A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 132: Return of the Jedi (4k83) Pt. 1

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Return of the Jedi is a haunted movie. It is haunted most obviously by the ghosts of the past films: droids walking across desert wastes, fateful holograms delivered in desperation, deflector shield substations, robotic hands, and a Death Star hanging above the world.  But it is also haunted by the future of the franchise: further reliance on ambitious CGI, a subtle sanding down in humor and character, dozens of little creatures whose names are never said but whose identity marketing has taught you before you ever see the text start rolling across the screen. Star Wars, as we know it, has arrived. Show Notes Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas - Outtakes Hosted by Rob Zacny (robzacny.bsky.social) Featuring Alicia Acampora (ali-online.bsky.social), Austin Walker (austinwalker.bsky.social), and Natalie Watson (nataliewatson.bsky.social) Produced by Michael Hermes Music by Jack de Quidt (notquitereal.bsky.social Cover art by Xeecee (xeecee.bsky.social)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakney, joined by Alia Kampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners by patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes and other special events. Today we watch Return of the Jedi, a film about marriages and their endings. It's organized around the quest of two children of a very bad break. up, define their place in the world and define their own families while the estranged father, Darth Vader and his partner, Emperor Palpatine, go through the motions of a relationship

that's already dead, each testing the other to see if they will acknowledge it and finally force their overdue reckoning. But first, we have to crack open a cold one with the boy inside it and said dangerous precedent by retreading the central threat of the first film in the trilogy. We open on, Vader, arriving to take control of the construction of a second Death Star, a scene that mostly exists to have him reveal to the imperial form and that the emperor will be arriving soon to oversee the final steps of the Death Star's activation. Then it's off the Tatooine to clear the board of that final confrontation by dealing with the Java situation. Imagine a chapter

title card here that says the Java situation. And then the scene opens on R2 and 3PO, heading to Jabba's palace where they discover they have been gifted to Jabba as a gesture of goodwill by Luke Skywalker as he presents Jabba with a soft ultimatum to release Han. Jabba laughs to the offer, but sends the droids to the droid torture chamber. Poor Fussy 3PO is made to serve as a translator and butler in Java's den of degeneracy, live snuff performances, and Muppet music. It's like if Saw took place in the Chucky Cheese. Things take an even worse turn as a bounty hunter arrives with Chewbacca in cuffs.

But then we get an inkling. things are not as they appear when we see Lando disguised as a guard as chewy is led away. That night, the bounty hunter sneaks in the Jabba's throne room and approaches the carbonite slab where he's being kept. A few touches of the control panel later, the ice begins to thaw and a Cerva solo falls out. And the bounty hunter turns out to be Princess Leia. But Jabba was ahead of this too and was in fact just waiting in an act. alcove having a good laugh at this failed rescue attempt.

And as Han tries to belatedly reach some sort of rapport with Jabba, Jabba announces that he's going to have Han killed, and Leah is going to be the new dancer at Jabba's Palace, now that that position has opened up. Things look even worse, but Chubaka seems oddly calm about the situation when Han meets him in the dungeon later. And we realized that our heroes have not played their last card

when Luke Skywalker arrives in the palace and uses his fully realized Jedi powers to bully his way into a face-to-face with Jabba. And Java reveals that he is not impressed by a Jedi. And in fact, uses his trapdoor that we already saw him banish that dancer through. Now we see what was awaiting her. as Luke falls into the into the dungeon with a Gamerian

I forget how we pronounce that. I think Gmorian. But I don't know if that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Either way, the pig dude. Luke's down there with the pig dude. Pig dude gets eaten.

And a bit that I think is very unrealistic instead of immediately going into a torpor, the big reptile rancor down there continues to want to eat and tries to eat Luke. Be hungry. He is hungry. Maybe he's, he's probably kept in that fighting shape.

Luke uses a giant bone to jam the rancor's throat and then runs through the gate and triggers the gate releases. The rancor stoops under it to get it Luke. And the gate falls on the rancor, killing him instantly. And the rancor handler is very sad. So sad. So sad. So, so sad. What's up when we revisit that.

Job is furious. Now everyone is. everyone is being killed, except for Leah, who in Baylor, or Ghana's worst nightmare is now on the pole. But everyone else is being sent to the Sarlack pit, where they'll be digested for a thousand years, Java announces. And then it is off to the Sarlach pit on the sail barges as Jabba leaves the safety of his palace. And at the, at the Sarlac pit, Luke makes one final offer to spare Jabba's life.

Jabba laughs it off. And then Luke is tossed his lightsaber by R2, who had it loaded in a compartment with uncanny, like outfielder accuracy, really. Some sort of spring-loaded release. Well, I guess he has the force. Luke probably just calls the lightsaber to his hand. But either way, Luke gets the saber,

cuts everyone down in some dubiously executed stunt work throughout the scene. Lots of hijinks are had as, Landau, Chui, and Han attempt to manage their own rescue. And Han, battling blindness from the carbonite chamber, is attempting to rescue Lando. Leah strangled the shit out of the big frog. And then she and Luke escape the sail barge as they point the deck gun on the sail barge directly down into it and blow it apart. And I think the application is like, we kill a ton of people.

Oh, they kill a lot of people. That thing was packed. They really get them good. kills a lot of people here, for sure. This is like Titanic if right after the boat sank Jack's like fuck those people. That's kind of what just happened

here in terms of loss of life. Point the World War II Aircraft Anti-aircraft cannon at the deck. What? Do it. Oh, okay. And then they're off to rejoin the rebellion where we find

we're moving right into it now. Lando, already made general. They're talking about their respective roles in the upcoming big push. The attack on the Death Star, when Mothma shows up to explain that, A, there's Death Star, we got to go get it, but two, B, we have a big opportunity. Palpatine's on the Death Star, the ultimate two birds, one stone situation. And we know this Intel is good, because many Boethans died getting this information to us. Landau is going to lead the basically the fighter forces in the

in the attack and who could be crazy enough to lead the ground forces to take down the shield the impenetrable shield that's wrapped around the Death Star none other than Han Solo Leah does a complete 180 having been staring daggers at Ma'amah

during this briefing and looking deeply unimpressed by the whole thing but now Hans leading the assault she's all on board and so is chewy and what's this Luke Skywalker arrives at this moment to join the attack I forgot Luke went to Dagova that's where that's what it's split off Luke

Luke just got here from Degaba Master Yoda was like hey Luke I'm making dinner and dying promptly they have some they have some final comments final words Yoda reveals to him there is another Skywalk Walker. And then Luke has his overdue confrontation with Obi-Wan, who does not acquit himself well in this scene as he explains exactly how that wild game of telephone resulted in Luke having

such a mistaken impression of what the situation was between him and Vader. Anyway, the point is, we don't need to examine that too deeply. Obi-Wan explains, still got to kill Vader. You still got to deal with him. and Luke emphatically says, I can't do that. And Obi-O-Wan finds that that is, if that's how Luke truly feels, then the cause is already lost,

then that's when Luke starts asking, well, maybe there's a different Skywalker who could do this. Having just, you know, maybe, as we just saw, if you really need someone killed, send Leia. All right, ask Java. She's good at it.

Anyway, that's when Luke, arrives back at the rebel headquarters and then everyone sort of goes their separate ways to begin the attack. Han has bad premonitions about how this might go. He looks at the Millennium Falcon thinking, I have this feeling I'm never going to see her again. And then they are leaving early because they are being covertly inserted onto the planet in a stolen imperial shuttle. and it's very World War II Commando movie as you know the first step

they have to get through the Imperial Corridan using their stolen codes Luke waits until this exact moment to think I don't know maybe maybe I shouldn't be here maybe this whole force thing between me and Vader maybe this is going to maybe this is going to screw things up and indeed through the magic of editing

it has screwed things up Vader is fully aware of what the plan as he knows the shuttle is full of of his kids, of, of, uh, rebel commandos.

But he has the Imperial fleet, wave them through, uh, so that he can trap them on the planet. They make planet fall in, uh, on the forest mood of Endor, basically Sequoia National Forest.

And I think they begin making, right? I assume. Is that where they shot it? I was pretty sure. Yeah. Or maybe I'm wrong. Today it would just be some scrub grass in Vancouver

At a big No it would be a volume It would be a volume yeah Yeah that's very true Let's be real So they need to begin making their way To the Imperial Shield generator But first they have to deal with some

Imperial scouts that are that are guarding the shield generator on their Speeder bikes The attempt to ambush them goes bad immediately. Han completely fails his stealth check, and it falls to Luke and Leia to team up and ride these blindingly fast speeder bikes through the forest and chase down this entire Imperial Patrol, which they largely do to great success, although both are sort of knocked off their stride at various

at various points. Luke ends up crashing and needs to take out the last Imperial Scout with his lightsaber. And Leah also ends up being dismounted knocked unconscious after killing her own final

final Biker Scout. And she awakens to meet a new friend. Wicked. We don't know his name is Wicked. We don't know. They never say the name with you. We never know the name from the movie, right?

And yet somehow as children, we all did. Well, we would have seen the Ewak movies by then. That's true. She meets this little fella. He's very cute, big stuffed animal, very alarmed when she takes off her hat. She's calming him down. But then they are found by more Imperial Scout, by another Imperial Scout. The little Ewok distract.

him at an opportune moment and Leah uh thwax him knocks it knocks him knocks him down and kills the other scout with her blaster and then she is sort of taken taken off by by the Ewok to some sort of safe harbor also being taken by the Ewok's under different circumstances is the rebel leadership team for the first and only time in the series uh wiki gives in to the animal side animal side of his nature and just cannot resist a raw, trust-up meat creature. They're sitting in an obvious trap, and they are picked up in a giant net, and then quickly found by a bunch of Ewoks, and carried away to the village in honor of what they did believe, a newly found god, the golden man himself, 3PO, attempts to

to have 3PO talk the Ewaks down from their, I guess it's not really a cannibal feast. These are different species. This is just like bears eating people, really. Yeah. You know, it really is like their ewarks, like whether they're your prey animal to them. Circle of Life.

Yeah. Well, Han doesn't see it that way. Han is getting increasingly angry. The 3PO isn't even really trying to talk them out of it, though I would be nicer to him if I wanted him to go that extra distance. Luke has an idea, though, that he will trick the Ewox into sparing them on the commands of an enraged and wrathful God, 3PO, by using the force to float his chair. And that convinces the Ewox to not devour our heroes. And instead, they have a big celebration.

And the group is inducted into the tribe after hearing an incredibly abridged version of events from 3PO. Yeah, good enough. and then in the midst of all this as things are finally starting to look up Luke gets a sad a sad haunted look on his face and leaves the party where could he have gone

we'll find out next time on a more civilized age well that was a great podcast everybody so next week we'll conclude Return of the Jedi please rate oh yeah there's one thing early on we'll see if this leads us anywhere

You said that it was I think the exact phrasing you said But you mentioned that the appearance of That old death star That old battle station one more time Was maybe bore bad things For the future of the franchise Here's my in the first episode

Of our original trilogy movies I said oh they never made a sequel to this movie I have another provocative statement This is the first Star Wars movie It's all here Yeah The franchise has arrived and in some ways it's really cool

because this movie is fucking haunted by the original Star Wars movie the first 30 minutes is like a replay of all the stuff in the first movie but like scary in some ways like oh the Death Star is back you know Jobs Palace looks like Mossize the Cantina

right down to the Alcoves right down to the Alcoves 3PO and Art 2 marching through the the sand Luke appearing as a hologram the way Leah did to begin with the droid torture room is just like the Jawa droid room in the first movie. Luke does the Jedi Mind trick the way that Obi-Wan does.

You know, he's like caught in the cycle. That's like, of course, like the story of Star Wars in some ways. Like, can you break the cycle that your father started? And, you know, there's kind of like a meta version of it happening inside of the filmmaking. But also, uh-oh, Star Wars, the franchises here, all of the things that were catchphrases are super catchphrases now. Some of the things that shouldn't have been catchphrases are being used as catchphrases now

or being used as like returned, you know, jokes now. You can feel, here's an interesting thing, Rob. You talked about all those Ewarks. Do you know what word was never said in this movie besides Wicked? Ewak. But everybody knew they were Ewarks

because the merchandising and the commercials were everywhere. So everyone knew what an EWalk was by the time they watch this movie. It's here. Star Wars is here. And, you know, it doesn't mean it's bad. I like this movie quite a bit.

I think this movie has some of the highest highs, though we might not talk about the highest of the highest highs this time. I'll just say that for next time. But I do kind of feel like if there was, in the same way that there was never a sequel to the first Star Wars movie as it really was, this is the, this is it. Star Wars has arrived fully, fully formed, you know? So there are still some quotes that are a little different.

Again, we can't talk about all of them this time, but there's some things some characters say. We're like, now, wait a second, I saw those prequels. You never saw that character before in your life. You were a baby. But we'll talk about that next time. No, I think that's very true. It is, everything feels different in this film. Right down to the fact, again, like, if Empire is, oh, we've really, we're in the 80s now.

Yeah. We've moved yet deeper in. to the 80s, and also everyone's hair has gotten worse as a consequence of that in some ways. You don't like Luke's hair more here? You like Luke's hair more in the empire? I like the clean cut Luke. I think he looks like interesting here. I think there's something going on with the like neatly side parted hair thing that it's just going

awry for everyone. Like, Cricks-Madeen, like does not. pretty egregious. He looks so bad. But it looks like him and Luke go to the same shop. Yeah. No, he looks like he went to the shop and was like, give me the loop. And the guy was like, uh, I'll try.

With your head shape, I don't know, sir. I don't know, man. But he did it anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. It really does. It really does. It's not.

It's not it. But it does. It looks like everyone kind of was like, yo, do me up. like do me up like Luke look like I want that I want that cut yeah the other thing it can't be on everyone the other thing about the mid 80s thing Rob is like this movie has way more blue screen in it I'm watching the 4k 83 and it's constant like for shots that they never would have used it for used it for before um I think this is probably next time but it's it's at the very end here when they're in the rebel fleet there's like a shot of Lando just like talking to Han or somebody

and like walking back towards the falcon and it's like it's not there. That's a blue screen projection of it or like a, you know, a composition of it. There's a lot of those sequences. And I'm sure at the time it basically worked because it still looked better than everything else out there.

