Has anyone else noticed a certain trend ...

Rating: 8/10 (9 September 1999)

`Star Wars' ended with Luke Skywalker's assault on the Death Star. We followed Luke and Luke alone. `The Empire Strikes Back' split the action at the end into two streams: we saw Leia and Han fighting for their freedom, and Luke Skywalker confronting Vader. `Return of the Jedi' split things three ways: Endor, Death Star, rebel fleet. And what do you know, `The Phantom Menace' divides the final action into FOUR streams. If this trend continues things will start to get silly. They already have.
It's tempting to view `Return of the Jedi' as a sour omen of things to come. Lucas hired Richard `"whatever you say, George"' Marquand to direct his third Star Wars movie, which accounts for the general sluggishness. He threw in pointlessly cuddly Ewoks. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher abandon the more adult romance of the previous film in order to play unconvincing second fiddles to all these furry things. While John Williams's score retains its power, his source music is pretty weak. Compared to the first two movies the dialogue is bland. (It would get much blander come 1999.) The story is an unimaginative re-hash of earlier work, except for Lucas's idea that bigger is better. If the rebels have to do THREE things at once to travel INSIDE the EVEN BIGGER, DEADLIER Death Star with MORE SHIPS THAN EVER BEFORE in order to achieve an EVEN GREATER victory, it will surely make things more exciting - right? Whatever you say, George.
Special effects are particularly disappointing. They're actually weaker than in the first two movies, with unbelievable - and I mean, literally unbelievable - muppets strewn all over the landscape. (The blue vinyl elephant thing in Jabba's court gets my vote for most ridiculous alien.) Oddly enough the digital adjustments of 1997 only made matters worse. The computer-generated pop singer Lucas created looks every bit as fake as that stupid animal with the big lips it replaced - it merely looks fake in a different way; and, furthermore, the presence of the computer creatures makes the puppets look more fake than they would otherwise look, and vice versa. Perhaps it doesn't matter very much. The special effects, creature effects, costumes AND art direction, had all deteriorated, with or without digital vandalism.
Yet despite all this the release of `The Phantom Menace' makes `Return of the Jedi' look better than ever. The chief difference between the two is that the latter, unlike the former, has a reason for being made in the first place. The story begun in the first two movies needed a conclusion. It DIDN'T need a prologue. If the conclusion stumbles a bit, well, we must take the rough with the smooth: obviously the story had to end SOME way. In any event, `Return of the Jedi' isn't a bad movie. It coasts on the energy of the early movies, but it gets where it's going. If you've just watched the earlier films this one still brings a lump to the throat. Yes, it could have been much better. Be thankful it wasn't worse.