise even its maker, given what Lucas says about pushing himself, and about pushing the audience, in "From Star Wars To Jedi: The Making Of A Saga". 

If Star Wars has any right to claim the space opera badge all for itself, then those third acts do a lot of Olympic running, vaulting, and shot-putting to justify the arrogation of the term. Even when a pronounced degree of silliness kicks in with the Ewok ground battle, the film is never less than a whirling, mad-cap, visionary feast: an intense tragicomic action bricolage. People fail to see how supple and renewing Star Wars is beneath its robust (if, at times, its tad oppressive) formalism and classical structural concerns. Yet, again, it was really ROTJ that set this template -- made multiple lines of intersecting operatic action (based on solid Eisensteinian montage principles) a rich and sexy thing.



Indeed. It even feels a touch prophetic and pre-reckoned in the film. An upgraded, matured Luke returns to Tatooine ("returning" being something of a profound mythic/religious concept in itself), while Yoda and Obi-Wan explicitly tell Luke that he must return to the maw of danger and "face Darth Vader again, and "only then" will he truly be a Jedi. The very powerful yet fleeting use of the twin suns outside of Jabba's Palace, in that brief frog-slurping shot (which itself anticipates the tongue gag of Jar Jar grabbing the fruit, and being stopped by Qui-Gon, at Anakin's home), also hints at "the harmony of the spheres" and the quiet abundance of greater forces in the universe. The sun sets on every "empire" in the end.


"Retroactive teaser". Hmm, I like that! One crucial element I forgot to mention is Obi-Wan's meme-worthy deployment of his now-famous "from a certain point of view" rationalisation. This concept is employed to profound effect in the PT. Not only do we learn where Obi-Wan got it from (from Qui-Gon, who may have got it from Dooku), but Palpatine himself uses it to snag Anakin in the (very meta) opera scene in ROTS. It even became the basis of an essay on Palpatine in a book extolling Star Wars for its philosophical dimensions in 2005. Thanks originally to mandragora for posting this extract at the start of her delightful thread on TFN in 2005:


The book is:

"Star Wars And Philosophy: More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine", edited by Kevin S. Decker, Jason T. Eberl, and William Irwin. 

The essay within the book is:

"A Certain Point Of View", by Shanti Fader, p. 195

So, as you can see, ROTJ bequeathed quite a legacy onto Star Wars, and a good deal of the saga extends very much from it.

GIANT ASTEROID ALERT!

This response will be a three-parter! I decided to break it into three parts for enhanced readability -- like Lucas claiming to have broken Star Wars into three movies! I think this is my most epic response yet on Naberrie Fields (or anywhere?). Especially if I'd posted it as a single piece.

The parts are not of an even size, however. The first part is more of an overture. Once this first part is out of the way (dealing with prequel links and rhymes within TESB), I will get straight on with my main response concerning ROTJ. The overture is a little off-topic, but I started this whole thread and I couldn't help myself. 

Here we go...



Good catch. The middles deal more strongly in moral ambiguity than their adjoining brethren. That staple is also one of a plethora of motifs and themes introduced or otherwise expanded upon in TESB that will be reprised in the PT. I wrote a small (but by no means exhaustive) list:

- The gorgeous sunset imagery on Cloud City. This type of imagery will show up to visually-stunning effect in the prequels, especially AOTC (the prequel middle), and carry with it tons of potent symbolism.

- Vader tempting Luke. Vader tempts Luke to join the Dark Side, much as Dooku tempts Obi-Wan, Palpatine tempts Anakin, and Anakin tempts Padme. Only one of these temptations is actually successful. I guess your charge has to really be desperate to join you.

- Yoda testing Luke. When Luke, a prospective Jedi, first meets Yoda, Yoda plays the fool, and Luke attempts to hurry him away. This motif is revisited in TPM when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan meet Jar Jar in the forests of Naboo. One may be more deliberate than the other, yet the Jedi are quick to show annoyance in both situations, giving a measure of their detachment from the Living Force. In Qui-Gon's case, this is quite ironic. Though he does warm up to Jar Jar a little later.

- The similitude between Lando and Dooku. Two mysterious, cape-wearing figures with murky allegiances, formerly allies of our heroes. They each show up in the final act of the movie and turn out to be answering to powerful, treacherous Sith Lords. Indeed, one of them is a Sith and meets a sticky end in the next film; while the other manages to defy the Sith and side with the Rebellion and becomes a General in the next film. This inversion could be considered emblematic of the difference in the focus and ultimate trajectory of the two trilogies.