Some of the speeder bike stuff in the forest also obviously filled with blue screen. And it mostly works. But it doesn't work anywhere near as good, I think, it's the stuff throughout New Hope and Empire. And it's like, it's here. Star Wars is here. Time to start pushing on the tech a little too hard,

then it can handle, start relying on post-production composition instead of in-camera effects. And there's still a lot of that. I don't want to be super clear. I think most of this movie just looks incredible. I think all the interiors at the John Pallas Palace that we're about to talk about and stuff looks great.

But there are these little bits where you can start to feel it, you know? So the other thing is, so I did not fix my pluck situation. So I watched the 4K special edition. Okay. Because you got the different songs, too. Yeah. Look, I had to make some, I had to prioritize.

And this week, I really needed, instead of you my pluck situation, right? I need to take down that Christmas tree. So, look, look, okay? It's not down by now. We've all been there. We've literally all been there. Thank you, thank you, Alie. At least one person.

It's willing to jump on that grenade. How bad was the needle drop Dropage On the way out? Oh Oh, oh, oh. MK's allergic as hell to Like pine trees

Okay You can leave it up there Race, you can leave it up there Next year Yeah, it's kind of be able to I'm right back around on this one, right? Yeah, yeah, you can make it a spring tree Could just put different things on the branches, really.

Easter tree, it's here all year. I'm celebrating spring now. There's like rabbits and eggs in it. Also really quick speak. F1 season tree. Whatever you want. This is a steering wheel on the top where the star goes. Quickly, it was the, it is not in fact Sequoia National Forest.

It is the Redwood National Forest. So same state, different part of the state. I'm they like right next to each other? No, Sequoia is further south. Apparently. And Redwood is actually north is like NorCal. And Sequoia is actually kind of far south based on what I just looked at. It is. It's about a five-hour drive from L.A.

four and a half, depending on where you go. Isn't that just... Isn't San Francisco just like five hours from L. No. Yeah, but that's if you take the five. It's five hours in a different direction. And it's only five hours because you have to start driving slow because you start driving in the mountains.

By the five, you can keep going fast. Point is, though. Return of the Jedi is, I think, the most altered of the films between original and special edition. And so Return of the Jedi also now is a film where you see attempts to keep star or actually here's the way I put it. I think now looking at things like Andor, there's sort of this embrace of the analog qualities and sort of the cultural moment that Star Wars originally comes from. But with the special edition, you have this like attempt to make Star Wars feel consciously, much more 90s. Right.

And a huge part of that is radically changing how certain scenes are scored, completely changing how, like, what happens at Java's Palace. And just trying to make the film feel less dated in ways that actually make the special edition feel incredibly dated. The 4K special edition is like a pristinely preserved, like, promotional cup from a shell gas station from like the 90s. That is the vibe of the special edition. But it is true. Like everything begins to feel like it is sort of being put together with an eye toward franchise logic, toward toys, toward, you know, products that you're going to see pop up elsewhere. And having said all that, though,

I think this is widely regarded as the weakest film of the original trilogy. I think so. And I think it's true. Yeah. But it's still really good. When it hits, it hits. There's so much good stuff in here. And there's stuff in here that I thought I would be lower on that I'm so pretty high on.

Allie, did you have something else there, too? Well, I think that this is. the film with like my favorite Star Wars scenes even if altogether it is like not the greatest of the trilogy I had that almost that exact same note and specifically about the opening which I'm sure we're about to talk about at length

but like this is my favorite opening 30 minutes of a Star Wars movie to watch even if it's not the best one because its lift doesn't need to be so high you know like Empire has to I mean Star Wars is set up Star Wars. That's really hard to do.

And there's so much good stuff in the first 30 minutes. You have to introduce all of these characters. It's really hard to do. Empire has to introduce the Han and Leah situation, which by itself is a big deal. It has to set up that Luke is going to leave and go to die. Chapter title card. The Han and Leah situation. That's right.

Yes. Thank you. But it's actually just other characters talking about the Han and Laya situation. Yeah. And nevertheless, so I think that's because those both achieve those much more difficult things, you have to be like, yeah, they did a good. Those are better opening 30 minutes. But I'm having a blast watching all this stuff happen at Jabba's Palace,

watching Sice Noodle singing, watching the weird eye come out of the wall or out of the door, looking at that weird spider droid that no one ever talks about. And by the way, there's a brain in that thing. We'll talk about it. There's like all sorts of fun stuff in the first 30 minutes of this. And not least of all is because, hey, guess who's in this movie together for like the first time is Han, Luke and Leia.

and they're all like doing a thing together. They're all together. They're all having, we just don't, it just doesn't happen that often, it turns out. And it's cool to see them all on screen. I think it's such a good call that I hadn't really realized until hearing you. Like, the fact that we, we already know everyone. We, we know, like, we get to be, like, we don't have to be told anything. we get to be surprised in this first 30 minutes.

Like we get the joy of the Jabba reveal. We've been hearing about this Jabba. We've been hearing that, you know, he's just like, like, you know, nasty gangster, this, you know, crime lord. And then we get to see it. We get to see, you know, him and his, you know, his crew and like, what is the, what are the vibes there? Freak city in here. Freak City. And it's a feast of freaks.

It really is. I can't emphasize that enough. And we get to kind of be in it for the ride, like getting to see Lando, the Lando reveal, not knowing that for sure that Leia is this, you know, massed bounty hunter, but getting to kind of relish in the reveal. when she rescues Han.

Like, we don't have to be told, okay, like, Leia's going to go in there. And she's going to, you know, we don't have to be in on the plan. We just get to see the plan unfold. Whereas I think you're so right, Austin, in the first two movies, like, we need to get caught up on so much of what's going on in those first 30 minutes. Like, there's so much kind of like, here's everything that's happened just before this. And this feels like the first time that we're just like going along with it. We don't need to really know what happened just before this, mainly because we just saw it in the last movie.

We're basically picking up right where we left off. Maybe they took a couple weeks to like, you know, decompress and make a plan. But we're essentially there. One day we'll learn all about what they did between these two movies. You wouldn't even... How much... You couldn't begin to imagine how many other things

were happening in between, you know? Well, I know there are a lot of Bothans that were working real hard to get some information. That I know for sure. Yeah, yeah. Maybe they could have worked harder to discover it was a trap. Well, we have... Next time, we're going to talk a length

about the degree to which this is a trap. I have many thoughts. But I guess actually at the very beginning here, Rob, we should go back to one of your points. Vader as competent leader because he gets called in as the fixer on Death Star Round 2. It's a very different vibe. And it's interesting here. So here's my theory.

Empire the mask is cracked or slipping that he is fully enraged, obsessed with finding Luke, and actually like just incandescently furious throughout the entire film, not at Luke. Right. here, so he's getting choked. He's very calm. He's just here to, he's just here to take over,

uh, the Death Star project and make sure this thing gets completed on time. I hadn't noticed that you're right. He doesn't kill a single Imperial officer this whole movie. No, the mask is back on and like firmly affixed. Well. But do we think that has,

like do we think anything has changed? Uh, because, you know, like we're getting, started going to get a repeat of the scene. at the same docking bay where like Vader and the emperor are taking stock of each other.

Yeah, well, and this docking bay, by the way, another thing that's haunting this movie. We open on the docking bay, an exact replica of the docking bay. Except now here it is pulling the primary characters of the empire into it. Exactly. From which they're never going to escape.

Yeah, by the way, a lot of this stuff is why I think the motto myth, the Joseph Campbell stuff, is like not adequate to be your primary lens for reading all of this. It's because, like, Luke is not the only, protagonists that you could read

these movies through. And when you do the thing you just noted, Robert, you're like, oh, actually Vader is being integrated into the loop of Star Wars in this moment by being pulled in the way the Falcon was in the first movie. Like, you can get other meaning from it when you're able to break out of the

Camballian mode, which again, a little bit of a pet, pet horse of mine. But yeah, so like, we have a calmer Vader than we've seen. And in fact, fairly circumspect where the guy overseeing the Death Star project is like you ask the impossible. This whole project is rushed. It's behind schedule. And the emperor and

Vader, instead of like choking the guy and finding someone else, this time he's like, well, you can explain it to the emperor. And there's also a little bit of Vader is, I do wonder if there's a bit here where Vader's firmly aware the emperor asks the impossible. He's actually started. He might sympathize with this guy a little bit. Like, yeah, I know. The boss is an asshole. And he sort of says like the emperor can motivate you and your men

when he gets here. I have a theory about this that we can't really dig into yet, but I'm going to float it so that we can think about it over the next week. And if any us do a rewatch, we can think about it. It's not even a week. We're going to talk. We're going to record again in a couple days. But

later on, Vader will say that Luke doesn't understand the power of the dark side and that one way to read that conversation is that he's saying he's not free to confront the emperor and so when he tells this guy

my reading on that scene is not my reading but one way to read that scene I'm not sure if I come down on this way yet is that like Vader is like leashed in a way that I hadn't considered before when we get the old costume element well he I mean he does He literally does.

You pointed this out in our chat earlier today. He has the chain around his neck, right? There's a thin black chain that has appeared that he is not wearing in any other film. Yes. And yes, there are other costume changes. But the chain is so pointed, like beneath his mask that, like, it is calling attention to exactly, like, it has a leash-like quality. You can be seen as like a chain of office, but it has this feeling of, like, he is now choosing to wear. a symbol of like ownership, possession of enslavement.

I'm going to say the exact line and again, we can get to do it next time because that's the scene for the next time. I'm sorry for jumping ahead, but when Luke is trying to tell Vader when they first start talking in the next part of what we're going to talk about next time, and Luke is like, you should come with me. Vader says, Obi-Wan once thought as you do,

you don't know the power of the dark side. I must obey my mind. master. He must obey his master. And like, I think first guess, or first blush, it's like, oh yeah, because like, Palpatine would torture him if he refused a command. But, like, it might be more than that.

And so here at the very beginning, when he's like, oh, listen, buddy, if you don't do it, you're going to have to deal with Palpatine. Palpatine will make you do it. There's this other layer of, like, which also ends up speaking into, like, throughout this movie and the last

movie, part of the question is, like, what is the force? What is the true nature of the force? We're going to hear that phrase again and again in this movie. What is the nature of the force? And I think this has been one that has shown up in the Thrawn trilogy. It's shown up in Cotor. One way that the Sith see the force is a means of control.

It's a way of wrapping your hands around the galaxy and making it do what you want it to. And we have talked for years about the ways of which the Jedi Mind Trick feels like a little dipping into the dark side, even though the movies never frame it that way. But here again, it's like, oh my God, like, is it, is it bad when you tell, when you force someone to do what they want? It so seems like the Jedi order are like the cops who believe in honest graft. And the, like, the Sith are like the Rampart Division cops who like just fully became drug dealers and like crime lords. I think that's, you know, we'll have a lot to talk about next time.

I'm sorry for jumping ahead even this much, but it's hard not to. It's interesting that Vader isn't in his usual mode of being you know kind of like needlessly aggressive or violent or you know kind of throwing people to the side it feels like with the knowledge that Luke is out there it has changed his like it there's almost as if there's no point

in expending like his, like, there's no, there's no proving himself. Like, the intimidation factor is already there. He approaches this, this commander. The commander is visibly nervous and, like, you know, shaken to see him on an unexpected visit, you know? And it's clear that Vader is being sent here because he seems distracted by the, the, you know, the fact that Luke is out there. Later on,

the emperor, you know, asks Vader if he's, like, thinking about Luke or if he's, if he's still on that train of thought of thinking about his son out there. And I don't know, I think there's some sort of correlation between

Vader just not being as not having to act on his intimidation, not having to like physically intimidate people anymore and that he it feels like his mind is elsewhere like he he can come here and just by his presence being there kind of whip everyone into shape and bring everyone into uh you know doubling their their efforts and manpower and whatever but um but he but the fact that he's not like crashing out

is interesting to me. It feels like he's got like a purpose in my, like there's just something else he's concerned with. Yeah, he doesn't give a shit about this Death Star. And I think that's really, he cared about the pursuit like around Hoff. He doesn't care about this. And look,

usual suspects is an extremely cursed film based on like the people involved in this production. But like, a good cultural reference. But there's things that state, stay with me and one of them is like there's a moment where uh it is related to us that next cop knew how to spot if you had a bunch of suspects who was the guilty person in the group and it's the person who just fell asleep while they were being

kept in 24-hour lockup because they know they're already caught and they're just in for like whatever's going to happen is going to happen it's out of their hands the people who are sort of innocent of this are are up there sweating bullets because they are still concerned about how this is going to work out and how they can get out from under this thing. And I think that's Vader in this moment is actually there is a measure of peace

with this character because like he is aware of it like things are pulling the various, the important players together. Yeah. And so like there's kind of nothing for him to do

because the scene he asked to play, The only thing he really cares about is not making sure the Death Star can turn on when you flip the switch. It is the things that are going to come with that. Yeah. And based on the scene that we get later in this section in this first half with him and the emperor, it's clear that he wants to, it's clear that he has not voiced necessarily his desire to continue on the Luke Skywalker hunt. Should we just talk about that scene?

