Return of the Jedi

The last film of the trilogy. Han Solo is hanging on a crime boss's wall. The first half hour is the operation to get him back. A palace on a desert planet, a pit and a sail barge. The section works almost like a self-contained short film. Then the real business. The Empire is building a new station and the rebels plan to attack in space and on the ground at once. The shield generator is on a forest moon. The team lands there and meets the local people. From there the film runs in three places at once: a raid in the forest, a fleet battle in space, and a room with three people in it on the station. What the narrative is interested in is not the battle but that room: Luke believes he can save his father, and the Emperor is using each against the other. The decision of the film is there. Luke throws his weapon away, and the way to win turns out to be not fighting. The Ewok section is the most argued-over part. Some take it as the emotional ground of the narrative, others put it down to toy sales. The title changed during production. Another one was used first, and after posters and trailers had been printed the word revenge was removed on the grounds that it did not suit a Jedi. A fake film title was used on set during shooting to hide what was being made. The desert section was shot in Arizona and the forest in the redwoods of California. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and Ian McDiarmid are in the cast. Richard Marquand directed; the screenplay is by Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas. Who it is for: anyone who wants to finish the trilogy. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the weight of the previous film; this one is softer and its middle is scattered.