- A big land battle. The middle installments each have an epic land conflagration between a heavily-armed invading force and a smaller force that flees a subterranean base. In TESB, the "good guys" are fleeing. In AOTC, the "good guys" are the aggressors. These land battles are also flipped in their placement, happening at the start and the end of the film respectively. Another notable feature is how both Skywalkers size up weak points in their enemies' imposing machinery very easily (Luke tells the snowspeeder team to "Go for the legs" of the AT-ATs, while Anakin tells the gunship pilot to "Aim right above the fuel cells" of a stationed spacecraft).

- Splitting up. The middle installments utilise a slightly more ambitious plot structure. After an opening act with everyone together, our heroes are split up on separate journeys. In each, there is a side quest happening in parallel to the main story. In the middle of the main story, a Skywalker receives a powerful vision of their loved ones in danger and decides to effect a rescue. The heroes meet back up at the end and the Skywalker is maimed. In TESB, Han is also frozen, though "in a state of perfect hibernation". At the end of AOTC, Anakin and Padme secretly get married and begin a long, complicated process of existential hibernation. 

- Smoke/fog. A fair amount of smoke and fog and beclouding occurs in the middle installments. In TESB, all three major planets are sheafed in heavy clouds, while the probe droid impacting the surface of Hoth whips up a dense plume of snow, the belly of the space slug limits visibility for Han and Leia (and confuses their senses), and Luke crash-lands on Dagobah after plunging through thick atmosphere. When Luke and Vader duel on Cloud City, the freezing chamber becomes a third character, with smoke providing a fetid, dream-like quality. In AOTC, we descend into thick cloud coverage in the opening shot, there's the hot and sticky droid factory on Geonosis, a huge expanse of dust that is whipped up in the ensuing battle (after Yoda orders an attack on a fleeing ship), and we have ominous talk of the Jedi's vision becoming "clouded". 

- Boba Fett subplot. A mysterious hunter of Han Solo in TESB, Boba is revealed to have an origin that ties into the Clone Wars in AOTC. This also represents an expansion of the father-son motif, which was seemingly baked into the DNA of Star Wars from the beginning (the first draft of the first screenplay begins with a scene where a father is hastily leaving home with his two sons; the younger son is ruthlessly sliced down by a Sith warrior before they escape).

- Looking for clues. When the Millennium Falcon is discovered to "no longer appear" on the Empire's scopes, Vader enlists the help of several bounty hunters to find their "lost ship". The queen's ship also goes missing and Sidious brings Maul into the picture to find it in TPM. Similarly, in AOTC, Obi-Wan goes to an old friend for a clue to the origins/whereabouts of the bounty hunter that shot Zam Wesell dead -- his only link being a "toxic dart" (Vader also describes Leia, the Cosmic Mother of the saga with a sharp tongue, as his "only link" to finding the Rebels' hidden base in ANH).

- Hiding with some camouflage. Flowing neatly from the preceding motif, a spaceship in both AOTC and TESB manages to hide itself from the bad guys by laying low. In the latter, the bad guy has learned the trick after it was done to him and his father in the former. The pursued turns into the pursuer.

- Asteroid chase. The middle installments each have a tense chase between asteroids. In both sequences, a larger asteroid is briefly flown into for cover. Following this procedure, to the enemy it appears that the "good guys" have been destroyed (Obi-Wan jettisons the spare part canisters, Han and Leia hide inside the space slug). But some in the Empire know better. It is unclear whether Jango really thought his Jedi pursuer had been destroyed or was happily leading him into a trap.
 
- Damaged hyperdrive. Kind of a sneaky one, but the damaged hyperdrive subplot of TESB is reused in TPM when our heroes become stranded on Tatooine. This also creates a weird tension in the trilogies between two very different ships and container forms (a gleaming, curvilinear luxury chrome transport with a pearlescent interior vs. the kit-bashed "hunk of junk" that is a refuge to our heroes for an entire trilogy). 

- Love declaration in a tense situation. The middle installments of the OT and PT feature love plots that culminate in love being declared by the female protagonists as things seem hopeless. Both romances are marked by the female playing hard-to-get in their early stages, while their male suitors exhibit a mixture of brash charm and petulant arrogance; and then a certain ripening occurs in the middle, as the females begin to melt and the males relax their overtures. Though Padme takes longer to fold than Leia -- and, of course, the consequences of falling in love (in secret) are more dire in the PT storyline. 

- Threepio getting rearranged. Again, in the middle installments of the Lucas Saga, poor C-3PO has a difficult time when he stumbles into a hidden industrial area, falling to Artoo (no pun intended) in both instances to ultimately set him back together. Indeed, in AOTC, Artoo actually plays a role in the dismemberment process. Lucas has described these twin occurrences as Cubist -- essentially, a meta-commentary on the state of Anakin and the galaxy, and in some ways, Star Wars itself.