Because it basically is the flip side. We keep talking around it. Yeah. Yeah. We basically have a repeat of the scene. It is. Let me say one thing quickly is, like, another potential answer for why we don't see Vader choking people in this, because that's like where we're at, or that's actually the

response to this. No, let's talk about that scene. This is a movie about whether or not you can save the heart of Darth Vader. And maybe that's a hard sell if you've seen him choking people to death for an hour. Totally. In the theater. The movie plays with your expectation in a, like, an interesting way in the scene, though. Like, especially in Return of the Jedi when it felt like when he does the first.

force choke. It's like, oh, Vader's on the screen. He's... In empire? In empire. It's like, oh, Vader's on the screen. He's doing his move. Like, that's so cool to see. Like, there's this sort of like pregnant pause before he mentioned the emperor and the person he's talking to is kind of stumbling, like, nervously, where it's like, is he choking him? But like, just evoking the name of the emperor is enough to make this person choke up. Like, Vader doesn't have to go to that leg. But it does leave this moment of, like, wait, is he hurting him? And then he's not. not. And then it's like, you're kind of left in this like middle space where it's like, what's going on with Vader? And kind of the whole movie is about that. And then you go, wait,

is someone else going to choke somebody soon? And we do see somebody else choke somebody soon. The fact that actually the first person to like choke somebody out is Luke in the canteena, I mean, in the, in Jabas Palace is, is fucking wild. It's, it's so interesting putting in that context of like, is, can Vader be saved? Wait. Is Luke,

is Luke becoming his dad? He's in the all black fit. He's, you know, in this like very kind of solemn, uh, mode of being. Like his,

his entire presence is like so locked in. In a way that we, you know, he was, he was the farm boy. He was like the bumbling. like ha ha farm boy and now he's like so serious so solemn um in a in a very vader vatery way um it's it's it's interesting it's it's adding claim to the to the to the

will luke fall allegations i'm i'm seeing it now when the emperor shows up because it basically repeats the scene but i also think we flips the the progression is there, which side of the screen they're walking across. I think that's right. I think Vader it moves from left to right and the emperor it moves from right to left. But they have such a freighted exchange as Palpatine arrives and takes stock of him. And a thing I really like here is, you know, this is our first chance. Really, this is our first time getting a real look at Palpatine.

now the fully realized character. And the palpable distrust, but the way they're talking around, what is their central conflict, right? That the emperor wants to know, yeah, he wants to know exactly like how intent Vader still is on Luke Skywalker. And Vader kind of downplays exactly how interested

he is in all this. But then the emperor like throws out this this little like ray of hope. You know, well, actually, I think it's going to be very relevant to your interest because I have foreseen him coming here

and, you know, you have to bring him to me when he does so that the two of us can turn him to the dark side, but only the two of us can do it. This is another thing that many, many things I hate about the prequel trilogy. the rule of two doesn't exist in this,

in this original trilogy. And it can't exist because otherwise this exchange and the dramatic sense around it disappear. Yeah. What makes this scene so delicious is that Vader is still pretending to be the emperor's loyal servant

and still fully in on the Sith project or like, let's seduce this young Jedi to the dark side. And he can join us. and the emperor is just racked with suspicion that Vader is no longer reliable, that Vader and Luke are now mortal threats to him. He's also thinking that Vader is now such a threat that maybe he can just get rid of Vader and try to re-rack with Luke.

Pivot. But the emperor is, it's funny because he's so, he's such a little weasel. He's always got that like that creaky laugh. I've seen it all. But there's actual panic, I think here.

The way he's like needling him is sort of half joking, but not really. This is a film about like marriage and divorce. Because this is like a it's like I know we're due for a fight. Like I know the shoe's going to drop. And the emperor keeps like

jabbing at it because in some way, on some level, he wants it to go off. He just wants the masks to drop and they can finally address it. But nobody can actually be the first to say like, hey, let's admit what's going on here, okay? We fucking hate each other now. Nobody can do it. So the emperor's got to keep doing like, doing like these little needling jabs. And Vader has to keep deflecting them.

But all of this gets lost if it's rule of two because then there is no fees. way for them to pretend that there's a world here where together they can turn Luke. The deception they're playing at each other doesn't even hold water for the two of them. It gives everything the sense of predestination and eliminates any sort of real... I think, like, the dark side, all of this is much less seductive, much less interesting if it follows these like two-X Highlander rules where you know, for one person to join the side of evil, another person has to basically volunteer for their own annihilation. And then the game is like, oh, but the Sith always think it's going to be someone else.

It's like scorpions stingy each other. I think it's whack. Like, I think it sucks in the original trilogy. I think it leads to, I mean, or the prequel trilogy. Yeah. Yeah, the prequel trilogy. I think it leads to like wastes of a lot of compelling characters, you know, ventrists. being one, that whole arc being derailed by the fact that any time, you can just have, like,

these characters say, well, you know, rule of two means this person's got to go because now they've, like, done too many hours to be, like, considered contractor, and now they're a part-time Sith, and so we got to liquidate them. Like, I hate it, and here you see, that logic doesn't apply here, and it's part of the sin of the prequel trilogy to look at everything that happens in these movies and extrapolate it into a grand, principle that like ties history together in Star Wars that like, oh, you see, there can only really be a master and an apprentice simply because Palpatine and Luke both end up fighting or Palpatine and Vader both end up fighting over Luke like like a bone. And even then,

it's not really about Luke. It doesn't, they don't need, the thing that's so tough about it is like, and we know this because we've, we played Cotor, we read the old Republic comics. You don't need the rule of two for there to be backstabbing Sith who are, you know, colluding with their younger apprentices to betray their own masters. You can just do that. You don't need there to be this, this thing with Ventrists, for instance, where, oh, she's a Sith assassin or she's a dark Jedi or whatever, right? Like, she's not really a Sith apprentice. She's not quite that. She's this other thing. And you don't need that to create the sort of like, the thing that the rule of two is supposed to create, which is this tension of, can the second

person train their own replacement and then use that person to like overthrow their boss? You don't need it. You just don't need it. It creates more difficulty than it's worth. I think the one thing that it does do, if there is a reason for it, and maybe this is how George gets here in Phantom Menace, is like, if there is no reason for the Sith to be so small, then why isn't there an army of Sith? Why doesn't Palpatine have a hundred Darth Vader's, you know?

And so I think that's, to me, of the reasons for it in the material storywriting, story, you know, building craft thing, you get there because you don't want the final fight of Revent of the Sith to be a bunch of Jedi versus a bunch of Sith. And instead, you want it to be about this one guy who's being very manipulative. But it would have been fine to have him be the exception to the rule or to emphasize that, yeah, actually, all the Sith got killed. he's being very cautious. I think you can so get there

without the rule of two being like, well, right now there's just Palpatine in Mall. Now there's just Palpatine in Duku. Now there's just

Palpatine invader. The Sif have a big master plan. They're always looking to conquer the galaxy and like spread evil. But they always have to have a hierarchy with one guy, one direct report.

I mean, that would even kind of work here if this was a weird thing that Palpatine. did and not a Sith rule, but a sort of like Palpatine strategy. And then you could have Vader here being like, now, wait a second. Like, you don't use, don't use cell phones anymore, basically. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. We're like, you know, it's been 20 years. I've been his dude for 20 years. I thought he was done with this switching out his one apprentice. I thought I had locked it in, you know, maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he's going to end up. You know, I, again, the rule of two just isn't real here.

It's one of those things that's important to remember just is not here. In the same way that the chosen one prophecy isn't here, you know, note, no one says the word chosen one once, you know. That's true. They completely 86 that. Now you can say like they don't want to put that on Luke, but it is for sure. It's just not in the text. And again, the dramatic tensions come from other sources here and much more satisfying ones. In fact, there is another, as we learned last time.

So couldn't be the chosen one, really. It's kind of like, do you have more people? It is so funny that Luke is like, the second it's like, Luke, it's your destiny to face Vader and kill him and deal with the emperor. And Luke's like, hold on. I just found out there's another one. So maybe someone else's destiny and I can go fishing with my dad. Yeah. Though in the end, it will be that he doesn't want it to be somebody else's destiny that keeps him on the straight and arrow.

right. Do we talk with the third? I mean, first of all, just the emperor. Dude shows up, has the red guards who are coolest shit. All-timer arrival. Four dudes in all red everything with a long cape and a huge, like, tall

helmet. Everyone else in black, white, and gray. The emperor said they are the only ones who are allowed to serve. You just, sorry. These are my guys. We are showing out. And then he shows up and I hadn't really realized, I mean, if you asked me, I would say yes.

but if you just told me the list of things he shows up with, I might not have remembered he has like a walking stick that just looks like a big version of the Yoda walking stick. You know, I think that's cool. And I don't know, they do a good job of like teasing his face under the hood for the first like 30 or 40 seconds of this scene before he finally turns and looks at Vader and you're like, God damn, dude.

They fucked your face up, whatever they did to you. They really did. Or whatever you did to you. dark side motherfucker the remastered special edition is not kind to that makeup like it is in my head it's like you know it's kind of crazy because

McDarman's kind of always looked that way no he doesn't they had to just cover him in clown makeup for this movie and then do something to irritate the shit out of his pores like so it looks it looks like they basically

took like they they had like five minutes with him in the trailer and then just brought him out for this scene uh in a way that like this is the classic when hd cameras rolled out and like there's a hevelin like newscasts because just nothing was calibrated to be seen this sharply this is kind of how it feels is like god damn uh i don't know that i don't know that the uh makeup and costumy decisions of 1982, 83 are holding up under the merciless case of this remaster.

Do we want to hit the last emperor scene in this part of the movie? I think we get it, right? In the throne room? Is that still in the first half? Where they meet? That's when, yeah. When the emperor, when, when Vader lets him

know that Luke is on the ship and, um, yeah, this is, this is, after Han and Leah, Luke Chubaca are all on the stolen

transport Imperial Transport Shuttle or whatever Yeah To Lambda Class Shuttle Thank you I knew I could rely on Rob here to

give me the official name Don't ask where they have Greek letters I don't know why they have the word lambda Don't ask It is called Land to Clash. Greek people are real in Star Wars. Yeah, I guess I've met Dexter We should know this.

Yes, yes. He's running the Greek diet on Corosan. I need to try Hispanicopoda. I know his bomb as well. And then Andor taught us that there's like canonical Italians in Star Wars as well. True.

This is true. This is true. So yeah, so Vader approaches is, uh, Vader approaches the emperor and is basically like, I'm pretty sure my son is on that ship, by the way. Uh, I'm pretty sure he's there. And meanwhile, the emperor keeps telling Vader, he's going to come to you. Don't worry.

You don't need to go out and get him. Like, don't text him. Just wait until he comes to you. It's going to happen. And Vader's like, but what if he doesn't? What if he doesn't text me? back. So he, the emperor tells him, listen, go to the moon.

Go wait on the moon until, and Luke is going to meet you there. I promise you. I promise you that. Because when Luke and Leah and Han are trying to get past the initial imperial like code check, Vader is there. He like immediately senses that Luke is on the ship and the, you know, overseeing officer is like, should I let them through? Like I was going to say it's okay.

But if you tell me not to, I won't do it. And Vader's like, I will deal with them myself. And that's when he, but first he has to go check with his dad, Emperor Palpatine and make sure that's okay. I realize there's actually another scene with them before that also there. Because there's the one with, like, the Imperial officer there. And then there's two randos who are just hanging out with Palpatine. Oh, the two freaky randos. Right.

And that's him being like, that's Vader showing him from me like, hey, man, there's reports of a rebel fleet near Sulles. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. And he's like, no, just go to your command ship and wait. Skywalk will be one of us soon. The rebels will be, will be flattened. Don't worry about it. And that just kind of loops, which is also something I noticed kind of funny about this that

makes me think about it as a, this is going to sound dismissive, but, you know, one of the long-running critiques of Return of the Jedi from adult Star Wars fans is they made it into a kids movie, which is like a wild thing to say about Star Wars, because like it's always been, at least partly for children. And so, pardon me for maybe echoing some of this here, but I do think that there is a little bit of something that you get a lot of unwarrantedly in kids. media here, which is you repeat the same point over and over again. You, so we have four scenes.

We have three scenes. We have the emperor arriving, the emperor talking to him here, and the emperor talking to him after he comes and after he senses them and goes to get permission from the emperor. And in each time, the emperor is like, I sense that Luke is going to come to us. Luke is going to come to us and then he's going to become my apprentice. We're going to make him fall to the dark side, which is like, like hitting the audience over the head, uh, and apparently hitting Darth Vader over the head with this idea that like, what's going to happen is Luke, the good guy is going to come willingly

to face us and then we're going to make him bad. And like there's three scenes of that. Thankfully, it's like there are three really pretty scenes and we get a bunch of weird freaks and we get the cool red guards and there's like other things to like when you watch them. But it's not only that. There's a lot of dialogue that gets repeated in this movie, like back to back. I don't know, did you notice this? So I think maybe the one that's the most obvious part of this,

or most obvious example of this is when Han is on the barge and he's about to kill Boba Fett. He goes, Boba Fett, and it's like the same reed twice. And there's like four or five times that that happens in this movie. And there's lots of times when someone repeats the situation. to the viewer that they've just watched five minutes doing, which, by the way, is another way, which this starts to feel like future Star Wars, is that it's constantly explaining what already,

you already know, happened. And that felt... Landau does have to explain the tactical situation to Admiral Ackbar like three or four times. Yeah, dude, it happens kind of a lot throughout this movie in a way that I thought was kind of weird. I, like, started taking notes about just this as I was going forward because,

Also, there are a number of times when something is like really blatantly a d-yard in after the fact to clarify something that was not that unclear to begin with, you know? There's even a bit where Yoda is like, I do. Yes, I do. And it's like, sometimes it's character work, but sometimes it just feels like, okay, you know you don't have to say everything. You can just let there be dead air. Was Marsha out of the loop for this one? I'm not sure. Because they get divorced the same year this comes out.

I think that's correct. The other reason this becomes a marriage movie. Like, there's, like, there is, like, there is divorce all over it.

There is, how is this going to affect the kids all over it? Like, there's just a lot of, like, uh, this is the divorce album. But also,

like, Marsha Lucas's role, what the first film at least was like making the shit, like hang and come here in a way that was kind of graceful. She was on it. She was on it. was on it. Do you want to know what George said she worked on?

What? I'm scared. I'm just going to make sure. I'm just going to make sure that I'm reading this right. Okay, Marcia, this is from Time.com or Time magazine. Marcia is a talented film editor with credits on taxi driver in New York, New York, as well as Star Wars, for which she shared an Oscar. On Jedi, she was chiefly responsible for the emotional scenes.

