Great ending of the greatest trilogy ever.

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2008)

While Return of the Jedi is my least favorite of the original three Star Wars movies, but it still packs a good punch and closes out the best trilogy of motion picture history. It begins with C3PO and R2D2 visiting Jabba the Hutt. They find Captain Solo (Harrison Ford) still in carbonite. Chewabacca (Peter Mayhew) is captured, along with Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) who was incognito as a renegade bounty hunter. It is up to Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to save the day. As a real Jedi, he is able to confound Jabba's men, destroy his barge, and rescue Leia, Han, Lando, and Chewie. The remaining two-thirds of the film deal with the final rebel assault against a new Death Star. Emperor Palpatine himself oversees the project with Darth Vader. As Luke and Han launch an attack to take out the defense shield from the moon of Endor, they meet some strange friends, the Ewoks. This leads to rollicking fun, great space battles, action sequences, awesome special effects, and Luke's temptation to join the dark side. I did have a few gripes with this movie. I know Lucas originally wanted to have the Ewok battle originally done with Wookies. I wished he would have stuck to that because the idea of stone-throwing teddy bears warring against storm troopers strained credibility. The only other strike was not introducing us to Emperor Palpatine sooner. He is only mentioned in the first Star Wars movie, and we do get a holographic image of him in the Empire Strikes Back ... but as the true master of evil he should have been brought in earlier. Nevertheless, Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie overthrow the Empire once and for all, restoring balance to the force and allowing good to triumph over evil. If only more movies could do that better.