- Sith invading a heavenly realm. Vader is revealed to be at Cloud City when doors part horizontally, like stage curtains, to show him waiting for our heroes at the head of a table. In TPM, doors part horizontally revealing Maul, who is waiting to engage the Jedi in fateful combat, just ahead of where everyone is moving towards. Padme coolly says, "We'll take the long way", while our OT heroes are essentially snookered. Interestingly, in ROTJ, Leia suggests going around the Imperial troops the Rebels come across on Endor, but Luke says, "It'll take time." Luke also cautions Han to take care of the situation quietly, and Han quips, "Hey, it's me." When Anakin jumps back into the elevator in ROTS, Obi-Wan is startled and says, "Oh, it's you."

- Cave symbolism. Cave symbolism is particularly dominant in the PT, and first finds a strong expression in TESB. Every dramatic situation in the Kershner film seems to be happening in a cave of some sort. And then the line that craftily repudiates the idea that the film itself (or the saga entire) is a cave: "This is no cave." Yet there's an element (arguably) of protesting too much. Caves are everywhere. Anakin and Luke (and Rey) are even introduced living in cave-like homes.  

- Pained expressions. Han being tortured by Vader and subsequently frozen in carbonite anticipates Anakin's visions of Padme crying out in pain and subsequently falling silent in ROTS. A sense of interpersonal tragedy and gloom enters the saga with TESB. In addition, TESB sort of made Star Wars into a saga, fit to to wear the name.

- Skywalkers feeling cold. Luke remarks he feels cold outside of the tree cave on Dagobah to Yoda. Similarly, when asked by Yoda how he feels in TPM when stood in front of the Jedi Council, Anakin remarks, "Cold, sir." An implied critique of the Jedi, perhaps; or Corsucant itself; or the Republic infested by corruption and the Sith; or all of these things. On a more personal level, the remark is suggestive of Anakin feeling fear: fear of loss. If Anakin continues to feel cold even after being burned half-alive before being locked in the Vader suit, this would suggest Luke half-sensing the truth of Vader before he enters the cave. He just doesn't know what he's dealing with yet.

- An inconclusive duel. In the duels at the end of AOTC and TESB, nothing much is really accomplished. None of the participants land a victory, consistent with the moral murk of the films and their attitude toward violence in general (and the series as a whole). In the latter, however, Luke does learn that Vader is his father, and Vader himself seems more reserved afterward, leading to the events of ROTJ. This "pointless nature" of duelling is taken to an extreme in "The Last Jedi" where no actual duel involving touching sabers occurs, and Kylo technically "kills" Luke only to discover he was being tricked so that the remaining members of the Resistance (including his mother) could escape. Their brief encounter also has some resonances with Vader fighting Obi-Wan in ANH and Obi-Wan confronting Anakin in ROTS.

- "This deal is getting worse all the time." Lando half-says this to the audience, much as Obi-Wan mutters little asides at several points in AOTC. Nute Gunray and Rune Haako also fret about Sidious changing things around on them in TPM and despair amongst themselves, "We should not have made this bargain." This shades into Anakin submitting to Palpatine in ROTS. By the end of the film, he realises he shouldn't have the bargain, but now (after killing the Separatists and losing Padme) he sees no way out. Like Nute and Rune and the Jedi Order, he has been played as a fool and rendered into a pawn of evil.

- Creepy holograms. In ANH, there was only the flickery, benign holographic recording of Leia that induced Obi-Wan to leave Tatooine, and which put Luke on the Hero's Journey (unless you count the colourful chess holograms). TESB introduced the foreboding image of the Emperor who speaks to Vader in real-time. The Emperor also appears as a hologram in TPM and ROTS, while Sio Bibble's communication to Amidala in TPM is laced with uncertainty. "It's a trick. Send no reply. Send no transmissions of any kind." Though the idea of deceptive holograms and recordings goes back to "THX-1138".

- More formal and beautiful wipes. The scene wipes started to become a bit more advanced in TESB, with more of an emphasis on circle forms. TPM also has a strong circle motif in various design elements. The podrace itself is circuitous, and the plot of the film also goes in a circle, starting and ending on Naboo. Of course, this is also true of the Lucas Saga as a whole, which is essentially a cinematic ouroboros: a snake chasing its own tail. The saga can also be resolved into a set of concentric storytelling rings.