The, quote, dying and crying, as her husband says. Awesome. She says, I love film editing. I have an innate ability to take good material and make it better, and I think bad material and make it fair. I think I'm even, I think I'm even an editor in life. She has taken charge of the layout and decoration of the Lucasfilm's offices,

creating a remarkably pleasant workspace with light, airy offices and numerous, much-use kitchens for the employees. I'm sad. Yeah. So she did, she did, she did work on this. I don't, she was not alone in working on it. there was another editor along with her, at least at least the one.

So, yeah. Yeah. But they, you are also right, Rob, she asked for a divorce in 82. George asked her to wait until after, return to the Gen.

I think of public with their divorce. Yikes. Dwayne Dunham and Sean Barton for the other editors on this. So a number of editors. Anyway. No. I do think you're right that there is a difference in quality of editing.

I also think respectfully difference in the quality of direction. I don't think they get as much good stuff out of this as an empire, out of these factors. This is directed by Richard Marcant, Markand. Maybe Marquand. I actually don't know. Maybe Markwand. Could be Markwand. new director alert

did not was not a part of Not the amazing Philography Duh Not super strong But he died only a few years after this Maybe he had a banger in him

Besides this And we just didn't get to see it Question marks It's possible Let me Let me go to bat for the boy You know I was a little surprised

By like how much it seemed Like the cast had aged Even though it had only been six years Yep and yeah, I don't know if there's just something about like, there's so much in the Star Wars machine now that it almost starts to feel like I'm Harrison Ford being Han Solo instead of being Han Solo

in some of these scenes. The second they took him out of the ice, I was like he doesn't look right. Yeah, I mean, there's like a reading of Han Solo's in this movie that I like of like, he is still coming out of it throughout the entire film and that's like why he's a little silly. That's why he

like fumbles the like weird run past the stormtrooper that he fucks up in the forest. That's like why he kind of staps at Leah and then like immediately is like oh I'm sorry for doing that. Like he feels like he's not himself through the majority

of it. Yeah. Agreed. But also is it bad direction or is it not adequate actor direction? Or is the series also becoming kind of indifferent to how the actors are doing. Like, I mean, you know, Lucas's influence on this is going to be increasingly like,

we'll fix it in post, kind of. And I have, like, y'all are kind of just here to play these stock characters while I just move the pieces around. And we see that come to full fruition with the sequel trilogy. But, yeah, it does feel like nothing quite feels hooked up.

And it's, I also just struck, like, none of the characters quite look right to me. And it has not been that long since they made Empire. What tried to be crazy is there's some shot, there are some shots where they could look even, we see them looking better and they don't stick with those looks for long enough. Princess Leia looks like the coolest person and the hottest person of all time when she takes the mask off. Bounty Hunter outfit. Bounty Hunter outfit with her hair off to the, never been hotter. Never being cooler.

Unbelievable. They never let her have that hair cut. And I'm sorry. Does she look moisturized in the way she never looks for the rest of the film? I don't know, she's glowing in there. Well, I have good news for all of you, and you can get Princess Leia Bounty Hunter

Fortnite skin right now, and she can live forever as a Fortnite's skin. Oh, Carrie would love that. It's so bad out here, man. That is the, coolest outfit. It's like, when I was a kid, I was like, oh, that's the coolest outfit in Star Wars. This is kind of like, it's the obese bounty hundreds. Bouch, B-O-U-S-S-H. I've always thought that since I was like 12 or 10 or 8 or however old I was when I first saw this.

I was like, that's the coolest character in Star Wars. And I'm like, oh my God, and it's Princess Leia. Sick. Like hair looks fantastic. Just like everything is, everything is perfect. But yeah, it's like... There are almost like that for everybody, I think. Did Luke get... Did Mark get in another car accident? Like, it kind of looks like... The early 80s, man.

He looks kind of badly made up. And again, I just don't think the haircuts are good on anyone. Like, everything looks a bit off. I think he looks good in the black when he shows up here at the beginning. And I think he... Mostly what I like about him in this movie. And we maybe should start talking about the main three. rest of this movie now, but he's so severe. He's so, he's like a little scary when he first

shows up here. And I did not, somehow, despite being the person who's constantly like, this is a movie where the stakes are. Is Luke gonna go bad or not? I'd forgotten how much Luke, how much Hamill plays that in the performance. I think his performance is really strong throughout the whole movie. This, especially in the first half, but there's so many moments where I was like, the fuck were we on thinking that Mark Hamill was the weak link in this cast? I don't know. Because he has so many great, graceful little moments. Like, that to your point about him being severe and dark, it also means those few moments

where he gets to be one of the guys again and like sort of be enjoying the hijinks, you see how much he is amused by them and how much he's going to kick out of it. But also it's like a guy who's gone back to hang out with his friends in high school. And like he's not of them anymore. It's not really one of them. He's somewhere else. And so like I think there's so many little moments like that where like Luke is not, the farm boy is gone really.

Like there's totally gone. He's sort of burdened by this destiny. And he gets little tastes of being reunited with his friends and one of the gang. But now it's always like trans. that he's got to go back out there and face fader. When I think about Luke at the end of a new hope, he just went on the adventure of a lifetime. He like met a wacky old wizard, old Ben,

and he did see some pretty fucked up shit when Ben disappeared, but he made these new friends. And then he got to show off his awesome piloting skills and his newfound, you know, connection to the force by blowing up the death star. Like, that was an adventure. That was, he went on an adventure. Episode five is not an adventure. It is, he fought for his fucking life against his, figured out who his dad was, got his hand cut off, almost died.

And, like, like, went into the tree of the dark side of the force and faced, you know, his greatest fears and etc., etc. Like that was not adventure time. That was, holy shit, I am completely changing the trajectory of my entire life. And I am realizing things about myself and my history and my legacy that I had no idea were even remotely possible. So when I think of Luke at the beginning of this movie, it's like he is like forever changed by the, the events of Empire Strikes Back.

Like he lost his friend. He didn't save Han. He failed at that. He failed Yoda by leaving. Like I think he's carrying all this stuff with him that he's like, I have to see this through. I have to see the part of, of, of my decision making that was I am leaving this Jedi training. I'm leaving Yoda to go save my friends. I failed at it in, you know, the first phase, but here I am to see it out.

And then, you know, seeing him actually go to Yoda and what he's like there on Dagaba is a continuation of that. It's like he's, he's carrying so much on him. And with that, just his connection to the force post the brawl with Darth Vader has grown tenfold. Like he's able to maneuver the force in much, much like more naturalistic ways. The way he enters Jabba's palace is like, you know, swag levels 1,000, but also scary. Like he, he, he, he, he, he, he's able to toss aside those two Gomorrean guards, like it's, like, like, they're nothing. He instantly is able to, you know, perform a Jedi mind trick and persuasion check against, uh, Bibifortuna. Like, he is, he's, you know, firing on all cylinders in a way that is, is such a stark difference from where he was at the last,

in the beginning of the last film. But any fun? That's right. No, he's not having fun. No, there's no fun to be had here. Even when he smirks, it's, it's a little bit like, it's a little bit like the Obi-Wan smirks in the first movie, but he doesn't have the joy behind them yet.

He's just like, they're the smirks of someone who's powerful and knows that he can get what he wants and that everybody around him doesn't have it like he has it. What's weird is if they'd written Anakin better. Yeah. We would see Anakin gazing out through Luke's eyes more clearly, I think. I think that was the intention. But it's a funny thing.

Like Luke has this like haunted, this haunted look, but also sometimes an eerily calculating one. Yeah. Just like that there's a fatalism about how these encounters are going to go. and it is just a matter of getting to the end despite how he wishes that we go differently. Yeah.

And, you know, the prequel trilogy just don't, just don't bring that into focus. But to get there, we do have to go through Jabba's Palace. And, you know, actually, it actually is a rich place.

Like, we've talked about all this stuff, but I remember Jabba's Palace as being, it kind of feels, feels like a failed first act in some ways to me, where it's like that return of the Jedi, the problem is begin from the start, which is that kind of doesn't hang together, because first we have to deal with this threat that was hanging over Han and rescue Han, and then we can

go on with the rest of the story. And I think there's a bit of that, but Austin, like your interpretation of it being a, like, through the looking glass dark fairy tale version of the space western hero's journey of the first film where now everything is sort of twisted and corrupted even more so like that the Java sand crawler

seems scary but it really is just like a mobile garage sale this place is scary that you have like this really cool like droid torture chamber where drawers are being ripped apart just for fun

and honestly even there are elements of this that like, uh, do feel like, uh, Christian allegory and imagery. 3PO and R2 journeying into the depths of Jabba's palace.

Uh, is this in the 83 version? They're tripped through the cells. Um, with like the, the creatures reaching out for them through the bars and stuff. Oh yeah. Oh,

it's like a journey into hell. And, and, like, the thing that hit me through this is like, you know, the part of the Christian cycle of like, the cover that comes up in Dante, like this is where where Christ brought forth,

saved the souls and brought them out through this. The heroine to hell. Yeah. Yeah, this is them descending into hell. And it is like this, this sequence of like just damnation for every kind of creature, right? the freaks are being tortured.

They're buried in the cells pleading for salvation. The droids are being tortured. They put pain receptors on that gonged droid's feet. So they heard him by burning his damn feet. That's hellish to me. That's, yeah. They didn't need to give him pain receptors down there. What are they doing?

They have just a gongtroid. Yeah, they have that one droid in the damn Metal Gear Solid torture rack that they had solid. They corner him. They corner him. They disintegrate him by pulling him apart into little pieces. Not disintegrate him. They disintegrate him, you know? Well, and this is all glimpsed through 3PO, 3PO size, effectively.

Yeah. Who is not clued into any of the plan. He's in ignorance like the rest of us. Everyone else has been told what the plan is. 3PO just feels like things are getting worse and worse and worse and worse, and that there is no salvation here, which I think does make it more menacing because it's all glimps through this strange, like, wait, I thought I was just delivering a message.

Now I'm trapped here in hell. Like, he's abandoned us to this. The other, the other reference here for me, definitely, especially on the rewatch that I had just, like, never really thought about before. So maybe, like, it opens with Jabba smoking as hookah. I should have thought about it. It's like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, like, the corrupt sultan of the deserts, you know, like, there's a little, like, 1,001 nights.

Arabian nights, 1,000, or 1001 tales, 1,000, 1,000, what's the actual name of the thing I'm thinking of, Rob? It is 1,0001 nights, right? Is that right? Okay, yeah, 1,0001 nights. This particular style of Middle Eastern folk tale with the corrupt, you know, desert ruler and the corrupt, you know, court

where people are being tortured for fun. And then the noble wanderer comes in to, like, overturn it and reveal the, you know, blackness at the heart of the place. That sort of thing is, like, all over a lot of Middle Eastern and Arabic folk tales. And even down to, like, there's, like, the, you know, it is, it is probably too far to say the job of the hut is, maybe it's not too far to say the job of the hut is fatphobic. They know what they're doing. But it's not just a big fat guy, you know, he is a big slug monster.

But it's playing in a lot of those spaces pretty actively. I don't know how I never really made that leap. I think just because I knew this before I'd ever encountered any other sort of Orientalism, you know? It's like, oh, yeah. When I see other stuff, I go, as a little kid, I go, oh, yeah, that's like tattooing. But compared to Mosisly, which feels like the Wild West, the Western, right? The first movie is like, oh, there are the sand people and then there are the like the outposts. And so we're playing in the Western of the Native American tribe and the settler outpoles.

post. Here we are playing in the other version of the desert, the kind of Middle Eastern desert, um, with the dancing girls and the chained, and also the chained women and the smoke and shadow and all that stuff. Which by the way, I think the original song is better. I like this song. So much more. And this was the first time I saw non-CG snice noodles. and she is incredible. Like, why did we, why did we stray so far from the light? She's so, I was so overjoyed to see a puppet here playing nice noodles. It was, she looks great.

Java looks great. The Java puppet is fantastic. Max Rebo looks good. Max Rebo looking good, man. Max Rebo, literally, I. is my king, I would do anything. And you know who's not here? Is that weird furry freak

whose mouth you see inside of in the CG special edition? I don't like that guy. No, and he's so in it. Wait, which guy's this? I'm trying to remember from me. Go watch Jedi Rocks the terrible song from the special edition.

Here, I'll send you up, it's this, fuck, this is, is, but here it is it's this guy this furry freak I don't know his I don't know his Oh yeah that guy that guy that he looks like a flea He's like a flea guy

Wait this one one second There we go Yeah He does look like a flea Who is this God Actually the buildup in the original version is way better To the ranker pit

Like moment where in the special edition, yeah, fuck this guy. I hate this guy. I hate it, man. It's like, why are we on a Disney ride right now? This is driving crazy. No, this dude, this motherfucker looks like,

oh my God, it's the we buy ugly houses, motherfucker. You've seen those ads, right? In my back of trucks. Yeah, with the big, the huge beard. Shitty caveman. Yeah, the shitty caveman. He is kind of the shitty caveman. but no I hate this character

and it's just like it goes on for an extra minute I don't need it it's a weird thing the special edition makes this decision like we're gonna show what we've done to this new look how awesome this is we put a musical number in the middle of Java's Palace

and you got the uncanny uncanny valley size noodles like 3D effect of her lips like blasting like her CG lips blasting into the camera. But the whole thing now is stage like music number.

This original version is like it's like walking into a strip club at like two in the afternoon. It is. Like this is not where you want to be. This is not a good scene. And it has that like

unsettled surly energy. Like Java's kind of bopping along to it but like seeing the girl dance but also you can see this girl get killed. both tend to be interesting. Right? She's so scared. She's definitely trying to keep him

like enamored of her dance. Yeah. When you first see her she's like, I don't want it. It's very clear she's scared of being here. It's a weird place to drop in a hot new CG song.

It's very, it was a weird choice for them to change that in the special edition. It's bizarre. It also like really, it just, to me, the vibes of this room are like

everyone is getting like shit faced and loaded every like when you when when Leah comes back here later when she's you know going to free Han everyone is kind of us passed out in the room

stuff like everything happens in this room people are eating here living dining sleeping like it's all just it's kind of this um you know, it just feels like this like this sunken place

of debauchery that people don't leave. Like you're not coming in and out of Jabba's Palace. You're just, you're stuck here. You ever have friends to have like a standing house party? Yeah. It's not good.

