The Batlord

And none of them are as good as the Thrawn Trilogy or the X-Wing series. You are straight up wasting your time filling up your head with the JJ Abrams movies when you could be reading Vector Prime or at least getting a laugh out of the sheer terribleness of The Crystal Star.

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Trollheart

Maybe, and if this were my only journal I might think about it, but a book takes a lot longer to read and process than a movie does to watch. Anyway, the idea is to see how the, let's say, screen has dealt with the franchise, so no, it will be movies and TV series only. There's more than enough there. Let's see. Good or bad we have

11 movies (3 of which I've seen and know well, so let's say
8
then
7 seasons of animated shows totally 312 episodes
7 seasons of animated "micro-shows"? with another 160 episodes
2 seasons of The Mandolin I mean Mandalorian with 16 episodes
2 season of The Book of Boba Fett with 7 episodes
and
Obi-Wan, just started, 4 episodes at time of writing

Total 8 movies plus almost 500 episodes

If that's not enough work to be getting on with you need to rethink your idea of work!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

Don't hold your breath. He won't even review all the Simpsons episodes

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Trollheart

I would if you would share the secret of immortality you've found. Very selfish. Where is that fountain of youth, anyway?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

I would but right now I'm busy saying bad things about Millard Fillmore

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The Batlord

Bro just give Heir to the Empire a chapter or two and see if you're into it.

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music_collector

I find myself going back to the animated series of late. Rebels and Clone Wars were well done. The story telling was great. Bad Batch was also very well done.

I like what they're doing with the newer series.

Trollheart

II: Old Friends and Family Reunions

The second movie showed us Luke growing up. Yes, you can say that he had to grow up real fast once those Stormtroopers came calling, and reduced his aunt and uncle to a Kentucky Fried consistency, but really, throughout Star Wars he’s a wide-eyed kid, taking his first steps in the great big galaxy, hero-worshipping Han Solo, falling in love with Leia (oh dear; we all know where that leads, don’t we?) and taking on the bad guys. By the end of the movie he’s the hero and all is well with the world. To some extent, Star Wars could be taken as a self-contained movie, and can be, if you wish, viewed as one. Local kid finds himself in space, takes on the empire, beats them and blows up their big bad space station, wins the girl. Although of course, not actually. But as a standalone movie, hell, it works.

But then of course, while Star Wars is not about reality, it’s not total fantasy either, and while the Death Star may be destroyed, it can, somewhat like a popular space astronaut in the same decade, be rebuilt, though probably for a lot more than six million dollars. So the menace is back: somewhat like Jason or Michael Myers or Trump, or any bad guy you can think of who just won’t stay dead, the Death Star (minus Governor Tarkin, last seen stroking his chin in classic evil genius pose before it all went spectacularly tits-up) is back, and so - sigh! - the rebels have to go through it all again. But that’s for the third movie, which we’ll come to. For now, it’s more a case of hit-and-run, as the rebels leg it from their latest base, Yavin having proven too hot to go back to, and the Empire, poor sportsmen that they are, in full pursuit.

Look, I don’t know about you, but the one glaring (pun very much intended) memory I have of The Empire Strikes Back is this: “Oh my fucking EYES! Why is everything so WHITE?” Well, of course it was all white because the rebels chose an ice world, for some reason, on which to set up shop, perhaps in the belief that Vader would never think of looking there. I mean, all that white would surely clash with his tasteful black armour, no? Well, no: fashion faux pas aside, the Dark Lord of the Sith certainly did go after them, and rather downbeat in a way, the rebels are defeated and must beat a hasty retreat from Hathor.

But the white!

For surely about twenty minutes of the movie (which to me seemed an hour) your eyes are assaulted by glaring, blinding white - snow is everywhere. Ice is everywhere. Fucking white stormtroopers are everywhere. It cuts the eyes out of you - or at least, it did me: like staring too long at the sun, my eyes were forced to squint. And then, when, mercifully for me, the rebels are routed, the sudden contrast of pure black in deep space is so jarring that I could still see the bright white surface of Hathor superimposed on space for a while. It did a lot to ruin the opening sections of the movie. For me, anyway.

