Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 374: Return of the Jedi

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Long, long ago, Retronauts East began a trip through the original Star Wars trilogy (and its games). At last, the circle is complete as Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, Chris Sims, and Ben Elgin blow this thing and go home with Return of the Jedi. Art by Amanda Pruitt. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts, a part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. To hear more great shows or to learn how you could become part of our consortium of independently owned podcasts, check out Greenlitpodcasts.com. This week in Retronauts, I'll have a blue harvest without you. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 374 of Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish, and this week we are talking about horror beyond imagination, Blue Harvest, everyone's favorite movie, finishing up our coverage of the Blue Harvest trilogy. and who do I have with me this week to talk about this amazing, timeless, deeply beloved movie that was filmed in Arizona. Let's see. Let's start with who has the fewest letters in their first name.

That would be Ben. Unless you use Benjamin, but yeah. No, Ben. All right. No Jay's here. All right. I'm Ben Elgin. That's it.

And I'm Ben Jedwards. Okay. All right. And with five letters in my name, I'm Chris Sims, ready to throw Jeremy down an mysterious open pit. And with a gluttonous six letters in my name, I'm still Jeremy Parrish. Wow. Anyway, so this episode is obviously a Retronauts East special, which means it's going to be very serious, very somber, very to the point. No digressions, no rambling, no dumb jokes.

Nope, this is serious business. And, of course, what film, what, what franchise, what video game tie-in is worthier of more serious discussion than Star Wars, Episode 6, the Return of the Jedi. Sorry, just Return of the Jedi. There is no, there's only room in that title for one definitive article. So, Return of the Jedi. We have covered a new hope, or as people with good common sense, call it just Star Wars. Several years ago, actually. Wow, it's been a while.

It's been a while. And, yeah, before everyone was forced into their homes to never interact with other humans again last year, we talked about Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back. So that's where we are in all of this. I guess eventually we'll have to talk about the prequel trilogy, which I know is going to be a delight, especially for Chris, who loves these films. But yes, Star Wars Empire Strikes, or no, sorry, return of the Jedi. Yeah, wow. Yes, the third, but also the sixth movie in the series. Guys, when did you first experience this movie?

I feel like at this point, we're far enough into the 80s that all of you might have seen this in the theaters. Is that correct? Am I assuming properly? Man, you know, I'm honestly not sure. When I was a kid, I, like, I remember thinking and telling people like this was the first movie that I saw in theaters. But I don't think that's likely. I would have been like one and also I think I was just being like trying to get that sweet nerd crap. Right.

I saw Star Wars back when they were still making Star Wars. They're never going to make Star Wars again. But I was there. I got my foot in the door. Yeah, I would have been like eight. So it's possible. But I'm honestly not sure that I did. My memory is I remember this film coming out, even though it was only two years old.

because I have memories that stretch back to when I was one, which is crazy. I have this weird memory thing. But I, my brother was talking about it all the time, and he got the toys and things like that. And I did not see it in the theater, but I got a, we had this drugstore. It was a Revco or something near our house.

Oh, Revco. And I would always look at the toys. And I got a, what's, Lando Calrissian in this gift guard outfit? It was like my first Star Wars toy, and I was so proud that I had my own Star Wars. toy you know my brother had all those vehicles and all this other stuff but that was my one star wars figure was the only figure that didn't come with something you could choke on well actually no he came with the he came with the helmet well he had the helmet and he also

had the pike so yeah it's good that you didn't choke on any of those things congratulations on surviving your childhood that's why i made it here today to do this podcast also as far as viewing it i probably saw it on you know vHS tape at some point For some reason, we had Empire Strikes back on VHS recorded off HBO or something like that. And that's the one I saw over and over and over again because we just had that one. And so the other ones weren't as available until 97 when they released this box set of sort of remastered, you know, versions of the film. Ah, the special editions. We'll talk about those.

No, it was before the special edition. So maybe it wasn't 97. Yeah, it was before that. It was like 95, 96 with the VHS with the faces on the cover. Yeah, it was just a cleaned-up box. Yeah, so those are cool. We bought that box set, and then me and my family watched those over and over again, and they're cool. I still have that box set, actually.