Like you either become one of the people who's at the house party like in the morning and just like waking up and like what's to eat, what are we going to eat? Or you get the fuck out of there and you never talk to those people again. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not supposed to be there. This isn't for me at all. Also, wait, it says here, Rob, that you get shots of her down in the pit in the special edition? Yes, you do. And it's her looking up. It's not much. Okay. It's like a reaction shot, isn't it?

Becoming terrified of, it's, it's her terrified of like what's coming, basically. Which you don't need. We get it. We get that what's going on down there is fucked up. And I think it's such a better. payoff to wait until we're with Luke himself down there. Right. Seeing what it is that is like so scary, so, you know, menacing.

We don't need to see the poor, you know, tragic dancer who's giving it her all to try and survive out here. And unfortunately. It doesn't show the rancor at least, though, right? Right. They say that reveal for when he goes down there. Okay. Yeah.

It shows like the gate lifting and. you know, but you don't see what's behind. Gotcha. Well, Leah is here. Dengar never would have that happen to Manoroo. That's so true. So true. Leah is here in costume

and in disguise as the bounty hunter with Chewy and with a thermal detonator and she negotiates. Yep. I love it. And then yeah, it's awesome. Oh, that's sorry, one last

thing on the user number. The way it's edited in the new version makes Boba Fett look way more into it. Oh, right. Like in the special edition now, like Boba Fett's like, yeah, music number. And in the original editing, it just looks like he's kind of stuck there because he has to be. Professionally, he's obligated to be there. But like, again, nobody's having a good time who isn't one of like Java's hangers on. And this is really like, Bob, you got to get out of there, man.

You can look at the cargo. Like, what do you do? Again, this is where, to me, the exposure of Boba Fett as, like, kind of a fraud, it kind of begins here. Yeah. Because it's like, man, winners aren't hanging out here. Like, winners take their paycheck and they get the fuck out. You're not hang around this man. There's no, there's no, like, you pay your, you deliver your contract and you get out of there.

Maybe he's waiting for... The loser shit is hanging around hoping for, like, an extra little, like, payday to drop out of the sky. Okay, but here's my theory. What if Jabba, like, cut his brake lines on the fire spray, not the slave one, the fire spray. And, uh, is like, oh, we're going to get that fixed for you any day now, Boba. But until then, hang out and tell us cool stories about bounty hunting. That's why he gives that little knot to lay it in the costume. because he's like, all right, you know how it goes to Jabba, man.

Fuck this guy, right? Yeah, fuck this guy. I actually wonder if he's the one who lets Jabba know. And it's like, that's not him. I know that guy. I know that guy from around the way. That's not him. He never talks like that.

He hates thermal detonators. I would never use a thermal detonator. That's right. But yeah, so the reveal that, yeah, she goes through there, his palace just turns into a crash pad overnight she pulls off the rescue we get the great reveal she looks fantastic

Han achingly vulnerable can't see who is this it's it's Leah and then he immediately goes into while still like shaking with the chills trying to talk his way out of it with Jabba yeah like everyone let me work

yes oh he doesn't And I also love his reunion with Chewy. We're like Chewy, Chewy clues us in that like, we're still like, this is, believe it or not,

still part of the plan. And we don't know what Chewy says, but Han is like Luke. Luke can't take care of himself. Yeah. And also just a marker of like how much things have changed where, oh, now Luke is the closer.

Like Luke is the, Luke is the ace in the hole that we're going to, we're going to bring out here. And we've all just put our head in the lion's mouth because, like this isn't out of control. This is contrary the emperor. Emperor always being like everything is as I have foreseen. This is a ridiculous plan that appears to basically shake out exactly the way Luke

anticipated it would. Yeah. Yeah, Han, the last time Han saw Luke was on the base at Hoth, right? Saying goodbye in that one scene. And that's it. They haven't seen each other since then. And how, you know, so much has changed. He's not a little kid anymore.

He's not. So true. And so, like, when Luke arrives in the place, one thing we get, Jabba looks comfortable as hell to lean against, though. Like, I know, like, Lay is in a tough spot here, and that outfit doesn't look comfortable, and obviously it's degrading. But, like, that does. I don't know.

It's a beanbag chair. No, like it's so, it's so soft. It's not being bag chair. It's slimy. He's so slimy. The way it just gives every time like somebody bumps the belly, it's like, oh, that's just that's just upholstery. I don't think. No, no, because it's like, because it's leather and it's fleshy and it smells crazy in there. It smells crazy. And the cameras constantly, like everyone is drooling in this room all the time. It's so messed up. Yeah, why is everyone drooling all the time? Chabba does it and they got to make it look like, you know what I mean? You can't not rule.

Oh, I just love smearing food over my face. I'm going to eat this pizza the way he eats the frogs. He does eat those frogs. He does have the jar of the frogs right there. Oh, it's scary in there. I don't want to be in there. I don't want, I hate it's dark. It's dark vibes.

It's dark vibes. I hate his little guy. Salacious be crumb. Yeah. Okay What's up? He eats C3PO's eye He eats C3POS I

That she was crazy I did not remember that happening at all I was horrified by it I was like what the fuck is going on here That guy's a little freak he's a little freak I don't like him His laugh is yeah it's a nightmare It's a sadistic monkey

Yeah like it's like a pet monkey that realizes Like people are just being eaten destroyed degraded and it loves it It loves every bit of it. Yeah. I want to know how he... I want to know how he got in with Java. Like, was he like something that Jabba just like saw...

Probably a gift, right? Probably a gift. You know there's going to be an answer to this now, right? Somebody brought... Yeah, there is an answer. Let's see. I'm looking. Salacious.

Check up a unique deal with him. What? Oh, he's stoked. go away on Jabba the Hutt's starship. It was found and captured by Bibb Fortuna. And then he was just like cool enough to get in with the crew. No, and then he did 1,001 nights. Jabba Shack would be a unique deal with the monkey lizard.

If Crum could have abused Jabba at least once a day, he would be allowed to eat and drink as much as he pleased, but if he failed, he'd be slain. So he has to make Jabba laugh once per day. So wait, that thing is fully sentient? Oh, yeah. I don't know, man. I guess he has the name,

so they just be Crumb, so maybe, He got middle initial. You're a dude. But hey, I figure like puppets also sometimes get like full names. So. So he's a jester? He's kind of a jester. And he's, and he lived like that for over a dozen standard years he made Java laugh every day once a day.

That is, wow. Get you one like that. Wow. Get you someone who makes you laugh like that. But then you say that you live with someone. And then you got to get out. He gets to eat and drink as much as he pleases. He does.

And Rob, he's cozyed up right where you'd want to be. He's right in, he's right there in Jabba's little. Do you almost say the Jabba Tate? Oh, I almost thought. No, I was going to say Javada Tilly. I thought you were going to say titty. I thought you were to say right up in the Java Titty. And I was like, whoa.

Either way, the Hut anatomy doesn't have a lot of great places to be. It's true. Yeah. But I am just saying that puppet. But the Laceous to be crumbs. enjoying it. Yeah. You were reminded many times that that is a hollow, that is a hollow poppet.

That's true. That she's, that she's up against. That's true. Luke shows up in full, like, maybe Dark Jedi mode. He kills those guys. I know we had this conversation years ago now, but any doubt in anyone's mind that he is forced choke. Maybe he doesn't kill them, but he certainly force chokes.

There's two Gomorri and guards. on his way in. Right? Yes. They go like this. I'm making, I'm using my hands and covering my throat

and making the universal choking symbol. Yeah. Maybe you're like submission. Like maybe he choked like maybe you didn't kill them. He just choked them out a little bit. Right.

Yeah, it's okay as long as they don't die. It's okay to choke them with the force a little bit. Like a James Bond kind of scenario where you just like pinch in the right spot. Oh, like Buster Bluth. Yeah,

go to sleep. when Yoder was saying the force isn't a weapon you know that's not what the Jedi do that's he meant it was okay to choke a little bit you know um no he is fully

like he's he learned that from his dad he that's that's a new that's a new one for him for sure yeah and he completely I really love the bit early

when the projection the holographic projection shows up And Bibb Frachuna is like, he's not a Jedi to Java. And then when Luke shows up, he goes over, he gets Jedi Mind Tricked, he goes over to Job. And he's like, oh, the Jedi Knight, the Jedi Knight is here. Oh, yeah? Yeah, Bibb is just, he doesn't have a chance. Like, the going up to, the way that he approaches Jabba, I mean, I know he's under, under,

a spell, he's under the Jedi Mind Trick, uh, force of the Jedi Mind trick. But it's just like, he should count his blessings that Jabba didn't just throw him in the Rancor pit right then and there with the way he was talking to Java. I'm telling you. There's also a bit of,

so this is fun, like the way Lou handles Jabba here is, it is a negotiation, but all of it is this one last chance vibe of like, hey, like I've tried. It reminds me a bit of Oh God, he's Chas Palminteri

In a Bronx tale In some ways And Jabba's the biker gang Where it's like, hey, I tried treating you like gentlemen Door locks Now you can't get out And this is that where it's like He's negotiating with Jabba

But in a way that like And this is again, little Dark Jedi coded He keeps letting Jabba like wrap the rope around his own neck, which is literally done with Leah. But at every turn, like Luke keeps holding out, like,

we could resolve this peaceably. But also he's kind of decided, but you won't. And so everybody here is going to die. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is like a,

it comes across like he's extorting Java in a very funny way a couple of times here. There's a real like, listen, we can do this. easy way or the hard way. You can give me what I want or you can be destroyed.

He says the words, you'll be destroyed. He doesn't say I'm going to free my friend no matter what. He says, you will be destroyed. And I think that that's, you know, again, he's not, it's a thing probably worth saying. It's like, I ring the bell of like the stakes of this movie are, is Luke going to fall to the dark side or not a lot. I know that's the thing that I talk about all the time with this movie. And I want to emphasize that like, there's a difference between.

Those are the stakes of the movie, and you, the viewer, feel like you believe it could happen. Sometimes you know the face is going to beat the heel in a wrestling match, but the stakes of the match are still going to be like, what's it going to take for the face to win against the heel, right? Like, and in this case, the question isn't, I think anybody watching the series, especially if you're just watching the original trilogy, probably feels in their heart, Luke Skywalker's a good guy. He's not going to fall to the dark side. Some way or another, he's going to save his friends and save the galaxy. Especially if you know it's the end of a trilogy, you probably don't believe he's going to fall to the dark side and that's going to be the end of the series. But it is still what the story is about, is about how much is he going to get caught in some sort of spiritual or genetic destiny that is tied up with who his father is. Is he going to become Darth Vader again?

we see it in a scene momentarily when he gets shot in his hand and the wires are revealed and he puts the black glove over his hand like it's as clear as day that like the story is interested in the draw of destiny

for Luke towards a form that looks like Darth Vader and we've been told that Anakin was a great hero and so of course what we're going to get to see is Luke doing great feats of heroism just like his father did I'm sure this version of Anakin

the version that is suggested to us saved his friends a great number of times. And we can kind of see that in this Luke. This is what he must have looked like. Now, the actual Anakin we've seen doesn't really look like this Luke or move like this Luke that often. But that's supposed to be, I think, what we're kind of feeling a little bit is like, this is what a young Anakin was like. Young Anakin definitely killed a number of creatures and made their creature, you know,

handlers cry about it. It is weird though The like They never pull up Because Anakin's too whiny There is never a moment Where Anakin feels like a gun sitting on the table And Luke constantly feels like a gun

Placed pointedly on the table In these scenes And Hamill is bringing that Whereas like And also I The thing that occurred to me here too Hey the Jedi are scary He's scary

He's wearing like Regulation Jedi uniform basically, right? The done cloth, the hood and all that. But like the hood, the inability to see who you're dealing with, the fact that like they're in indistinct form crackling with power. And that is how they go forth in the world. And like in that light, the gap between Jedi and Palpatine.

doesn't quite, doesn't seem quite as huge as sometimes it appears. The Jedi are also kind of like willing to play up the like hanging back in the shadows and just being a threat of violence. They're sort of the, you know, the, what is it in a samurai film where like they don't draw the blade, but they just release it from that like final stay on the, on the hilt, right? That is, that is kind of the Jedi. There's that little bit of the feel of steel running through the scabbard. Another thing, Star Wars doesn't deliver on it. Star Wars loves killing monsters.

And here we have that. And yet, the enduring scene of it is that was someone's beloved creature. Yeah. And the handlers are like, gut. And it's not played for laughs. Like, this guy runs past Luke and people taking Luke back into custody. runs past that and sees the rancor like pinned beneath the gate and is overcome. And the scene ends as like his buddy, like one of the the pirate, the,

they're a weak way, I think, right? Weekways, yeah. Yeah. Like grabs him and like tries to lead him away from the body. And it's like a weird little like humanist note in the midst of this that is not how Star Wars has handled monsters ever since, right? Like, oh, we got a critter that, like, kill, there's a danger to, like, humans.

Got to kill it. Got to deal with it. And here we've got an actual monster kept in, kept in the dungeon. And the handler's there to sort of imply that, you know, that is someone's pet. Yeah.

Yeah, I can't imagine it not being played for laughs, I guess, in another Star Wars scene, like in a future Star Wars moment. I feel like the killing, you know, the sadness of the monster handler is like more of a gag, is more of a bit than it is you genuinely empathizing with them.

And for what it's worth, I feel like that maybe was the intention here is like, look at this like, you know, this disheveled, guy who like the thing that he cares about is this like terrible monster like I think there is a bit of a

I think we are empathetic beings here and we are we are people who are saying beings like the Revenge of the Sith novel you're right I think I could imagine this getting laughs in the theater in 1983 with this this shabby guy I guess yeah

But I love him. That's my boy. I love him. I feel bad for him. I feel bad for the rancor. Like the rancor didn't ask to be, you know, the direct TV of the fucking Jabba's Palace. It's not his fault. And yeah, it centers.