But while a lot of people laud TESB, personally I have some issues with it, not least the annoying glare. It takes itself a little too seriously. We get mysticism, self-exploration, almost a vision quest for Luke, and the action divides between he and R2D2, as they head to Dagobah to find Yoda, and the rest of them, who end up with their heads (and bodies) in the clouds, in the lazily-named Cloud City. Look, there’s no doubting the two sections of the movie dovetail quite beautifully at the end, and that next-to-last scene, after Luke falls into the chute and improbably ends up holding onto an upside-down flagpole (what’s it there for? Who’s going to bother risking their lives, or flying up there, to run up a flag that’s the wrong way around?) and is saved just as he falls by the Millennium Falcon, is a thing of beauty.

And who can fault the confrontation between Luke and Vader, with the - at the time - galaxy-shaking revelation of their relationship? This was originally in an era when something like the internet wasn’t even thought of, much less in use, and so there really was no way for the secret to leak, so I doubt anyone really knew what was going to be revealed, and I think we were all gobsmacked. The scene of course gave us a future pop culture reference: "[insert name here] I am your father!” Right. And the fight between the two of them? As the skinny jerk who always argues with the big tub of lard once said, mmm! Classic movie history.

But does the movie itself try to do too much? Star Wars had a lot of moving parts, but they were all moving in the one direction: a final (we thought) confrontation with the Death Star and Darth Vader, and the realisation of the destiny of a young boy who was to become a Jedi knight. This one? I don’t know. There are subplots - there’s Han being frozen, Lando betraying them for some reason (money I guess) and Luke, um, fighting himself in a cave. A bit existential for the kids, which is why I think Lucas had figured out by now that his movie was appealing more to adults than kids, so he could go a bit more cerebral with it.

Empire does make some telling observations: it ain’t necessarily over when the fat lady sings (or in this case, the fat space station blows), enemies don’t give up as long as they’re live enemies, and sometimes, splitting up is not the best idea. I personally could live without all the bullshit Jedi training in the swamp - all it was missing was a montage and an eighties AOR affirmation tune such as Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” or Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” - and I may be in the minority here, but my Star Wars world could stand without Yoda in it. Don’t like the little guy, and other than playing the role of sensei to Luke, what does the little fucker do? Yes, he has a lightsaber fight in I think Attack of the Clones, but (so far) that’s been about it. Damn muppet. Literally.

But of course this was three years later, everyone was salivating for the follow-up movie, and the box office returns proved there was an appetite for more Star Wars, with Empire making back almost twenty times its already considerable budget, pushing the revenues to almost half a billion dollars. Not bad for 1980! It’s a far cry, though, from the original, which made over seventy times its much smaller budget, but a lot better than its successor, which only managed a paltry tenfold return on a budget that was very similar to Empire. Hmm. Is it possible that by the time the original trilogy wrapped, people had had enough of Star Wars? Well, there was a gap of sixteen years between Return of the Jedi and the first of the “prequel” trilogy, The Phantom Menace, so you know, maybe. By now, perhaps other science fiction movies had picked up the baton and run with it, and left the original far behind.

This wouldn’t of course stop it becoming one of the biggest and most profitable and well-known franchises in film history, and there can hardly be a kid or adult alive now who had not a figure, bedspread, poster, toy lightsaber, model Millennium Falcon or some merchandise from the movies. It’s as ingrained in the human consciousness now, and as much a part of human culture and history as, well, as James Bond, or The Magnificent Seven, or any movies you care to name. It may have been, today, a long long time ago but it is never going to go far, far away again.

Another interesting thing about Empire is the reduced role in it for Leia. Well, I say reduced: she didn’t exactly have a lot to do in Star Wars, beyond stand with a blaster in her hand and proclaim she was not just a damsel in distress, while unable to avoid the very clear fact that that is exactly what she was. After an initial snarl at her would-be rescuers, she pretty much fades into the background of Star Wars, until she’s there smiling at her heroes as they’re awarded their medals for being Really Great Heroes (sorry we never had any Really Great Heroine medals made; just didn’t seem any point and it would have cost extra, besides, what did you do, Your Highness?). I mean, let’s be fair here: Lucas does not exactly fly the flag for women in the, um, past (when is this set? Does anyone know? Does he?) - well, in space then. It’s pretty much lipservice when we meet Leia, but she’s more or less pushed into a corner and told to stand there and look pretty for the majority of the movie.