Yeah, I do, too. And I got the Laserdisc versions, too, which were the definitive cool versions until they... I guess they're still the definitive cool version. Yes, they're what everyone always likes to, like, quote-unquote, remaster to say, like, look, this is what it's like before Jedi Rocks. And everyone says, oh, that was so good. It was so good before Jedi Rocks. Yeah. So this, this, you know, not that I'm trying to get nerd credit here or anything, but my parents were very nerdy, I guess. So I did see all three of the original movies in the theater back in the early 80s. So Star Wars, you know, when they did the reissue where they added like the title, A New Hope and added new footage and stuff. I remember seeing that in a drive-in very vaguely. I definitely remember seeing Empire Strikes Back. I know I've talked about how I was very confused because I was like five years old. and I thought Yoda was the name of Luke's Tonton

and he was on a quest to find his Tontan that he lost on the snow planet and he wanted to go find his Tonton Yoda because I mean obviously it was his ton like it was his friend I didn't I didn't quite get the fact that it died and that Luke Skywalker took a nap in its guts that part kind of glossed over my brain but by the time Return of the Jedi came out

I was old enough like seven and eight to comprehend it and to be excited about it. And it was just like monumentally huge. I remember, you know, they would do the kinder pre-release mailings of action figures before the movie came out. So we ended up with an emperor action figure before the movie came out, you know, with the UPCs that you mail in and everything. And it was a terrible figure. It was basically just like a chunk of plastic, an old man with a cane who barely had. any articulation. At some point in my, you know, childhood, I buried that in the backyard and then never was able to find it again. So that's, that's an appropriate use. I wish they had done that

in the film trilogies, but no, he's back. He's back. Yes, he is. He sure is. Thank you, J.J. Abrams. But yeah, my mother had one of those, like, some promotional mailings, and I think she still has it. It says Revenge of the Jedi, because that was originally going to be the title for the movie until someone was like, George, you know, all this, you know, talk you've had about how Jedi are good and noble and stuff, revenge doesn't really factor into that. A Jedi craves not these things. So they did change it to return of the Jedi. And yeah, I remember going to see it in the theaters and being very, very excited for it, like sitting down for probably days in advance, just listening over and over again to my, oh man, I don't know if you remember.

these, like the little tiny record players that would have little books that you would read along with. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, I can't remember what they were called, but it was like a little, you know, single length record player. Was it just like read along or something? Yeah, it was a reader, read along, basically. And it had like clips from the movie. So it was like a very, very summarized version of Star Wars with, you know, audio clips from the movie. And I remember like trying to, as a seven-year-old trying to do Darth Vader is like, we meet a good, we won. Not very effectively, I'm sure, but my family thought it was funny. But going to see the movie in the theaters with my aunt. And before the movie had come out, someone gave me the novelization of the

movie, because those were also a big thing back in the day. And she came in and was like, I can't wait to see this movie. I don't know if Luke Skywalker is going to survive. I think I heard he's going to die at the end. And I was like, no, actually, I saw in the book that he lives. She was like, why did you just spoil this for me? That was my first encounter with spoilers. But, yes, Return of the Jedi was a big, big deal. Well, I bet your, I bet your Vader voice was at least as good as the digitized one in the Artari arcade game. Because, man. You could at least understand what I was saying.

But, yeah, actually, I'm remembering now, I'm pretty sure I didn't see Jedi in theaters because I'm pretty sure, like, my parents were not as nerdy as Jeremy's. And I have a memory now that the first Star Wars I saw in theaters was the 10-year anniversary re-release of New Hope, which would have been afterwards. even remember that. 87 was out of it. Yeah, yeah. They did a limited, limited theatrical run of it for the 10-year anniversary. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I think, unless I'm hallucinating. No, you're probably right. That seems like the kind of thing they would do. Keep the brand alive for a while. And, you know, we're going to talk about the video game tie-ins that were kind of keeping the brand alive, but not very effectively. But first we're going to talk about the movie. And the first two Star Wars movies were basically the biggest thing ever. They best performing film in theaters for many years.