- The beautiful score. John Williams' full embrace of leitmotif scoring in TESB effectively nailed the colours of Star Wars to its mast. While the groundwork was already laid in ANH, it was TESB that essentially canonised the idea that Star Wars works best with a lush, orchestral, theme-laden musical score. To this day, many fans consider TESB's score one of Williams' all-time greatest. It also introduced several musical themes that would be re-used in subtle ways in the PT. One piece, when Luke is battling Vader on Cloud City, actually runs through all three trilogies (in the PT, when Yoda is about to duel Sidious beneath the grand Senate chamber; in the ST, when Rey gets angry and begins to react to Kylo while training on Pasaana).

- The idea that all is not what it seems and appearances can be deceptive. This is a foundational theme of the series. In TESB, it is perhaps best summed up with Yoda's pithy line, "Judge me by my size, do you?" Even after Yoda's earlier deception wherein he casually reveals his real identity to Luke and calmly fires off a few nuggets of wisdom as clues (e.g., "Wars not make one great"), Luke still hasn't gotten the message. It is, of course, a lesson that constantly has to be re-learned. In the PT, this obliquely takes the form of a repeating line, and finds its most potent expression, once again, with Yoda: "Much to learn, you still have." Yoda teaching the younglings also nicely ties into Yoda's more light-hearted teacher characteristics in TESB. The idea that Jedi begin as "Padawan learners" also extends, in part, from the tuition dynamics between Luke and Yoda in TESB. All Jedi are children next to Yoda, and Yoda himself is, in some sense, the ultimate (enlightened) child.

Welcome to Part 2 of 2 (or 3 of 3). If you've been enjoying the discussion of ROTJ so far from a "prequel" (or saga) point-of-view, you'll hopefully like this last part, which now moves on to looking at the evolution of Vader/Anakin, and the expansion of Luke's role in ROTJ.

No discussion of the connection between ROTJ and the PT would be complete without touching on the evolution of Vader/Anakin himself. While TESB may have taken the first steps toward humanising him (even ANH has a few of these moments), these steps aren't all that significant until the final act on Cloud City. ROTJ is tasked with making sense of Vader's revelation to Luke, and is also obligated in ensuring the bond between Luke and Vader is believable and conveys sufficient emotional depth. The choices made would again inflect the narrative of the PT. 

In the rough draft of ROTJ (then called "Revenge Of The Jedi") from February 1981, Vader would undergo a transformation into a more human and vulnerable character compared to his portrayal in the previous films, competing with the Emperor for the prize of Luke -- though, in the rough draft, his interest seems more samurai-esque and power-driven, without some of the indecision and protectionism we see in the finished film. Kaminski states:


Kaminski illustrates with an example from the script. A scene between Vader and the Emperor in the revised rough draft actually has Vader attempting to stand up to the Emperor in his throne room, and getting choked by the Emperor through the Force in response -- an echo of this would appear in "The Last Jedi", when Kylo, Vader's grandson, literally attempts to stand up to his decrepit master Snoke in his throne room, provoked by the idea of him being an inferior version of Vader, and is flung back with lightning. The scene from the revised rough draft of ROTJ:


Some lines in this scene would later show up elsewhere: Snoke looks forward to being able to crush the Resistance "once and for all" in "The Force Awakens", while Anakin half-heartedly apologises to Obi-Wan, "Forgive me, master", outside the nightclub in AOTC. The Emperor's double meaning in promising to "take good care" of Luke is also duplicated in his comical reassurance to Nute Gunray in ROTS regarding the arrival of his new apprentice (Anakin): "He will... take care of you."

Kaminski himself says about the scene:


Indeed, in the finished film, Vader's subservience would be crystallised by a poignant line to Luke, before Luke is brought to the Emperor and can see the power relationship for himself: "You don't know the power of the Dark Side. I must obey my master."

Of course, it is arguable that Luke never really glimpses the full extent of this power relationship. The Disney Sequel Trilogy, controversial as it stands, builds on the implicit idea that Dark Side apprentices (or at least those with tremendous power like the Skywalker apprentices) are essentially tethered to their dark masters, and freeing themselves of this influence is no easy thing -- they literally require an abundance of faith, hope, and compassion in order to abandon their Dark Side prison. Overcoming the Dark Side is a Herculean challenge, and it is essentially the eucatastrophe of the Star Wars saga.

Lucas seemed to emphasise this reality in Episode III when Anakin pledges himself to the Emperor, describing his submission as a "Faustian pact" on the DVD commentary and creating a weird ambience in that scene in general. By the time Anakin is placed into the Vader suit at the end of the film, horribly burned and mutilated, his friends a distant memory, his wife dead, and his children scattered, a viewer is left with the impression that he is trapped -- his personal circumstance has caught up with the underlying metaphysical reality (of his choices and deeds) as he is shut inside a machine coffin, seemingly "consumed by Darth Vader" (in the earlier words of Yoda to Obi-Wan).