And in Empire. Well. Can anyone remember what she does? I mean, I know she goes with Han and Chewy to Cloud City, I know she sees Han encased in Carbonite (we always thought he was cool enough, to be honest) but, you know, what does she do? Not a lot. And the next movie is no kinder to her. So really, when it gets down to it, Star Wars - at least, the first and original trilogy - is really a boys’ adventure tale, with some girl tagging along and getting in the way, having to be rescued - twice - and just, well, being a girl in the end. Damn women. Also, as was caustically pointed out in Family Guy, she is, if not the only woman in the galaxy, one of a very few. I can’t remember any others, apart from the smoking skeleton of Aunt Baru, and let’s face it, there’s not much sex appeal or girl power in a charred pile of bones, is there? I can only assume later movies addressed this, but for a period from 1977 to 1983, women are pretty much conspicuous by their absence, other than Leia. And in the third movie she’s in chains. I mean, how much more pointed could the irony be?

You definitely have to give Empire continuity points though. Whereas, as I said, Star Wars could be watched as a one-shot deal, you certainly could not do that with Empire. Possibly the first movie, certainly the first science fiction movie to end on a cliffhanger, or at the very least with loose ends trailing from the fleet like the tendrils of a jellyfish as the movie ends, you couldn’t help but want to see what happens next. So the scene is set for the third and final movie in the trilogy, and the wrapping up of the story.

Like I said in the previous entry, Star Wars was the first science fiction movie to showcase robots as other than just machines that did work and nothing else, or as comic relief. Certainly, the relationship between R2D2 and C3PO, skillfully handled by both actors and the writer, in a way that should not have been possible (one of them only emits indecipherable beeps, for god’s sake! How did we come to love him?) is something of an Odd Couple/Laurel and Hardy deal, mostly thanks to Anthony Daniels’ fussy, English-butler-style manner (something Family Guy called, unkindly but hilariously accurately, the gay robots of Star Wars) that makes us laugh and grow to love them. But it’s more than that.

They’re agents of the plot. It’s the message recorded on R2 that alerts Luke, a farmboy dreaming of adventure in space, to the presence both of the “beautiful” (I’ll agree to disagree with you there, young Skywalker!) Princess Leia and the mysterious Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom he knows only as Ben. Without these droids (these are the droids you’re looking for) the story would not exist. As it proceeds, through three movies, R2 and Threepio are an integral part of it, and it really would not be the same without them. When the stupid little metal barrel gets damaged in one of the fights while in Luke’s X-Wing, we worry for him, and Luke himself shows his affection for the tub of circuits when, offered a replacement for the “beat-up R2 unit”, he refuses, saying he and this one have been through a lot.

Even the word we now use often for robots, “droids”, comes from Star Wars, where Lucas clearly wanted them to be thought of as more than just machines or automatons, and robots would not cut it. But to be fair, and annoyingly so, they’re not. At least, R2 is not. Droid being short for android of course, this refers to a robot with a humanoid appearance, such as Data in Star Trek, or Kryten in Red Dwarf. Nobody could say R2D2 looks human. But that’s beside the point: for Lucas, droids referred to any robot, and so it was written into science fiction lore.

One character I have never had time for - with respect to the late Peter Mayhew, and no slight meant on his acting - is Chewbacca. Other than roar and look threatening, what is his role in the movies? Is there a single scene, other than maybe the one where he’s playing chess with R2D2, from which he could be removed and that scene suffer, or not work? I find him totally superfluous, and I get that Lucas wanted an alien co-pilot and friend for Han Solo, but I nevr thought they explored the relationship between the two in enough, or even any, detail for me to warm to the Wookie. We never even found out how the two got together (though maybe the later film, Solo, covers that?) and to me, he was, to quote an annoyed Leia in the first movie, a big walking carpet, who did nothing and contributed nothing to the movies. Any of them. And yet the fucker got a medal! Well, I guess he did fight alongside them. And who’s going to tell a seven-foot Wookie he can’t have a medal? But as a character, for me, just did not work. Definitely my least favourite. Until the horrific advent of Jar-Jar Binks, of course.