I mean, you know, Rob, to your point, it centers that Luke killed a thing and somebody sad about that thing. It doesn't just vanish off the screen. Luke killed something. That's, you know, we've seen Jedi. do that before. In some ways, this Luke is a lot like the Obi-Wan Kenobi who cut that guy's arm off in the canina in A New Hope, right? Like that's, again, the Jedi of the shadow who's like willing to be a force for violence instantly. Though also, I think part of the reason why

this stuff works so well is like Luke doesn't even have his lightsaber here. And he's still so imposing throughout all these scenes. I'm so confident, you know? It's true. It's good. We are going to get his new lightsaber. which looks like that looks great first we got to get them on the sandbars they're heading out there in the special edition they're bouncing some club tunes on the on the way out there uh again deeply feeling like a 90s work at that point is the music different what is the music what's it like i'm listening there's a bop in the original two playing there it's a different track. But it's like while

R2 is doing drink service, right? Yes. Yeah, this is while they're like racing over the sand. Yes. Yeah. So you're hearing it like from their from their sound systems. I would bet it's different. I would not be surprised by that. So. Either it's much

pointed about it. But yeah, and then Luke does the one last one last chance for Java. And then cool green lightsaber. Just mowing people down. Yep. Nobody else really contributes except Leah. Yeah.

This blue screen stuff looks pretty good. The outside, like, sand barge stuff? Yeah, like the lighting is pretty strong and consistent with the backdrop. Like, seeing through the window of the barge as Leah's looking out at Han and Luke, like, works really well for me. Yeah. Agreed. Better than Endor IMO. Well, and some of it is some of it is really

on set too. Not obviously not the, they don't have floating sail barges flying around. That stuff is a fact. But notably, the reason he has a green lightsaber is because the blue didn't look good in the sky of the deserts of Tunisia. And so they gave him a green lightsaber.

It was supposed to be blue originally. And as always, that is just like, I love being reminded that the thing is just a movie, you know, and like they have to make the movie. And there's, there were, you know, through the edit, it was blue. And then at some point they were like, we can't really see it. Good. What if it were green?

What if he made a green lightsaber? And they're like, yeah, that looks great, actually. And that's how it goes. Yeah. So, which I, the thing I read recently, too, is that that's actually sort of related to why base window has the purple lightsaber too. in Attack of the Clones. It's not just

Samuel Jackson wanted the purple one. It's that he wanted to be visible in the fight scene. He wanted to be separated from all the blue and green ones. And so he was like,

give me a different color. Give me a purple one. Which is very funny, you know? That is really funny. Sometimes you've got to make a physical movie you're going to make a movie, you know?

Samuel L. Jackson had made a lot of movies at that point in time. And I think it's extremely commendable the foresight that he had that he, you know, would find a way to really make himself pop on screen. I think that's awesome. That's right.

Bob Effect gets played, as you said, Rob. Killed by accident. I mean, killed by a funny, like, ha-ha moment. He gets to work like four times in a row. That's your goat. That's your goat.

He gets, so he, he, so Luke does the, like, fake jump off the side of the, he walks the plank, but he grabs the plank and then like, you know, boomerangs himself back up into the air. You like springboards himself up in the air. R2 shoots the lightsaber off into the sky just off screen. Mara Jade watches. We never see her, but she's here somewhere, remember. Remember. If only she'd caught the lightsaber, we'd all gone different. Oh, my God.

She's just off screen. Luke catches it. Um, and Boba Fett like backpack, you know, uh, jet packs over to him. Uh, get one. Luke immediately cuts his blaster in half. Like, it's not a big deal. Then he does wrap Luke up with the, with the little grappling hook wire thing. And then Luke immediately cuts that wire in half.

Then a gunner from, I forgot in this part, a one of the, like, a heavy gunner on top of job as Skybarge shoots at them and just shoots Boba Fett in the back. She's like, hits the ground behind Boba Fett, and he just falls over, which is embarrassing. Or maybe what happens is Luke, like, blocks it and reverses it behind him or something. But then he gets up and we get the moment. He stands up behind Han Solo. Chewy goes, rah, rah, r. And Han goes, Boba Fett, Boba Fett, where? And then turns and by mistake his Boba Fett in the back with a stick he found.

And Boba Fett's jetpack turns on Flies him into the side of the barge And then falls into the pit The Sarlac pit at the pit of Kharkoom or whatever Rip Embarrassing Yeah so funny If you are a kid who like loved your Boba Fett

Action figure for years For four years And this happened to your guy What do you even What do you even say? Well this is Imagine going to school the next day after being the kid with a boba fat action figure.

Everyone else is like, Luke is going to get you, Hats someone's alive, like, Tar's Vader sucks, and then he falls into a pit accidentally. But wait until that Boba Fett kid gets his, uh,

gets his validation. His Boba Fit off. When Boba Fett wakes up in the Sarlac pit, um, you know, what years is, 40 years later, Well, the time you.

The thing is there's two different eras of Boba Fett waking up in the pit, right? There's the Boba Fett that we know from the TV show where he becomes the daimio after becoming a member of the Sand People clan or whatever. We all remember. And then there is the Boba Fett novelizations where he also wakes up in the Sarluck pit and crawls his way out. Yeah. It's not good. And then what does he do? There's a whole war of the bounty hunters.

Yeah, he hangs out with Dengar for a little bit. I don't know. I don't. I think you read those books more recently than me. Did you actually get through the, or did you just read the bounty hunter, the tales from Jabba's Palace? I just read the tales of the bounty hunters.

Okay. Okay. Which was just the introduction to all of them. And I think that that is pre-fif. It. I think that that's right, because then it's the, oh my God, what is the actual series called? What is the actual name of the, the Boba Fett short story, not short story, but novel collection actually called. It is called the Bounty Hunter Wars.

It's the KW. Jeter series, which I read and loved back then. and the first one 100% is him waking up in the pit of Kharkoon and like dragging himself away and then it's him and the other bounty hunter. It's him in Zuckus and Dengar and, you know, I don't remember the core details of it all, but it's all caught up in, you know, it's all the, that era of late 90s EU stuff. So I was going to say one day I'll go back to it all, but I'm not sure I will. will. I don't like that.

I don't like that Boba Fett. So this is one of the things where it's just like every Boba Fett thing is a, every Boba Fett moment is a is this your king moment? Like there's just never even like he tracks Han to Cloud City, but Vader's the one who captures him. Yeah. Yeah. Like Vader.

He's even like complaining about it. Yeah. Right, and just kind of whining. Like, no. You promised you give me Han Solo. And Vannis, like, shut the fuck up. Like, I'm freezing him to a brick for the guy I actually care about. Then you can have whatever's left him.

I don't really care. Yeah, it's funny. So he gets a slapstick deaf. Han, we get some slapstick with him and Lando. Some good, like, I'm seeing what's better now. guard, by the way. We kind of move past that, but Lando also undercover. Cool outfit also, but just like one of the guys.

The helmet is sick. The helmet is very sick. It is. Immediately knocked off the skiff, though, and is hanging above the Sarwhack pit, and Han has to save him by sending a stick down. And then, of course, like Leia chokes the shit out of

Java, and, man, it's kind of gnarly. Yeah. Like, I don't know how you know when a puppet is dead, but you know he's dead. It's like, wow, it's sort of you, you sense when the puppet is animated and, like, living, and then what a dead puppet looks like, and Java's extremely dead when she's through with him.

Yeah. And Luke kills, I don't know, a dozen people here. Luke really, like, comes for Jabba's whole shit. Like, it is, it is, he, there's nothing left of the Jabba gang. This is devastating damage to Jabba and his crew. The mission screen for this is like Leia, one boss kill, like two or three, like two or three enemies killed.

Han, one enemy killed. Lando, zero kills. Luke, 275 kills. That's nothing compared to, was death star numbers though man you know no it's real yeah so now he's killed a million 275 people that's right yeah oh man but he's up there i do think it's interesting when he's up on the top of the sail barge and he's like yelling at lea did anybody else kind of feel this that that when he's up there and he's telling lea to point the gun at the deck he like yells at her twice in increasing

amounts of like she doesn't get it at first like what like huh But he's like, we got to blow this whole thing up, you know? He's like, point the gun at the deck. And he's not. He's like, he's locked in in a way that's a little, you know. It's like when you're grouped up with a friend. It's like, yeah, we'll do that raid together or something. We'll play it.

Like, and you realize there's a sweatiness to the way they roll this game that you are just. And you know what? Like respect to them. They're very good at this, but I don't think I want to play with you anymore. Yeah. And that is kind of Luke on comms. Yeah, exactly right. I need you to point the gun at the deck.

Was I not clear earlier when I told you to point the gun at the deck? All right. Now, interact with the back. You know what? I'll just come over there. Okay, thanks. Well, maybe Leah should have done the raid homework and watched the YouTube video first. She got stuck on Java for long care because there was a phase no one told her about,

but she still toughed it out. She dealt with it. She soloed Java. What do we think of Slaya? We shouldn't probably move past. about talking about one of the most iconic moments in Star Wars and we start a little bit of time in Empire talking about like the state of Leah as a character and what she gets to do and et cetera. What do we what's what's the vibe on slave leia slave leia quote unquote bikini? I mean we haven't like described it because I think we all assume we know.

I mean on the one hand if I ever looked that good I would I would want that moment to be immortalized. to some extent too, where it's like, you know what? I did look band fucking tastic in the 80s. Yeah. And yet, it's such a deeply uncomfortable looking outfit. The scene is uncomfortable. Like, it's grody. It's gross.

And then I think, again, it's just what gets, like, slave layer outfit becomes kind of the merchandising thing. That's what's remembered. And less than, the feminist win question mark of like her choking him out. Yeah, I will say that like, I don't know

if this is true for anyone else here, but growing up, my mom loves the scene where she chokes Jabba the Honout. She loves it. For my mom, it was feminism wins. Like, she's, my mom, big Princess Leia fan,

big Carrie Fisher fan, you know. And I think there is a, I don't want to under, I don't want from 2026 where I go, she had to do it in that outfit. And like, we have to, like, where, aren't we kind of the Java in this, in this scenario? To undercut that, like, there is, there are women out there for whom they're like, hell yeah, choke that big slug. You know? I don't know.

That's just my mom. Maybe my mom is the outlier. There's a, there's like, Carrie Fisher has talked a lot of. about her kind of experience of wearing the, you know, the gold bikini, the golden bikini, as it were. But I love this excerpt from the Wall Street Journal, which I think this, if I'm, if this, you know, clip is correct, was right before the release of The Force Awakens. There was an interview she did with the Wall Street Journal where Wall Street Journal said, there's been some debate recently about whether there should be no more merchandise with you

in the return of the Jedi bikini. Carrie Fisher responds, I think that's stupid. Washington Square Journal says to stop making the merchandise. Fisher says, The father who flipped out about it, what am I going to tell my kid about why she's in that outfit? Tell them a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit.

And then I killed him because I didn't like it. And then I took it off backstage. Like it's, I think, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's, you know, I think I had, um, I have a, the, she does look incredible. Like she, you know, is, is in this, you know, ornate presentation, but I can't let go of the fact that this, in her recollection of this time, she was, like, so consumed with her appearance in, in this scene. Like, specifically, like, what her body looked like. Like, was she, like, was she thin enough in this moment?

Was she, you know, there's an excerpt. It might be from the Princess Dyerist, her book of journals that she wrote while she was filming these movies that she published later in life, where she talks about, thinking about if there were any creases on her stomach or things like that. And like it's hard to separate that from Carrie Fisher's experience of wearing the bikini and then what it became like this, you know, nerd, you know, sex fantasy fodder for the rest of her life. Yeah.

But, you know, I think that there was a certain, by the end of it all, it seems there was a certain, like, yes. like I know it's iconic and and you know it's not my job to kind of explain to you how to feel about it. Like she could, she would really only, you know, was speaking from her experience of it, which is, you know, it's, it's a, yeah, interesting to think of it from her perspective, I think. for sure. Call on, of course, never sees it. Sorry, go ahead, Allie. Well, I just think, like, the legacy of it is the hardest part. It's been difficult to live a life of, you know, constantly being, like, the most attractive

thing that my girlfriend could do is dress up in a slave uniform, just, like, repeated over and over and over again. And, like, it, you know, she does look great. That is true. But when you think of, like, the other ways that, like, Carrie was sexualized. on set and like even in the white dress like you know the the like women don't wear bras and space sort of thing like that you know she was always kind of dealt a rough hand with regards to this um but she got the look off so she did take the way out there's important hang out with the teenager

like yeah no one stepped in on that one huh no one was like hey bud don't don't do that uh yeah so like I think you're right it's the overall like groatiness sometimes that surrounds the overall like relationship between Carrie Fisher

and Star Wars that reaches its capstone with this and becomes like sort of the enduring part of it God though the other thing I wonder if there's a bit of speaking of like we're getting deeper

into the 80s but not that actresses have ever like needed more cause for insecurity about their looks, but I do wonder, is there also a bit of, are we starting to get toward the, like, preposterous, like, thinness is now the standard for attractiveness? Like, is the, is the, is the needle moved on that where, uh, what is considered, like, fat versus, like, attractive? Is, has that meaningfully shifted from 97, to,

1983 because we do know where it's going, right? Like heroin chic is either, it may not quite be here, but it's coming. I mean, yeah, I think look at the like, look at the leading ladies of, of this year in movies. Like, you know, like 80s sort of maximalism. Like, you know, it was like sex appeal at the forefront, you know, thinking of, you know, Like the who's like, who's, you know, we have Madonna is like one of the biggest, you know, American musicians in this moment. Um, I don't know. I think, yeah, we're certainly like hurtling towards, uh, the just the unbearable, um, expectations on women in the 90s, uh, an early, you know,

will bleed into the early 2000s. But it's, yeah, it's hard. It's hard to separate such an iconic outfit with all of the, like, cultural context and, like, humid experience of Carrie Fisher, you know, attached to it. But I did like when she choked the big frog. If she, but, yes, if she hadn't gotten to choke the big frog. frog, we would be having an even more damning conversation. Oh, you had to rescue her from the big frog?

No, that's what I'm saying. It's all the thing is. We would have betrayal the character. But instead she chokes the shit out of him and he dies hard. So that is. It's awesome. Yeah, it is. It is frankly awesome.