Some Lucas comments from the "Chosen One" featurette originally included on the DVD for ROTS help explain his basic purpose with the PT:




Similarly, in "The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith" by J.W. Rinzler, Lucas discusses his saga on the eighth day of principal photography in July 2003, during a lengthy break in filming in the video village:


It is interesting that Anakin's first owner, the pot-bellied Watto, complains to Qui-Gon after Anakin unexpectedly wins the podrace in Episode I: "I lost everything." Indeed, there is a pronounced slavery motif at work in these films, and Anakin (in many respects, the saga's central character) seems to escape one type of enslavement only to fall straight into another. As Rinzler puts it at the end of "The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith":

 
As Lucas also says at the end of the book:


Consistent with this in-built process of upending perspectives and eliciting sympathy for Vader from a different angle (yet without Vader being a centrepiece of the entire saga at this point), a major change would enter the picture for the second draft of ROTJ, which was completed in September 1981. Now we would get more of Vader's transformation and ultimate redemption from Luke's perspective. Lucas' lofty prequel vision was swinging into view as the storyline of ROTJ became a moral fable about reconciliation and redemption. Kaminski explains:


In the earlier drafts, Vader simply charges at the Emperor at the end to stop him attacking Luke, killing the Emperor and himself in the process. His sacrifice in these earlier two drafts (the rough draft and the revised rough draft) is more abrupt, and more reminiscent (in a way) of Gollum immolating himself in "The Lord Of The Rings" when he swipes the Ring from Frodo and plunges into the fiery lava of Mount Doom below. In these earlier drafts, strengthening the resonance, the confrontation between Vader, Luke, and the Emperor takes place beneath the capital planet, Had Abbadon, deep inside the Emperor's lair, which is sat atop a river of lava, ultimately serving as their doom.

Interestingly, the abruptness of Vader's death in these earlier drafts is also similar to Ben Solo's abrupt embracing of the light at the end of Colin Trevorrow's and Derek Connolly's script "Duel Of The Fates", dating to December 2016 and leaked online in January this year (the earliest script we have available for Episode IX). Rey and Ben duel in the Force-soaked world of Mortis, and at the last moment, Ben returns the life force he has drained back into Rey (note the similarity of this moment with Ben's final moments with Rey in "The Rise Of Skywalker"). He then utters Rey's full name in apology, and a moment later dies "with a look that could be perceived as love". While Ben's death is still abrupt in TROS, his turn (occurring on the ruins of the Second Death Star) is given much more weight and emphasis in the J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio-penned film.

History repeats. Star Wars films with redemptive plot arcs evidently require their fair share of sweetening. This is how the script fragment describes Vader's last moments in the revised rough draft for ROTJ:


The Emperor actually verbalises his imminent defeat at the hands of Vader here -- perhaps a touch clunky. Interestingly, the term "netherworld" is also used by the Emperor in his last moments. This term would not be used in a finished Star Wars film until one of the last scenes in Episode III, when Yoda tells Obi-Wan that his Old Master "has returned from the netherworld of the Force" -- marking a profound "return" of a Jedi! Qui-Gon's return at the end of the PT is the gift of communion in a trilogy dominated by "communications disruptions", and a way for the Jedi to eventually gain the upperhand on the Sith after death, by retaining some influence via the Living Force (first mentioned by Qui-Gon in Episode I). 

In this draft of ROTJ, we therefore have a significant story detail that would not get any proper acknowledgement for many years. Indeed, the idea that the spirits of vanished Jedi are negatively influencing Palpatine, or powering the hero to victory against him, will only find real story expression at the end of Episode IX, when Rey defeats Palpatine by calling on the legacy of "a thousand generations" of Jedi that have passed before her. It is also notable that Anakin's fate is placed "in Yoda's hands" in this earlier draft -- Yoda, the mystery character who watches over the Skywalkers very closely, in all three trilogies. But returning to ROTJ here:

The whole Luke-Vader dynamic would be much improved in the second draft. Due to rewriting that had occurred elsewhere, a certain shockwave rippled through the new draft, resulting in a tightened emphasis on Luke having a "mission", of sorts, to save Anakin from himself and bring him back to the light. Lucas' story conferences with director Richard Marquand and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan proved fruitful on this front. These conferences occurred following the writing of the revised rough draft and took place July 13th to July 17th 1981. Lucas had a film to make, and he had to make it fast. What did his new director and returning co-writer feel should happen? Lucas would shoot down many suggestions, but was receptive to many ideas that were brought up.