In fact, when you think about it, over three movies (which should be enough time for anyone to write a decent backstory) we get hardly any character development. Yes, Luke learns what it is to be a Jedi - sort of - and Han realises there’s more to life than money - maybe - but if you look at the characters in Star Wars and compare them to those in Return of the Jedi there’s not a lot of difference. You can recognise them as the same people, and even though they’ve been through adventures together, suffered and triumphed together, and blown up the Death Star together (twice!) there’s really no massive change that I can see. So you kind of have to ask yourself, what did they learn?

But more to the point, what did we learn? Taking, of course, only the first three movies as our base, what are we told about Han Solo? Leia? The droids even? Vader? Kenobi? Surely somewhere along the way there would have been time for someone to at least hint at their life story? Why did Solo become a space pirate? What planet does he, or did he, call home? What about Leia’s family? Does she even mourn them, other than one short scene after Alderaan does a very good impersonation of a bunch of floating cinders? And how does the daughter of the emperor’s chief enforcer end up living the high life with a royal family that hates his guts on another planet?

So many questions, and maybe some are answered in the later movies, but that’s beside the point. If the first trilogy had been all we ever heard of the franchise, if the prequel movies had not been made, we would be in the dark about these characters we have come to love, seeing them only as the barest sketches of the people they are. Even so, it appears that’s where they’re left, for at least thirty years, as the next movies go back even a longer, longer time ago, to tell us the prehistory of some of the other characters, and Luke, Leia and Han appear to have been forgotten about, done with.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

It''s been a long time ago and I've been far away (shut up) so let's wrap this movie up and get on to the third.

Okay then: got your sunglasses? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you - we’re going in!

Although there’s not a space battle going on, this is still the second of the movies to open with a shot of space, downward camera to show an imperial star destroyer, albeit coming towards the camera instead of going away from it, but really: couldn’t Lucas come up with a different opening? And is there some irony in a world that is covered in ice being called Hoth? Well we’re into action straight away as Luke is the main course for some version of the abominable snowman and Han decides to make that exit he had delayed to help wipe out the Death Star, but as usual there’s something stopping him. I mean, it’s one thing or another isn’t it? Either a megalomaniac is threatening to destroy the Alliance, someone has encased him in carbonite or Luke has gone missing. How’s a guy expected to go pay his debts and get that price off his head?

Good to see there’s realism in the fact that Leia and Han have not just settled down to raise little space pirates; she’s pissed at him for leaving and he’s pissed at her for refusing to acknowledge her feelings for him. Hey, what is it with Lucas and severed arms? Vader loses one, Luke loses one, the guy in the cantina, now the abominable snowman. Even C3PO lost one of his. Is it some sort of fetish of his? Does nobody cut off legs or heads anymore? And now it’s time for Alec to earn his wages by putting in another ghostly appearance. I swear, agents: once they have you on contract… I find this one a little more visceral than the previous, perhaps proof that Lucas believed his movies were appealing more to adults than kids. The cutting open of the belly of the beast Luke was riding and his being put inside it is, well, yuck. Interesting how Han has been demoted from general back to captain. Maybe that’s because he’s now about to leave, and his Alliance rank only applies while he’s under their command?

Well it’s time to evacuate once more. Must suck to be a kid of one of these rebels, always moving, always on the run, never a chance to settle down. Ah, the life of a rebel scum huh? Those new uniforms the stormtroopers have for snow work are damned scary: make them look just like members of the KKK! Well I see one woman operating a communications console in the rebel base - typical! Only work available for the girls is to answer the phone! - but so far I don’t believe I’ve seen one single female in the entire imperial army! Not one! What is this? A boys only club? Suppose it saves on those specially-made breastplates...

This is the first time we see the ground assault troops, with walkers and AT-ATs, which kind of helps to underline how damned powerful the empire is. It also makes a clear distinction between the men (and occasional woman) of the Alliance and the machines of the empire. A trip through an asteroid field provides more scope for the many video and computer games that were to follow, but there’s time for a little humour when they accidentally land on a living organism, taking it for an asteroid. Meanwhile it’s time to slow everything down and bore everyone with the unwanted introduction of a muppet. Damn Yoda. This is a little like the later scene with the Architect in one of the Matrix movies - was it the third one? Interestingly though, there are parallels between the two scenes, the big monster in the swamp with Luke and R2D2 and the strange monster in the asteroid with Han, Leia, C3PO and Chewie.

