#comments

You know it’s no secret that I harbor no love for George Lucas. His horrendousness is obvious since the very first “Special Edition” versions of the original trilogy, not even bringing up Episodes I-III or Raiders 4(??!?). But I save my vitriol for those – the good folks at Film Threat are taking it a step further and bringing down the lightning on Return of the Jedi.

In the face of his more recent works any issues I may have with Jedi are insignificant, but it doesn’t make what Film Threat says any less true. Although I do have to admit in my younger, dumber days (is that possible?) I liked Jedi at least as much if not a touch more than Empire. This is a very impressive list of 50 reasons Return of the Jedi sucks, I mean lists are hard to make (I only ever get to 8) so a list of 50 is hard core – some are weaker than others, but it’s quite a good one overall.

There’s obvious ones like, you know.. Ewoks. Two of my favourite are the terrible handling of great characters like Han Solo (#10 on the list) and Boba Fett (#20 on the list). I also like #28:

28. [ The Opening Text Crawl ]
In which we are given our first taste of each of the three films. Let’s compare their opening sentences, shall we?

WARS: “It is a period of civil war….”

EMPIRE: “It is a dark time for the Rebellion…”

JEDI: “Luke Skywalker has returned to his home planet of Tatooine in an attempt to rescue his friend Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt. Charro guest stars.”

Okay, we threw in the part about Charro. But the point is, we’re talking mythic tracts versus a blurb from TV Guide. The first sentence in Jedi centers around the word “friend.” Well, that’s just peachy, but we much prefer the first two films’ implications that we’re about to see something a bit larger than a buddy picture.

Anyhow, I could go on and list them all, but I won’t since they, you know, already did. Go read the article.