It was in these conferences, for example, that Marquand raised the idea of Luke honouring his promise in TESB and returning to Dagobah and consulting with Yoda and Obi-Wan there, instead of Yoda's death happening off-screen and Luke speaking to them in visions as he does in the earlier rough drafts. With Lucas agreeing, Kasdan was able to write a scene between Luke and Obi-Wan full of exposition and revelation, and it was this scene, so charged with information, that gave birth to the dramatic shift between Luke and Vader in focus in the second draft. In effect, befitting the eventual title of the movie, Luke returns to Dagobah, in order to return to Vader -- becoming more determined and able to confront Vader as more of an equal. As Kaminski explains:


I pause to note a resonance here with Palpatine using intimate information to manipulate and turn Anakin in ROTS. In the last prequel, it is established early on that Palpatine knows about Anakin's slaughter of the Tuskens in AOTC, as well as his troubles with the Jedi Council, and even the fact that he is married. It is also heavily implied that Palpatine knows that Anakin has been struggling with visions of Padme dying in childbirth. It is sometimes argued that Palpatine implanted these visions himself. At the least, he seems to be able to read parts of Anakin's mind with the Force, having an awesome degree of hidden ability, enabling him to be sensitive (if incredibly devious) toward the fears and frustrations of others. So ROTJ can actually be read as a tussle between Luke and Palpatine, where Luke, representing the light, has grown quietly ascendent over the dark. Luke is now the one in possession of freakish intuition, and Luke is now the one pressing on and exerting a strong influence on Palpatine's apprentice. The "first" and last prequels share an intimate relationship of their own -- echoing the connection between Anakin and Luke. Kaminski continues:


It is in the second draft of ROTJ that Luke emerges as the self-actualising reformer that has made Luke such an enduring paragon of heroism for so many. In this draft, Luke is finally more of his own person, and he faces down Vader accordingly -- with authority and conviction. He believes his father can be redeemed and set right, while everyone else in the film who comments on the matter to Luke (Yoda, Obi-Wan, Leia, Vader, the Emperor) seems to hold a more fatalistic or pessimistic view. This depiction of Luke evidently agreed with Lucas quite strongly, as years later he would finally crown his completed saga with a powerful homily -- this is a story of compassion and of one generation cleaning up the mess of the former. In an interview with Gavin Edwards (not to be confused with Gareth Edwards, director of "Rogue One") for Rolling Stone in 2005, Lucas explained his saga, effectively offering the "master equation":


It had taken him three decades, but Lucas could finally take pride in his epic accomplishment. The Star Wars saga, his paean to the world, was complete, and it had a remarkably lucid core: this was all about going astray and being inspired by the next generation to find the right path.

Yet nothing comes without some degree of compromise and sacrifice. While the Star Wars saga is brought to a satisfying close in ROTJ, Luke's faith in his father seems to come somewhat from left-field. Kaminski himself highlights this questionable "fudge":


Of course, it's no saga-spoiler. The films are in any case elliptical, with time jumps and adventures and revelations and character growth happening off-screen. And if this sudden change in character feels a little abrupt in the Original Trilogy, the prequels help by suggesting that Luke's insight was pressed into his consciousness from birth -- by a forlorn (and seemingly Force-sensitive) Padme, who manages to glimpse and report on Anakin's inherent retained goodness in her last moments. This revelation of Padme's sows the seeds of Anakin's redemption, not unlike the way ROTJ sowed the seeds of the PT itself.

In the Original Trilogy, Luke just needed to remember Padme's insight, much as Luke chastises Vader about the rejection of his real name: "It is the name of your true self. You have only forgotten." In TPM, Jar Jar also admits that he has "forgotten" about being banished from the Gungan city. In AOTC, Anakin himself worries that Padme has "forgotten" him "completely". Here again, ROTJ infused the saga with deeper meaning -- a meaning that may have come about, in large part, because of the aesthetic and ontological leanings of the people that helped Lucas forge the original films.

It is interesting to note that the producer of the first two Star Wars films, Gary Kurtz, was Buddhist, along with TESB director Irvin Kershner, and Lucas' co-writer Lawrence Kasdan. Perhaps owing to their influence, Lucas would look more into Buddhism and later call himself a "Buddhist Methodist", after his daughter starting using the term at school. There is even a tinge of Buddhism in the original film, with the Jedi loosely based on Shaolin monks and the legendary samurai of China and Japan, and at two key points in the film, Obi-Wan counsels Luke to "let go" (a Buddhist precept) and to "act on instinct" (precedents for this in other Indian-Asian belief systems). A more esoteric reading can even make the Death Star into a mandala (which Luke blows up after practicing earlier in the film with a training remote).