Looks like this is the first time we see the emperor, the guy who runs things, and the only person who has any sort of command or control over Vader. A third mention of “I have a bad feeling about this”, coming from Leia this time, so now all we need is Luke to say it and we have every character - who can speak or at least whose speech can be understood - having voiced that opinion. Meanwhile, back at the swamp it’s gone all existential, as Luke seems to battle Vader but finds it’s himself he’s fighting, a foreshadowing, did we but know it at the time, of the relationship between the two.

Time to bring on the one black man in the Star Wars universe. Of course, being a black man he’s immediately “where the white women at?” And not to be trusted. That’s established pretty quickly, when he hands the heroes over to Vader. No choice, my ass. Time for Han to experience the big freeze. Quite surprising how Lando expected Vader to keep his word, after all, what leverage has the guy got? Now that the Dark Lord has what he wants, what’s to stop him destroying Cloud City if he wants to? Idiot. And now, the classic, iconic confrontation between Vader and Luke, and the revelation to shake all revelations since, well, maybe the end of Planet of the Apes. Ah, the world before the internet, huh?

So then we have the classic split as the heroes undertake two missions, and the first time, as I say, at least in my experience, when a movie ends, not only on an almost literal cliffhanger, but continues into the next one. This would of course become standard for this genre, and others, as time went on, but TESB set the precedent, and after this all the other movie writers could do was follow the trail Lucas blazed across the galaxy and through motion picture and science fiction history.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

III: If at First You, um, Succeed, Try, Try Again

Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi

As I noted or at least alluded to earlier, there’s one serious problem I have with what was, at the time, the final movie, and which, even now, with six others in the can, still stands as the end point and conclusion of the entire, now fifty-year story. The problem is that it’s almost unnecessary. Return of the Jedi is indeed a return, in so many ways. It’s the return of the bloody Death Star (didn’t we blow that thing up already?), the return of Darth Vader, last seen watching Luke fall to apparently his death, minus one hand, and no doubt thinking “****ing ungrateful kid! I offer him the galaxy and what do I get?” and even the return of the bloody victory parade and awards ceremony! It’s really hard not to see it as being a copied, slightly tweaked (and I mean slightly) version of the first movie, and to be fair, after waiting six years for the “final part”, I think we had a right to expect something better than a rehash of the first one. But that’s what we got.

This would, of course, be the final movie to feature the full original cast. To my knowledge, the only one to go on and have a part in the later movies would be Han Solo (I think played by Harrison Ford, but we’ll see; I haven’t even seen the “third” prequel movies once) with our hero Luke Skywalker, his sister, the two droids and indeed Darth Vader (as we knew him) all written out. This is of course due to the fact that Lucas goes back in time, so if the first trilogy was set “a long time ago” then the other six take place in a time even further back, all of which we’ll come to. But the point I’m making here is that the characters we had grown up on and come to love and even identify with (yes, even you, Vader, one of the truly great evil characters of science fiction, or indeed of any drama) bow out in The Return of the Jedi, and for me, they kind of make a bit of a balls of it.

Not that that’s their fault, neither actors nor characters. That’s all down to George, and why he couldn’t have made the effort to end the series better is a question I guess we’ll never have the answer to. My own belief is that, having scored big with the first two movies, he sort of took his foot off the pedal and cruised through to the end with a final movie that, in my opinion anyway, far from deserves its reputation and disappointed me as a conclusion to the story.

But before I get too down on this movie (really, Trollheart?) let’s be fair here: there is a lot to love about it. The daring rescue of Han from Jabba the Hut - the appearance of, and rather quick disappearance from existence of said Hut, who up to now has just been mentioned as a kind of shadowy underworld crime boss figure (given his size it’s quite a considerable shadow he casts, too!), Luke’s final face-off with his father and the surprising turnaround which almost saves the soul of Anakin Skywalker (oh come on now! You already know: how is that a spoiler?) and does for the Emperor, the death of Yoda (with much cheering, at least from me) and the reappearance, if only as a ghost, of Obi-Wan, to say nothing of confirmation of the relationship not only between Luke and Darth Vader but between him and Leia, and of course the return of everyone’s cocky hero, Han Solo. Oh, and Chewbacca is in there too somewhere, but who cares?

