Well, if you’ve been keeping up with these Star Wars posts, you’re doing a better job than I.  My untimeliness is astounding, but now that Episode III is released, the pressure’s off.  So here are some thoughts on Episode IV, Return of the Jedi. 

Finding out that Luke and Leia are brother and sister is like getting kicked in the balls.  My wife mentioned that she always wanted them to end up together, only to feel dirty when she learned the truth about them.  She also blames George Lucas for her adolescent affinity for “bad boys” (i.e. Han Solo).  I blame the inconsistent discipline of her childhood. 

On Tatooine—in the lair of Jabba the Hut—Han hangs, an ornament in carbonite.  Jabba mentions his unwillingness to relinquish his favorite “decoration,” but the whole reason he wanted Han to begin with was to get the money he was owed.  How the crap is he going to get money from a chunk of carbonite? 

Again, C-3PO finds himself in a room with the McDonald’s-trash-can-with-legs.  This time, said trash can is being branded by one of Jabba’s torturous devices, and yells, “No!  No!  Noooo!” which leads me to believe droids can feel, and all those times C-3PO was dismembered, he was in dire pain.  And speaking of droids, Princess Leia comes to rescue Han posing as some sort of cyborg bounty hunter whose only phoneme is apparently, “Yato.”  Isn’t it convenient that English is the one language that everyone in the universe understands?

Subsequently, Leia frees Han from the carbonite, and instead of catching him as he falls from it, simply lets him careen face-first onto the floor.  Thanks, Leia.  But she makes up for it with that string bikini.  Indeed, for me it was a taste of what puberty would be like. 

In Empire, Darth tricks Luke into falling into the carbon freezing chamber, and by the power of the Force, Luke leaps immediately up out of the chamber to safety.  When he falls through Jabba’s trap door, however, he forgets about the Force, opting to battle a carnivore ten times his size.  Seems right.

When our protagonists are eventually brought before Jabba for “sentencing,” C-3PO is instructed to tell them that they’ll be dropped into some being in the desert who will show them a new definition of “pain and suffering” as it digests them slowly over the next thousand years.  Man, I think I’d rather starve to death and rot.  Oh, wait…

My wife refers to R2-D2 as a “glorified Swiss Army knife.”  Her comment is precipitated by another act of Deus ex D2—his brandishing a circular saw to cut them from a trap set by the wily Ewoks.  And after Luke finally rescues them from the furry little guys by using the Force to levitate 3PO, Han says, “Now I owe you one.”  Not true.  Luke owed Han TWO—one for the DEATH STAR battle and one for Hoth.  So what Han should have said is, “Now you owe me less than two.” 

The rest of this movie digresses into things like: people and Troopers looking around from side to side while traveling at hundreds of miles per hour on speeder bikes, thus dying by explosion; rebels taking gilded droids (i.e. C-3PO) with them onto Endor, the forest planet (camouflage be damned); Leia admitting, “I know.  Somehow I’ve always known,” about Luke being her brother, as we remember their three-second kiss; Luke telling Vader, “That’s why you won’t take me to your Emperor now,” as though the old Jedi mind trick is going to work on the very LORD OF THE SITH; an airborne rock is capable of killing a Stormtrooper; Chewie swinging on a vine while doing a Wookie Tarzan yell; et cetera et cetera et cetera…

The more I write on these movies, the more I realize they’re crap.  Why, oh why, didn’t I take the blue pill?

Official “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” tally: Han says it once.  I think that’s four occurrences in the “first” trilogy. 

Okay bye