Indeed, much of Star Wars is built on the back of the so-called hippie or counterculture and a surge in New Age thinking in the 1960s and 1970s in the Western world, the focal point of which (in the United States) was California, Lucas' home state (and the home of Lucas' film companies) -- one of the most politically liberal states in the Union. A controversial book also came out in 1975, right in the middle of when Lucas was drafting the original film: Fritjof Capra's "The Tao Of Physics". Eastern culture (or the West's interpretation of it) had become a big deal, and the book is perhaps echoed in Star Wars with Lucas fusing scientific and mystical nomenclature into one all-encompassing "Force". Yet Lucas was rather vague about the mechanics of his world in the original film. It is only in the sequels that the gravity of Lucas' cosmology intensifies.

In TESB, Yoda (whose name invokes several Indian-Asian words of interest) tells Luke he needs to "clear [his] mind" of questions, and generally instructs him in a broadly Buddhist way. There are grave undertones to Yoda's tutelage of Luke on Dagobah, centred around the premise that Luke himself is far more vulnerable to the Dark Side than he realises -- that Vader's fate could be his own. When Luke enters the cave on Dagobah, he discovers an image of himself in Vader's mask, after lashing out with negative emotions. This is the film's moment of apotheosis: an abstract "movie within a movie", and a potent portrayal of good and evil more consistent with major Oriental belief systems than Western ones.

Luke telling Vader that Anakin Skywalker is his "true self" is thus a variant on the cave scene, again owing something of a debt to Oriental philosophy. In Buddhism, for example, there is the concept of atman (self), though followers are normally encouraged to aspire to anatta (non-self) as the higher ideal. Indeed, it seems that Luke doesn't realise until the climax of his confrontation with Vader that Anakin Skywalker is also his true self -- that there is a piece of the other in the both of them. The father is the son, and the son is the father. When Luke glances at Vader's sliced-off hand and then his own mechanical hand (hidden away inside a dark glove) that Vader removed in their previous encounter, it is like long-forgotten knowledge coming back to the surface in a blinding realisation -- exemplifying ROTJ as the spiritual high-point of the series.

Furthermore, the basic idea that Vader has "forgotten" who he really is is provocative, and quite obviously lights the fuse that leads to his redemption (see how affected Vader is after this conversation with Luke when left alone with his thoughts). Finally, Star Wars had discovered, to paraphrase Obi-Wan, a "point of view" on its real subject matter: the often doleful and contradictory nature of human beings. The series now had an orientation, a perspective, a slant: a sort of beautiful mountain-peak view. The act of forgetting is no meager thing and is actually central to human affairs. In a lucid article on Jorges Luis Borges' famous short story "Funes The Memorious", appearing in a collection of short stories called "Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story", Aleksander Hemon writes:


Additionally, in a poignant illustration of how young minds are more receptive to radical ideas than older ones, and how two people can be in a room can come away with entirely different impressions, Padme's final words are mouthed to Obi-Wan, but it is Luke who takes up the cause, decades later ("There's good in him, I know there's still..."). It exemplifies Obi-Wan saying to Luke: "You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." Indeed, Obi-Wan clinging to the idea that Anakin is probably beyond saving ("He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil") could be read as a narcissistic attachment to the old ways, while Luke is free of such blinkeredness, having only walked the Jedi path years after the dissolution of the old Jedi Order and the loosening of those old ways. It is the forgetting of these old ways, and their imperfect remembrance, that is key to the revitalisation of all that has gone astray in the perfection of all that is -- or could be.

Now a few final pieces:

One thing I left off when describing the evolution of Vader in the different drafts of ROTJ, which Kaminski also explains in his chapter on the development of the film, is Vader's relationship with a snide, overbearing bureaucrat called Jerjerrod. In a very basic sense, this Jerjerrod (with the rank of Moff) is like the Jerjerrod of the movie, in that he is intended as a foil for Vader's ambitions: a middle-man, of sorts, between Vader and the Emperor. However, temperamentally, and in his power relationship over Vader, he is very unlike the Jerjerrod of the film, who is a markedly weaker figure of authority, essentially in over his head (a deleted scene in which he is ordered to turn the Death Star to fire on Endor itself makes this clearer and far more poignant -- a neat little cut of the film on YouTube, titled Jerjerrod's Conflict, is worth watching). The Jerjerrod of the earlier drafts is a man with a great deal of power who makes things difficult for Vader and bosses him around. At one point, Vader remarks, "The disgusting little bureaucrat is attempting to lay a trap for me." Vader also considers him, as the Emperor's counsel, to be "very clever and quite dangerous". However, this doesn't stop him later snapping the neck of Jerjerrod, quipping that "your importance has been greatly exaggerated". 