They make their escape. And then they go the separate ways, them to rejoin the fleet, Luke to go to Dagobah. And where another frog dies. Hamel's finest moment of that act, this movie, the two scenes back to back? I think he's on fire. It's incredible.

Like, when we were talking before about how, like, Luke is such a different person in these beginning scenes, like, like, performatively, him being able to shift to a more tender version of himself. Like, the, the person who was, like, seeking answers again instead of, like, you know, being the coolest guy in the room being the Jedi Knight is so incredible and also just like

you know the what came into focus so much in this film is like how much Luke has seen really important people in his lives last moments and like

that the scene plays differently when you're 35 versus seven in that way. Like, it's, it's just huge. Oh, yeah. It's very well performed. God, this is one of my favorite, like, things I've seen, like, in film criticism.

There's a website Film Freak Central. And over a span of years, some years apart, the same critic revisited Rambo First Blood twice. And in the first review, writing as a younger review, where he finds Stallone's monologue there at the end. Nothing is over. It's overstated. It's too heightened. He finds it corny.

And then revisiting it later as a guy in his 40s and realizing that like, oh, no, this is just how it feels. At a certain point in your life, this is just how it feels with like you're alone. A lot of people you care about have left and moved on or passed on. And a scene that you can sort of smirk at. when you're much younger, suddenly is like, oh, no, this is just what was waiting for me. Like, this was a movie that is about, like,

hey, like, life is going to feel like this in places. And that is, Luke has become a peer of Yoda's. You know, he's sitting there as a guest at Yoda's house in a way, a level of comfort he never has during Empire. And, and, like, Yoda at this moment, it happens so fast. Yoda's preparing dinner. He looks healthy.

healthy as can be, it looks fine. But the moment he realizes that, like, Luke is a finished project that, like, Yoda's purpose is now over, he just fades over the course of the scene as he just, like, let's go of life as they have this final conversation. And it's so well played. And, like, this is the best, like, again, it's like, Michael Kane, Mark Hamill. the two greatest, like, cross-muppet actors ever, ever to do it. Just absolutely like, no, I'm just playing the scene with another actor.

It is, it is incredible. And I love Yoda here. You know, one, like, like Luke kind of trying to be in denial, this can be happening, right? Like, they have come to finish my training. What do you mean? You're, you're dying. But also, Yoda's like, and again, this is also very kind of true to love. life, the barrage of things I wish I'd told you

or had handled differently that now that we're at the gate starts coming out of Yoda. Luke, Luke, Luke, one more thing, one more thing. Look, there's nothing more I can teach you. That's done. And then realization that, like, Luke asks, was it true? And Yoda's like, yeah, it's true. And I'm sorry, we didn't prepare you for that.

And just the realizations of, like, the things that they have not done right to, this kid up and there's nothing you do about it now. It's just passing these things on. It's just so, it's so well done. Yoda trying to offer the last bits of guidance, the little bit of comfort, and also apologies for not being a better master. Yeah.

I can't say enough nice things about Hamel's acting here. It's really hard to have a character in a scene, call attention to someone's face, and have that live up to what the character in the scene is saying, but the scene opens basically with Yoda being like, hey man, don't look, you're looking at me like I'm dead, you know, do I look so old to young eyes or something like that? And the way Hamill is acting at trying to cover up his natural reaction to seeing Yoda look so old is so good, you know. And then yeah, we get the classic, I love this, the Yoda being like, all right, I'm going to get into bed. And Luke finally advocating for himself and being like, hey, I need to talk to you right now.

Like, is Darth Vader my father? And finally he's like, and he, at that point, he's like, I got to rest. Rest I need. Yes, rest. And he's like, Yoda, I must know. And it turns back around. And that is where you do get there are so many little like I think he says the word Luke six times in this in this exchange and he's like all right remember the Jedi strength flows on the force beware anger and aggression don't estimate the power of the emperor there's another the force one strong in your family. It's just it's so intense again here is my Yoda and he's a little apologetic but he isn't.

And it's so tough because what he says is Luke says, hey, I got to know. And Yoda says, your father he is. Told you, did he? And Luke says, yes. Yoda says, unexpected this is and unfortunate. And Luke says, unfortunate that I know the truth? Because he is pissed. And Yoda says, no.

unfortunate that you rushed to face him, that incomplete your training, not ready for the burden or you. And Luke says, well, I'm sorry. And at that point, he doesn't know it,

but Yoda is about to die, you know, and it's such a shame. Luke can't hold him to task here. Because he has to, because he is still, you know, a scene ago,

the last thing we saw from Luke, besides saying goodbye to Han and Lando, Was that he literally told Jabba the Hut, free us or die. And now he's like leaning over the body of his second dying mentor. And it's so hard to hold that posture with a person, let alone a little green Muffet. And Hamill just absolutely crushes it. And again, it's so hard to know. What?

What's up? When he took some in. When he tucks him in, when he tucks them in, it was like, I can't. This is so precious. Muppets are real. That's the thing. Everyone's everyone's on set with them. They are uncanny.

And part of it is they don't break. Yeah. The Jim Henson Workshop puppeteers, they break character. They break character and become actors on a break in between shots. I don't know if Oz was doing this with you. Yoda, but notoriously on Muppet sets, like, between takes, they're like any other actor, except it's still a puppet. They're piling the puppet as an actor on a break.

So their performance extends into the realm of the actors, like, just being themselves. That is how they operate. You've seen the Emmett Otter Jug Band Christmas outtakes with the rolling drum scene with, like, the two little beaver people or whatever. the drum has to roll out of the, I'll link it to you later. It's so funny because they're in characters as the little Muppets as they can't get this shot. And they're just like, they're cracking jokes about the production of this scene.

But they're in character as. And getting pissed in characters. Like they're two actors now who are like, okay, come on. Yes. That's really good. It's so funny. It's like five minutes long. It's just, it's a really great set of, of scenes.

So yeah, I think there really is. I think, Rob you're right that, like, there's a value of Yoda is a puppet. And the person who's puppeteering him is, like, locked in on that. And Yoda won't break, you know, as long as the performance is solid. Yoda's going to be a, and if you can buy in. If you were like Mark Hamill can be like, that's my guy, that's my Yoda, you know. Well, and then, like, it doesn't let up because Yoda passes. And the only person Luke has to share.

this with is R2. Like, there's things I just forgot about this until I rewatch the movie, but there's such important little grace notes. Yeah. That, like, in my head, he walks out of the house and talks to Obi-Wan. But no, R2 is working on the X-wing. And Hamill just stands there with him for a minute, not knowing what to say. And he looks out to the little, the little, like, pond where the ship had crashed the first time,

just for a moment and just, like, soaks it in, you know? it's good and he says I can't do it R2 I can't go on alone and then I'm a little torn on this because like you know the end of that last scene we just talked about with Yoda dying

and he becomes he disappears the way Ben did the way Obi-Wan did which we've talked about this before but it's very funny if you watch this original trilogy this is what happens for Jedi die when Jedi die their bodies disappear but only between the years of whatever A B-B-Y

and now But if you just only saw those, you just, that's what I guess would happen. Yeah, yeah. We didn't know that they both learned special technique taught to them by the ghost of Quigon Gym. But Yoda has warned him. He said, you know, don't underestimate the power of the emperor or suffer your father's fate. When I'm gone, the last of the Jedi you will be. There's the last of the Jedi phrase.

The force runs strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned. Luke, there is another Skywalker. And in my mind, I'm like, oh, he holds on to that for a while. while he has to like, he must learn about Leah a little later in the movie. But really, there's a beat. And I, again, in terms of like the material composition of the film, you have to wonder, did they add that beat with Art2 so that it wouldn't literally be he walks outside and finds out from Ben about Leah. But it's such a necessary like exhale before that happens, you know.

And then we get, well, and Archie is the only other character who meets Yoda. Like, there's no one else who knows him. You're right. Yeah. So there's part of that where it's like there's, he can, can't share this with Leia, can't share it with Han. Like, this is a death that the only person who can even, like, you know, it comes up, it comes up a lot where, like, some of my oldest friends,

like, a thing that holds us together is, like, that we knew someone who passed, that other people don't remember. And, like, that becomes incredibly important. And, like, that little beat is, again, like, Luke is so alone. And, you know,

I think one of the, Again, like for all my issues with The Last Jedi, like, I think Ryan Johnson picks up a lot of threads that like ultimately he gains some friends for a minute in Star Wars and he has these friends. The Starved Empire strikes back. And then it's the process of losing those relationships or at least being like put at a remove from them. That there's so many things that keep isolating him. And one of the architects of that is Obi-Wan here. reappearing as a blue force ghost and asking for an ass kicking if he had a corporeal form. I'm sorry.

The certain point of view speech lands so fucking badly. In my head, I remember Luke letting him off the hook. No, Mark Hamel really does not, but it's a bad, it's a bad answer to Luke. This is probably like the one of the weakest parts of the movie to me. This feels like what you were describing earlier, Austin, as like needing Star Wars is here and we need to explain something to the audience right now that we can't just let the characters figure out for themselves. I was reading the original script. It's wild. I'm so glad someone else who read the.

this too? I was like, I will thank God they didn't do that because that would have been disastrous. You should explain with this. You should explain the thing you're talking about. The the original script has a lot more from. Let's say, let's say what happens for the person who has not watched this in a long time and just listen to us, which is he confronts Ben. He's like, Ben, why didn't you tell Obi-Wan, why didn't you tell me? You told me that Vader betrayed and murdered my father. And Obi-Wan says, says, well, from a certain point of view, you. you, you know, your father was seduced by the dark side. He stopped being Anakin Skywalker.

He became Darth Vader. In a sense, the good man who was your father was destroyed by Darth Vader. So from a certain point of view, I wasn't lying to you. And that's what we get in the movie. And then he says, he talks a little bit more at this point. He says, you know, yeah, I was, I was, does he even say this stuff? I know the one thing he doesn't say. Anakin was a good friend.

He says, he says the part of like when I first knew him, your father was already great pilot. Yes, okay. But I was amazing how strongly the force was. All that stuff is in the original as it is. I can't do it. I can't kill him. And Ben says you can't escape his that your destiny.

And Luke says, I tried to stop him. I couldn't do it. That's all the same. But there's something new in the, or something that they, that isn't in any of the versions, but was in the shooting script. Yes. So he explains, he tells, he, he tells Luke why, basically like what happened, everything that happened in Revenge of the Sith. He tells him, you know, there's a few things. It's like, he starts off by saying, you know, very, you know, very. Vader humbled you when you first met him, Luke. But that experience was part of your training.

It taught you, among other things, the value of patience. Had you not been so impatient to defeat Vader, then, you could have finished your training here with Yoda. You would have been prepared. And Luke says, but I had to help my friends. Ben, stage direction, grinning at Luke's indignation. And did you help them? It was they who had to save you.

You achieve little by rushing back prematurely. I fear. Luke says, with sadness. I found out Darth Vader was my father. Ben, to be a Jedi, Luke, you must confront and then go beyond the dark side, decide your father couldn't get past. Impatience is the easiest door, for you like your father. Only your father was seduced by what he found on the other side of the door, and you have held firm. You're no longer so reckless now, Luke. You are strong and patient. and now this is where we pick up from where the movie is. You must face Darth Vader again, and Luke says, but I can't kill my own father.

Yeah. And then later, there's also even before that that they also removed where Ben goes. Oh, yes. He's like, I wouldn't blame me. I don't blame me for being angry. If I was wrong in what I did, it certainly wouldn't have been for the first time.

You see what happened to your father was my fault. And they cut that out too. They did not keep that in the moment. movie. He did not say, I don't blame you for being mad at me. They cut up a bit right after that where he says, I also thought he could be turned back to the good side.

It couldn't be done. That's when he says, he is more machine than man, twisted and evil. It's jaw-dropping. How many screenwriters are crap? Like, I mean,

like they get there, right? But like, there's things that would never make it onto a page. Like, I would, I would never. I would never put them down.

I would just never put them down. Just wait till the second phase. Go ahead. Wait till. Read the second phase. Okay. What we get is what we get in the movie is we learn about Leah, right? We learn Ben says, says, hey, you're the, the, there's, you know, your sister has to remain anonymous.

And that's why. And Luke just kind of gets it. Luke goes, oh, Leah. Leah is my sister. The script did not have that originally. No, the script adds in after Luke, you know, kind of has this realization. He says, when your father left, he didn't know your mother was pregnant. Your mother and I knew he would find out eventually,

but we wanted to keep you both as safe as possible for as long as possible. So I took you to live with my brother, Owen, on Tatooine, and your mother took Leah to live as the daughter of Senator Organa on Alderon. the Organa household was high-born and politically quite powerful in that system. Leah became a princess by virtue of lineage. No one knew she'd been adopted, of course. But it was a title without real power since Alderon had long been a democracy. Even so, the family continued to be politically powerful.

And Leah, following in her foster father's path, became a senator as well. That's not all she became a senator. force, she became the leader of her She became the leader of her cell in the alliance against the corrupt empire. And because she had diplomatic immunity, she was a vital link for

getting information to the rebel cause. That's what she was doing when her path crossed years. The foster parents. The tant of four. The tant of four was a rebel blockade brother. She was a really brilliant in Corvette design.

But her foster parents had always told her to contact me on Tatouine if her troubles became desperate. Luke is overwhelmed by the truth and is suddenly protective of the sister. But you can't let her get involved now, Ben. Vader will destroy her. Luke says that. Ben, she hasn't been trained in the ways of the Jedi the way you have, Luke. But the force is strong with her, as it is with all of your family.

There is no avoiding the battle. You must face and destroy Vader. The end. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? If we would have, like, dog shit movie immediately. We've all seen airplane, right? Yeah.

No. Yes. Remember there's a scene where a character just begins monologuing and another character zooms in while they just talk and talk and talks and zooms back out. And first they're talking to you. It's a skeleton. This is a dedicated death head. This is exactly what happened here.