It would be grossly unfair to say the movie is a copy of the first one (hey wait a minute, TH! That’s literally what you said a moment ago! - don’t you have somewhere else to be, pal?) though it does reuse and recycle a lot of plot elements; after all, it would not get away with just being a clone (sorry) now would it? But I just wish there had been, for instance, a new threat rather than the tired old Death Star being hauled out of retirement and, rather like the bowl of petunias in Douglas Adams’ The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy groaning, “Not again!” or even, hell, a different end scene! And don’t even get me started on ****ing Ewoks, the chilling first tendrils of merchandising directed at the really young market touching the franchise, fingers which would soon be all over the next movies, with characters that could only be explained by saying they had been created in order to sell toys, and not the other way around.

Let’s also nod to the brothers of the galaxy while we’re at it. Two of them. Two. Or, if you only count the first three movies, one. One. A single black man. Talk about your Token Black, huh? One thing Lucas certainly did not have a handle on, at least in the 1980s, was the idea of inclusion, affirmative action, or just the simple premise that the galaxy would not be run, exclusively populated and staffed by white people! We’ve already noted his male-dominated universe, but it seems white male privilege is at a premium, or was, a long time ago and far, far away. I don’t know if this led to any sort of boycott of, or disinterest in the movies by an African-American audience. I guess probably not. Our soul brothers and sisters were already used to being overlooked at this point, unless for comedy effect or in the case of giants such as Poitier, Pryor or James Earl Jones, chosen simply due to the weight of their fame, and luckily later in the 1980s and further on we would get bigger stars such as Washington, Smith and Elba coming up, as well as - finally - some female ones, but in the bleak early eighties there wasn’t much room for - some would say call for - black actors, and whether this figured into Lucas’s idea when casting the first trilogy or whether it simply didn’t cross his mind that there would be “black people in space”, all three - indeed, all six that I’ve seen - movies suffer very heavily from a white imbalance.

I suppose you can give this film some small credit for having a few more women in it, though in fairness we’re talking about exotic dances and slaves/hookers here, so not exactly breaking the glass ceiling and not quite the strong intelligent type of woman, in fact really, featuring the kind of women we get to see fawning over, performing and dancing for a big fat sweating mound of blubbery flesh is pretty much only reinforcing the stereotype of female character that even by the late 1970s was beginning to be cliched and phased out in favour of stronger, more serious ones.
[img]https://images.bauerhosting.com/legacy/empire-
More, I guess, on that later, but for now let’s also look at the somewhat unsung heroes of the first three movies, the droids. Of course, you can’t have an ancestor if you’re a walking hunk of metal, but it’s kind of sad to see there was no room for C3Po and his beeping friend in the prequel movies. After all, they could have been built decades, even centuries ago (is there such a thing as planned obsolescence in Lucas’s world? How long is the warranty on a translator droid anyway?) so it might have been a nice link had they been in the other movies. Hey, maybe they are: as I say, I’ve seen - suffered through, let’s be honest here - the first, or rather, second three (parts I - III) only the once (and never had the desire to repeat the experience) and the final three I have not seen at all, so perhaps, as usual, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Might be as well to hold onto that thought till I at least re-watch the second three and get my first taste of the third.

I hope they are in at least some of them though, because since droids don’t really age (remember Marvin the Paranoid Android? “The first ten thousand years was the worst. And the second. The third ten thousand years I didn’t enjoy at all. After that, I went into something of a decline.” ) there’s scope for them to have been in the service of, oh, maybe Obi-Wan Kenobi or even a young Anakin Skywalker at some point. Would they, then, remember their old master when they were sold to his son, I wonder? Might be awkward. Oh yes, sir! You’re the one whose father became the Dark Lord Vader, and is a Master of the Sith. Sorry, sir: have I said something wrong?

