By the time we get to Starkiller Base in “The Force Awakens,” it does really feel like “Star Wars” has turn out to be too reliant on the idea of “another Death Star” (and even defensive about it in dialogue). “Return of the Jedi” makes it work, although, because the full-throttle Rebel assault on the second Death Star unravels with the immortal Admiral Ackbar line, “It’s a trap!”
If a film is made and remade thrice over within the writing, directing, and enhancing, then as a lot credit score ought to go to “Return of the Jedi” editors Marcia Lucas, Duwayne Dunham, and Sean Burns, because the triumvirate of George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan, and Richard Marquand. In “Icons Unearthed,” Dunham says Marcia Lucas “was the heart” of the Lucasfilm household and, “There wasn’t an emotional or dramatic scene that didn’t pass through Marcia’s hands.”
Lucas herself says, “Everything that had emotion, George wanted me to cut.” Not each emotion in “Return of the Jedi” tracks with “The Empire Strikes Back,” thoughts you. Han Solo’s war-room reunion with Lando Calrissian after he will get his sight again is completely too affectionate and smiley when juxtaposed with all of the distrust and betrayal they went by in Cloud City. However, this goes together with shielding younglings within the viewers from the Dark Side, the place Han might need held a grudge and ended his bromance with Lando.
In actuality, George Lucas introduced his divorce from Marcia Lucas simply three weeks after “Return of the Jedi” hit theaters. As Howard Kasanjian says in “Icons Unearthed,” “When Marcia and George divorced, we all hurt. It was the end of Camelot in some respects.” Yet for the sake of the moviegoing public, they held it collectively lengthy sufficient to carry this trilogy throughout the end line and preserve it located within the “New Hope” wheelhouse.