Yes. Why the lore drop? I don't know. I literally reading from what. Oh my fucking God So it's a wonder We got the movie Maybe this was one of the dying and crying scenes

That Marcia edited Because Jesus Christ You know and I still think Natalie to your point Like I mean I think the script Really is the over explaining thing That I call it wind of here and there

The actual scene is a lot better than that But you know I I I do get what you mean when you say that this scene still has a degree of like the over-explanation stuff. It's not as bad as the script at all. I think, yeah.

I think the thing that obviously is another case of Al Guinness, a pro-pro, rescuing something that could be really awkward. And then Mark Hamill's grown a lot as an actor and plays opposite him quite, quite well here. But I think the low point of the, well, see what I was telling you was true. from a certain point of view, and Luke isn't really having that, but the fact that we segue so quickly into, Kenobi's a man racked with regrets.

And it almost does retroactively make it feel like, oh, this is a guy who's had to come up with a narrative for, like, how he feels about Darth Vader in some ways. Like, he's lied to Luke. But it's borderline a lie he has told himself, right? That there's this affection and, like, crushing guilt he has about his role in everything that's happened. and he has told himself again and again,

well, there's nothing left of the man that I'm friends with. There's nothing to redeem there is the way that he is like holding that door shut and just wedging it shut to prevent sort of the reckoning with the, like what his old friend has become. And this is the thing that I think the prequel trilogy and the cartoon does end up enriching more where like we do now get a sense of, oh,

like you can read into Guinness's performance just this incredible wellspring of sadness over over everything that has happened here and the role he played in this. And so I think it ends up like his palpable regret and sadness over this and resignation about everything

that's brought him to this moment I rescues rescues this from otherwise you know you're just a con man yeah I mostly wish they had it out a little bit more before the pivot into and by the way your sister

but I you have to keep the movie moving it's already a two hour movie it can be too mad at especially if the script would have been the way the script was you know but I will say something interesting here

is again there's a version of the story even without the script stuff with Owen being Obi-Wan's brother and Leah being taken like all that stuff that's like a little bit different that even in the movie where he's like your father was already a great pilot by the time by the time I met him your father was

already a great pilot none of us were thinking that he was a little boy none of us heard that line and thought he's a little boy at all and he says I thought I could train him better than Yoda could basically. And that is also just like not part of the Obi-Wan and Anakin and Yoda's story. There's never a bit that we've seen where Obi-Wan and the pre-equals is like, I got this one Yoda. He does tell Yoda I have to train him. That's what Klygon wanted. But it's not like, he's like, Yoda, you don't get to train Anakin. I do. Yeah, the line in here is I took it upon myself to train him,

which is a really interesting retelling from what we get. Yeah. Yeah. But that's Real different than like he hung out with the younglings for a minute. And then he was my Padawan. But then Yoda was across his training. And Mace Windew was also involved. But you watch just this movie. It's very easy to think that Darth Vader, that Anakin, was a grown man by the time he was being trained.

He was a teenager. Just a few years older than Luke maybe. But yeah. Right. He was an accomplished pilot the way Luke is. Right. But he's not 12 or whatever. And that's not too old somehow.

You know? What a remarkable decision to make Anakin a little boy for that. All for the service, I guess, of, like, showing a shmee and his, like, childhood on Tatooine, but I don't know. Yeah, I think that's probably right, though, Rob. I think you're right. It's, like, we have to show him as a little, little kid. But the other thing, I think, the thing of Hamill lands here is standing his ground with Canobi, where it's, like, I can't do it, Ben. You're just real, like, just like

And the thing I like about it is the way he delivers it Is The way a grown adult does where it's like, hey, I have looked inside myself And I'm telling you this thing you're asking me to do, it's not happening Like it's just like I can't do it And Kenobi just looks Defeited

The Emperor is one. Like there's no like Luke can't do it And there's, no plan B. And Luke ropes for this like, well, what about my sister? I love how this comes up. Because he doesn't know it's a sister yet. He just says, but Yoda said there was somebody else. As if to be like, oh, please. Canobi gives him. Please take this weight off my shoulders. I don't want to be the one. You know? And Canobi looks at him. Like, who are we kidding, man? Like who? There's another. This is your solution. Like, come on, you got to face this. And so this is how we,

get to the reveal that Leah's his sister, but this is not held out as a, oh, so the cup can pass to her. No, like, that's not, that's not what's going on here. Yeah. And so Leah, Leah is the sister. He goes, Leah, Leah is my sister. Yeah, you got that one, Luke, you figured it out. Good job. You can say serves you well.

And then Ben is like, nothing happened with you two. this point like we mentioned this on the I mentioned this on the most recent bonus episode that the original plan per sources was at the time of Empire Strikes back being written that Luke would have a twin sister

a different one different than Leah and they just decided nah just it's Leah it's just let it be Leah it's fine what was her name again it was like something with an N I think I think it was something with an N not

net N uh Nelleth, Nelleth, Skywalker. Nelleth. Luke and Nelleth. Luke and Nelleth. Nell. Right. Yeah.

Right. I do think, Rob, you're right a little bit about nothing, nothing ever happened between two. He just say, bury your feelings. Like deep. Real deep. What he means is like, don't let Darth Vader know about that or let the emperor know about Laya. That would be trouble. You don't want, don't let that happen.

That would be, they'd really be able to take advantage of your, your, you're, strong compassion and love for your friends. But also, any weird feelings you had, you got to get rid of those. The Vader, Emperor is going to bring those right out. Emper is going to be like, yeah. If you had any bad thoughts, he's going to tell you about them. He's going to remind you what you were thinking.

It's bad. Anyway, we leave. We leave. I know what was in your heart during the adventure of the spitter of the mind's eye, young Jedi. I didn't know. God. Join the dark side, and you will not need to resist your base of sturges.

Terrible. That's fucked. Oh, my God. There's something about the way they reunite that feels off to me when they all reunite. Really? Everything seems off. I don't know what it is.

It's something about the... Something's wrong from the start. Allie, you can feel this. Tell me, tell me Leah's vibes during Monmouth's briefing. I mean, because to me it feels like the rebel cells

about to start dissolving in like counter-revolutionary accusations. Like when Motha's going to get in her car, it's going to explode. I don't know. I am. Which reunion are you talking about? Is it when, when, so we've,

as Rob summarized at the very beginning, Mon Mothman goes through the plan. Hey, The Boston's brought us these plans. It turns out the weapons aren't operational yet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In that room, after she's like, someone has to go down to the planet to turn off the shield generator, and Leah's like, what idiot would do that? And Han is the one who's the idiot who would do that.

She goes, Han, Ma'amah says, you know, is your team ready? Is your crew ready? And he's like, well, you know, my flight crew is, but I got to get a few more people together. and obviously Leia says, I'm going to do it, I'll be there with you, and then Luke goes, and so will I.

And everyone goes, Luke's here. And that's the part that feels like, there's something about that that, that doesn't work for me. And there's also like, good luck, you're going to need it.

And there's something about the quality of the quippy dialogue that's starting to come in here that doesn't work for me. I'm with you too, says, Luke. Well, and also, they need someone crazy enough to leave it. You're the respectable. And remember, those two things don't go together. Yeah. Not even ironically. I like seeing them together. They're my

friends. They're together on the screen. I like that part. But I think something about the delivery that feels so bouncy that it doesn't feel, you know, the last scene was Luke on Degovah. It's hard to I think compare it. I don't know. Compare it to a new hope. Like the briefing feels like an actual like mission briefing. And now it feels like, Mademothma is now, admittedly, she's a political figure. This is the big one. You bring out, you bring out the boss. Like, this is why we fight.

But the other thing is, the whole vibe is, like, in New Hope, is like, flight deck of an aircraft carrier before the strike takes off. It's like, at this really serious, like, people are friends and they're catching up, but it is last, like, dude, we're about to go, we're about to go into it. The stakes are high. And here it is so desperate to be in that, like, you old rascal. I'll catch you on the side, chum. That's the Han and Lando stuff,

where Han gives him the Falcon to use for the mission. And Lando's like, don't worry, old chum, I won't get a scratch on her. And he's like, you better not. And then there's a beat. And he goes, I got your word now, right? Not a scratch.

And it's like, what do we like? You couldn't have a difference conversation. That is Ford salvaging it, I think, too, because I think the way Ford is playing it is I'm not actually worried about the, ship. I'm worried about the ship. But like, hey, you're going to be okay in this thing, right? This is why I'm forcing you to take it. Because it'll keep you safe and it can do it. It's the fastest ship. A hundred percent. I'm with you there. I'm with you there. I don't know.

There's something about the quality of these interactions that I don't know. It didn't, none of this lands to me as well as even the stuff on Joppa's palace was landing in terms of performances. This is the bit where Landa goes, would you get going, you old pirate? And it's like, ah, I don't buy it compared to them. on Cloud City where they really felt like boy. When he was betraying him, he was doing, but they were doing a better job selling that they were buddies. That's all I'm saying.

I think this is part of Han Solo still being like off character. Like some of it is, and I think like there's something in the way Harrison Ford is playing him here that like, I don't know if it's like a post Indiana Jones thing. I don't know if they're just like we've been in Star Wars for so long that it's like we're not hung up. for it anymore, I guess, but it's just like, there is a sort of mood here that doesn't land.

But I think, like, I can, in my head, I forgive that because I'm like, this isn't Han Solo yet. Like, he is still transitioning out from being, like, away for so long. Like, he hasn't, like, he's been frozen. I think there's, like, some of the social, like, friction there, I think is, him trying to find Han Solo again, whether that's like performance-wise or like literally character-wise in terms of being like,

I've been out of this for so long. I guess you can look at it both ways. The one thing that I really, really, really love about this section, because I agree that like Luke coming in is so convenient and it's like, especially compared to a new hope where it's like, Luke is barely a protagonist in that scene. Like, it doesn't feel like anyone's a protagonist

Where in this one, like, Han and Leah are, like, sitting in the front row and, like, Han, like, he does the cat call thing of, like, you're going to need some luck. Like, you mentioned that, but it just feels like Mama's still talking. Like, she didn't pause for, like,

audience interaction. It just feels so weird. Luke comes in the middle of it and everyone, like, shut up. She's doing the briefing, man. It's so weird. But I do love, like, Luke, Leia being like, what's going on with you? And Luke saying, ask me later is just one of my favorite, like, character interactions ever, ever, ever.

That's pretty good. I will forgive this five minutes of the movie. Yeah, I agree with that. I also, hey, here's another weird haunted by the previous movies thing. The Death Star has the shield generator from the opening of Empire Strikes Back, not literally, but figuratively. It has the distant shield generator that you have to send people down to deal. with before you can send the fleet in to deal with the threat. I like that part a lot.

I think the computer graphics on this look cool. Like the 3D hollow map of it all looks cool. Yeah, I was going to say the graphics look really good. It looks great. In the scene. Yeah, it like looks very crisp and clear and not floaty. It's like feels like it's there. And Mon Motha really does sell that she's sad about all those dead both bothans.

She really does go. many bothins died to bring us this information. Damn, true. And then Timothy Zahn was like, what if they were the worst fucking people in the world? And like everyone was like, God damn, we gotta be nice to the Bothans. Oh, because they brought us to the-

kidding me? Were you going to ask Allie? Is this the first movie with Aramesh? I think so. I don't think it's in, it's definitely not in a new hope, right? Or in Star Wars. Yeah, I don't remember it being in Empire,

but it's all over this movie. Yeah, like one of the first scenes is a screen showing a bunch of texts, which like this has not been on the camera in any way in Star Wars before. So just like the further franchising of it. Yeah, apparently this is the first. Yeah, an Orrbeth-like script first appeared in Star Wars episode 6, a return of the Jedi. It could be seen on the monitor readouts, et cetera, et cetera.

So I don't know if it was exactly the same, but it, this is the, first place it shows up, which is cool. But also, you're right. Now it has its own alphabet, right? Star Wars is here. And Admiral Akbar is here. Yep.

Our first big fish gun. Montau. They're here. I got to tell you, we already talked about it, but was it Maydine or Nadine? What's his last name? Croix Maydine. Cricks Maydine. To be in the scene with a bunch of fish people and you got to

the most fucked up head, you gotta get a new barber, my man. I know your head shape is, you could do something else with that. I've seen people on TikTok, he'll be fine. He's got like the two-day beard thing going to. Like, it's patchy and it's like... It looks like a freak beard. This guy is a second term Trump official. Like this is the vibe he's giving.

It's like, oh shit. Like, this guy is leading this agency now? this guy this guy's leaving me up yeah nobody's seen cricks made dean in days and he last year I just held up in his office with a with a bunch of spice he's gonna sue you over that one man

you gotta be careful I know that actor had better hair cuts in his life I know he did 100% 100% this is just a really unfortunate thing that happened to him this is my theory that there was a hairdresser

problem on that set like I think just across the board. Like the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, are less, are less sharp than they've been. Um, but yeah,

so they, they head off, they, they head down to the planet and, uh, Natalie's gotta get out of here. So maybe we leave it as they are departing for Endor and are approaching the imperial,

uh, security cordon, uh, to, to begin their mission to take down the best star shields. Yeah. Sounds just me. The end of the original trilogy.

Wow. Star Wars. Star Wars. More than ever. Oh, one last stupid note, which is just, I mentioned Luke killing a bunch of people, but the final thing of being like, oh, wow, this is the first time we've really seen this. That's the most you've seen, like, lightsaber fighting, regular guys. Sure.

Right? Well, and, okay, if we're talking about, like, again, things are not quite matching up to the first one. first movie is very clear lightsaber hit person limbs go flying oh yeah he knocks that guy off into the like as if it's a kinetic punch rob you're right yep like it is he is running around there

with a cardboard tube the gift wrap tube and just thwacking people with the lightsaber and like it's not doing anything gnarly when the very first time we see the lightsaber drawn the film is very clear this is the weapon that does

really gnarly things to the bodies it encounters. Now it's the sword of a hero. Yep. All right, well, until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And we're back next time with the finale to, I mean, we didn't get as far as I thought. Who knows? This might be our first three-parter in history of the original trilogy. But we will endeavor to do our best to cover all the remaining ground from here.

to the big celebration at the end. Spoilers.