Okay but seriously, is this not taking it a little far? The opening scene is almost identical to that of (sigh, all right then if you insist) A New Hope. We see the by-now-familiar words scroll up in yellow letters, then the camera angles downward, this time to the still-under-construction Death Star II: The Next Generation, and then that star destroyer does its pass over the screen. Admittedly, this time it’s not chasing a rebel ship but dropping off Lord Vader for some much needed r&R (no, not rock and roll - rest and recuperation) or at best a surprise inspection of the new deadly battle station. Anyway, as I may have mentioned, ROTJ becomes the first science fiction movie, possibly even the first movie of any kind to follow directly on from its previous incarnation, becoming in effect part two of a two-part movie. In many ways similar to the original four-movie arc that wound through the second, third and fourth Star Trek movies, ROTJ and TESB can almost be viewed as one long film, as to some extent can ANH, but as I already noted, that can be viewed as a standalone movie, whereas these two very much depend on each other.

The rescue of Han Solo is handled well, and it’s good to see Luke has really been practicing those Jedi moves, though again Chewbacca is there pretty much as bait, while Leia forms a sort of bait herself, enabling her brother to come in and rescue them all. I have to wonder (and I cant’ remember; I’m watching it as I write) if the “rescue” was all planned to fall apart so that Luke could get into Jabba’s palace? I mean, if not, it was a pretty poor one, wasn’t it? How did they think they would get away with it? Yeah, has to have been a kind of false flag operation to open the door to the Skywalker kid, no other explanation. Man, I hated that little alien dog thing Jabba had, the one that kept laughing like a hyena. Hey! The big monster in the pit is called a rancor! No, I’m going to do it, just watch me - so if he’s out one day, is the cave without rancor? Sorry, sorry. I do think the idea of one of Jabba’s henchmen crying over the death of his pet is a bit silly. I mean, humanise monsters all you want, but what’s wrong with a dog, cat or a budgie?

There is a touching scene when Solo and Chewbacca are reunited, though I’d have to say the way the Wookie paws him it looks more like he considers Han to be his pet than his friend. Here’s a point though: if Luke is such a powerful Jedi Knight, why did he have to hurl a rock at the control to close down the big portcullis on the rancor? Why couldn’t he just have used - oh, what is it again? That force that binds all living - oh yeah: the Force. Why couldn’t he just have willed it closed? Some Jedi master. I will say, it’s good to see Tattooine again, and those Banthas. Haven’t seen any Sandpeople yet. Hey at least Leia gets to act out the fantasy of every poor girl enslaved and/or abused by a scumbag. Choke on that, pal!

Kind of hard to imagine though that Luke had, as he says “taken care of everything”. How could he know exactly how things would turn out? Does the Force allow you to see the future? And what’s with the Sallac? Luke lived on this planet and never mentioned a huge alien venus flytrap thing that lives in the desert! Look, I’m sorry: I know it’s meant to be moving, but the death of Yoda does nothing for me. Never liked him, never will. Hey, is this the first appearance of the emperor? I think it is. So now I guess that thing in the cave, where Luke was fighting himself, makes some sense: he has to face his father, as well as the dark side of him, in a battle that will decide once and for all yadda yadda yadda right I get it now. And they even recreate the swinging-across-on-a-rope scene from the first movie. Sigh.

Oh look! Another woman! And this time she’s not dancing around in a skimpy costume. Well, I guess they might frown on that sort of thing over at Rebel HQ. Yeah, for once - and perhaps the only time so far, with the exception of one princess who’s lost her planet - it’s a woman in charge. She’s telling the boys what to do. Ah but she doesn’t last long. I think this may in fact be her only scene. Oh, and if you’re going up against the might of the Imperial fleet, it’s always been my strategy to follow a fish. Step forward, Admiral “It’s a trap!” Ackbar. Can I get an Allah stuck onto the front of that? No? All right then: just an idea.

Here’s a question though: last time we saw them, Lando Calrissian had sold out Han Solo in Cloud City to Jabba. Now, without, so far as I can see, much of an explanation, they’re the best of pals again. As they used to say in the seventies probably, what gives, daddy-o? Speaking of that, what’s with Vader suddenly going all medieval? “What is thy bidding O Master?” Huh? Surprised Palpatine doesn’t turn around and say “what the f**k you talking like an extra out of Game of Thrones for? Not that I would know what that is, as it hasn’t yet been televised, but seriously dude, what the f**k?” Think Lucas got a little carried away there!

