Review of Star 80 (1983) by Anthonyb — 27 Mar 2011

For years I pretty much dismissed Star-wars after "Empire Strikes Back" but recently I began to see this as the jewel of the series. There are problems though. First off I actually found the Ewoks, although there mainly to sell merchandise, rather interesting.

A carnivorous groups of tree bears who worship golden robots. Lucas should have explored them a bit more. It would have been great to see these cuddly creatures feasting on the bones of captured storm troopers.

After all the movie already established that they consider humans a healthy source of food. That aside what I finds to be the main flaw of the movie is the death of the emperor. In episode IV the first movie there is a classic good vs evil battle.

When the rebells blow up the Death Star evil is defeated. This sets up "Empire" quite nicely. We find out Vader is actually Luke's father. Luke is vulnerable to the dark side. In "Jedi" Luke is courted by the emperor who wants to replace the aging Vader, while Vader want to recruit Luke to run the dark-side like a father son company.

What "Jedi" does, is it introduces a more eastern concept of the light side dark side struggle. Amidst the rebel attacks Luke must come to term with himself. He can no longer simply try to defeat the dark-side in him.

He must make morally complicated choices. Act in anger and attack the Emperor thus darken his sole to help his friends survive, or let them die while retaining his innocence. Unfortunately These ideas get clouded by the need for a happy Hollywood ending, So Vader toss the emperor down the shaft and another death stars blows up.

First, this has always been highly disappointing for the Emperor to die in such a mundane way. Vader should have done this years ago is what I was thinking as a child. As an adult I ponder on the existence of evil, how it is something that one must come to terms with live with, but never vanquish.

If one take Luke putting down his light saber as the climax of the scene it retains that power. We now know what path he is on, but I suppose Ewoks dining on storm trooper, while Luke turns his back to the Emperor would have left many of ten year olds scratching their hear.