Arguably, ROTJ is a little impoverished with the diminution of Jerjerrod. While minimising Jerjerrod's presence in the film served to give more of the floor to Vader and Luke and the Emperor, a relatively undiluted power triangle, it resulted in the loss of an antagonism between high-ranking Imperials that it might have been interesting to see -- making ROTJ a less-than-ideal continuation of prior scenes in ANH and TESB (it is something of the odd one out). The only scene between Vader and Jerjerrod (where they speak to one another) in the finished film is the opening scene. This seems a little unsatisfying when you know that more was originally intended between the two men. Indeed, Jerjerrod is scarcely in the film beyond that opening scene, only showing up in one or two others between Vader and the Emperor as window dressing. Yet the Sequel Trilogy would end up picking up the slack here. The relationship between Kylo Ren and General Hux echoes what was intended between Vader and Jerjerrod. Kylo obviously considers Hux to be an annoyance, while Hux seems to view Kylo as a loose cannon. Of a similar age and played off against each other by Snoke, they have a strange brotherly rivalry. Eventually, Hux traitors Kylo and meets a sudden, unceremonious end, much like Jerjerrod in the earlier drafts.        

Another matter I'd like to briefly address:

In the course of writing this response, it occurred to me how much more family-oriented (in perhaps both an internal and external sense) the saga became in ROTJ. While combing the chapter in "The Secret History Of Star Wars" for quotes, attempting to pin down certain quotes with certain words, I noticed I had consecutively inputted the terms "sister", "brother", and "mother" respectively. Add the terms "father", "son", and "daughter" to the mixture, and it's clear that one is describing the basic building blocks of a family drama; or in Lucas' words to Charlie Rose in 2015, a soap opera:



Speaking about the original film, hinting at how the movies would gradually unfold:


Speaking about the saga as a wider whole, with all the themes and character relationships in the first two trilogies nailed into place:


Revisiting Lucas' reframing concept from earlier, his interview by Gavin Edwards for Rolling Stone in 2005, ten years before the Charlie Rose interview, found him emphasising much the same thing:


Indeed, all these characters are embedded in a construct repeatedly termed a "saga" -- a word that points in the direction of a story intimately concerned with the exploits of families, lineage, and myths and legends:


It is interesting to note that the weight of Star Wars being a "soap opera" first starts to become apparent in TESB, which opens on Hoth, which was filmed in Norway. When ice and snow are introduced into your story, against hot desert sand and impersonal Death Star constructs, then I guess you begin to have yourself a real saga -- something rough, something fierce, something incurably beautiful and pristine. No wonder some people think TESB is pure as the driven snow. Star Wars has suggestive effects. It is the ultimate Jedi Master performing the ultimate Mind Trick.

But where does ROTJ sit in the Star Wars pantheon?

I think it is worth noting the sort of Star Wars movie that Richard Marquand, the film's director, felt he was making in "Return Of The Jedi", and giving him the chance to speak. In a rare, previously-unpublished interview conducted in 1984 and only unearthed in 2013, which coincided with the release of J.W. Rinzler's epic "Making Of" book on the film, Jules-Pierre Malarte sat with Marquand and captured his unique perspective:


A user comment that used to exist on the same page also captured the intense gravity and focus of the film -- I saved it because I was immediately struck by it when I first read the page, so here it is:


It is interesting to ponder what people would have made of the film, and what would have become of the Star Wars franchise, if one of those earlier drafts had been used, before the story conference with Richard Marquand and Lawrence Kasdan took place in July 1981. Lucas clearly saw that his ideas were in need of refining, and it was only in the second draft, written after this conference took place, that the focus shifted to Luke and his personal goal of turning Vader back to the good side. In effect, the last Star Wars film of the Original Trilogy, and Lucas' Star Wars saga entire, had finally found their raison dêtre.

Lastly:


I appreciate it, too. All of Star Wars is ridiculous and all of it matters.

More ROTJ bashing this time from TV Tropes
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DethroningMoment/StarWars

That's right. His character name is Major Marquand.

Reading Richard Marquand's Wikipedia page, I see the second film he directed was called "Birth Of The Beatles" -- and yes, it was about that quirky quartet, though it was a dramatisation of their early years and hence they were played by actors.

That would therefore make Richard Marquand the second big Star Wars name in the Original Trilogy to come from a Beatles film project (the first being DP Gilbert Taylor, the DP on the original movie, who was also the DP on "A Hard Day's Night").

JJ himself has made a couple of analogies to The Beatles.

In 2011, he paid tribute to American makeup artist Dick Smith:


In 2015, he compared the brilliance of the original film to The Beatles:


(Looks at the name of this message board).

What the...?!

(Best Plinkett voice)

Get these Beatles out of my Staaaaarrr Waaaars!   

jppiper :

I'll get to your thing in a bit. More bashing? Oh, my...