The landspeeder/hover bike thingy chase through the forest is pretty cool (though you’d seriously have to ask yourself where Leia learned to ride like that; surely her daddy the king of Alderaan wouldn’t have allowed his precious little girl to have one of those dangerous things?) but you can again see the idea of marketing this to the video game market. This, again, something new: Star Wars was probably the first movie, never mind science fiction one, to spawn a whole slew of merchandise beyond the standard lunch boxes, posters, figurines and comics. I’d be willing to bet my completely inconsiderable salary that this was the first time a computer or video game was derived from a movie. Now, it’s common practice, but back in the seventies and eighties, not so much. Mind you, that might have been because there were still hardly any personal computers, but even in video arcades you had the standard Space Invaders, Frogger and Pac-Man, but I doubt there was one game based on any movie before this franchise came along.

Of course, after all that fast-paced excitement there had to be a comedown, and it arrives in the form of the thrice-damned Ewoks, which for me means that halfway through the movie it’s time to go to the lobby unless you fancy watching ****ing teddy bears down in the woods today (and are you gonna get a big surprise!). Clearly put in not only for the kids but to test the characters out for their own (sigh) short-lived (hooray) series of mini-movies, you’d also have to say that they’re a pretty racist creation. I mean, does nobody draw a parallel between those Ewoks (all dark-skinned, you’ll notice) carrying their captives on poles to their native village? Really? Nobody? Clear as day to me. Oh, and they just happen to elect the big golden robot (a figure of white authoritarianism if there ever was one) as their, um, god. Right.

I see Chewie proves his worth again by getting them all trapped in a net because he’s, as Han says, thinking with his stomach. I like it when Luke says “Han, can you reach my lightsaber?” I keep hearing “Uh, Han? That’s not my lightsaber!” Time for Luke and Leia to share an awkward moment when he tells her who she is, and more to the point, what her relationship to him is. Come to think of it, how did she become a princess of Alderaan? Was she fostered out? Who ever heard of a foster princess? Aren’t they usually all anal about bloodlines and lines of succession? And is Leia really going to be the first female Jedi? Did that storyline ever go anywhere?

Well, to be fair, Leia does have a lot more to do in this last movie than she did almost in the other two combined. Once she gets out of those chains of course. Bit more of an action heroine this time around. It’s interesting how Luke approaches the emperor in black, just like his father. And indeed Palpatine himself. It might have been too much of a cliche for him to have been in white, but is it a case of his being susceptible to the Dark Side if he doesn’t watch it, that he’s not such a goody two-shoes? Okay, so Chewie is some help after all, commandeering the walker, give him that. Nice to see a reversal too of the last words Han and Leia originally spoke, with him saying “I love you” and she replying “I know.” A reversal too for Luke and Vader, as the son pays the father back for taking his hand. You know, an eye for an eye, a hand for a hand?

The climactic fight between Luke and Vader lives up to its promise, and to give him credit, Lucas does a very good job turning what has become one of the all-time movie bad guys into a sympathetic figure at the end, no easy task. I do wonder though how Vader managed to carry the emperor and throw him down into the shaft when he was missing a hand? Hah: bet Palpatine hadn’t foreseen that! The usage of the same theme for Luke’s solo (sorry) vigil at Vader’s Viking-style funeral as when he first watched the twin suns of Tattooine set and dreamed of glory and adventure is a really nice bookend, though if I can sound a note of cynicism here, the funeral pyre could also symbolise the death of the franchise. With the passing of Vader, even though they’ll go back into his history, I think the series lost its main anchor, and remembering that the next six films would be Luke-less, I think in many ways you could say this was the end of an era.

And maybe they should have left it at that. What am I saying? If there’s money to be made, there’ll be sequels. Just look at Speed 2. Or rather, don’t. This idea would then lead to another six movies which, let’s be honest, I really doubt anyone needed. I did enjoy Revenge of the Sith but the other two I distinctly remember as blowing big time, and as I say the final three I did not bother with. For me, and I think for a lot of people, this trilogy was almost perfect: a beginning, middle and end. But we all know how Hollywood works, and in fairness to Lucas it would be another twenty years almost before he would unleash the first of the six prequels upon us. Personally though I’ve always regarded these as the “core” movies, and had little time for the ones that followed.

Nevertheless, they did follow, and so must we. Therefore, in the next instalment, we take you even further back in time, an even longer time ago, but still the same distance away, to a time before empire, and back to the Old Republic.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018