Empire Strikes Back was the best performing sequel for many years in terms of box office revenue. So obviously when the Return of the Jedi came, sorry, return of the Jedi was going to be a huge deal because this was a pop culture phenomenon. Star Wars was everywhere. And by this point, I think they had really figured out how to do, how to laser focus in on marketing and profitability. And I feel like that is a big downfall for this movie, kind of, kind of. where a lot of its problems come in, but it was everywhere. I mean, I remember going to stories there'd be like, I remember like some sort of Oreo stand-up or something, like a cardboard case, you know, where they had the Oreos

and it was just like Star Wars, the Return of the Jedi, just everywhere. So obviously, a movie that many, many people wanted to see, there were so many questions like, will Han Solo live? Will, is Darth Vader really Luke Skywalker's dad? Like, what's going to happen? Is Luke going to turn to the dark side? So, yeah, it was an event, as I would say, more so than anything I can really remember besides maybe like Avengers end game.

And even then, I feel like that wasn't as big an event as Return of the Jedi. But I say this with a caveat that I was seven or eight years old at the time. So, you know, my perception. was skewed and I was very much all in on Star Wars stuff but just because I was into it doesn't mean the rest of the world was but that's my perception yes yeah it's certainly all over the place I did not get to witness that firsthand other than I mean I did but I don't remember I just remember thinking it was a huge huge thing because my brother was basically your age Jeremy and he was caught up in that hype train too. So it was a very, very electric cultural event for young youngsters.

Yeah, I don't remember not having seen this movie. Like one of my earliest like pop culture memories is I had the big story. Well, I say big. I was small at the time. So who knows. But I had the storybook, like the hardcover storybook with the like Luke on the sandbarge with his lightsaber out, like right after he gets it from R2, like that big picture. Oh, yeah, yeah, I've got that little hardcover book downstairs somewhere. That definitely rings a bell. I have two copies of that. Jeremy gave me one a couple of years ago.

Anyway, sorry. I had, I definitely had that read-aloud book as well, or read-along book as well. And when I was a kid, like, this one was my favorite. Like, it was my favorite of the three movies. What had Ewox? It's got an old man getting thrown down a hole. How do you not love that? There is that.

Actually, two of you consider Bobafed an old man. I don't know if he was an old man at the time. Well, we've all seen that mustache. We have the dad stash. Yeah. Yes. Young Han Solo, go back to your room. Think about what you've done.

You stole from Java. You dumped your spice. No dessert for you. That story book actually is one of the... Yeah, I think I looked at that over and over and over again. The picture book, the big picture book with Luke on. the cover on the sail barge and all that stuff. And, yeah, it was really cool.

I loved it. I think I looked at that book way more than I watched a movie for the first, you know, 10 years of my life. You know, it's funny because I remember everyone loving this movie thinking it was just the coolest, like it wrapped up all the plot lines. It had the best action. It had the most fights, the most spaceships. It was just so cool.

And it wasn't until about 10 years after it came out that I started to see. And again, this is all perceptual. but I started to see the tide of public opinion turning against it. I remember picking up some sort of, like, Starlog or something magazine in, like, 1993-ish. And, like, the cover was basically like, Return of the Jedi isn't as good as Empire Strikes Back. Here are all the reasons why. So I was like, how dare they? So I flipped through it angrily at the store and started reading, and I was like, oh, wow, they make some good points here.

So, yeah, at some point, basically fandom put their foot down and said, actually, Empire Strikes Back is the more piquant take on this narrative, and Return of the Jedi is far more commercialized, yes. This was the magazine that pointed out the fact that you never hear the word Ewak in the film. And yet, everyone on the planet knows what an Ewak is. That is because marketing, marketing was the purpose of this movie. Of course, it was also to wrap up the saga, but why not both? Yeah, and it's all true, but I also remember, you know, making the same transition myself just because as a kid, you know, you don't really see the thing, you know, you're not really paying attention to the things that make Empire Strikes Back such a good cinematic achievement. And I didn't actually like it that much when I was a kid because it's such a downer, you know? Yeah, they're just like standing around and there's fog and they're just talking a lot.

and sometimes there's a big worm in an asteroid, but mostly it's just people and spaceships talking. And like the heroes don't win, you know. Right. You know, when you're a little kid, you want your hero to win. I do think that I want to preface this saying, don't get mad of me. Because I do think that it's very, very good. But I do think empire is overrated and I think Jedi is underrated.

because of the tendency, and I am as or more guilty of this than anyone else, of, like, having to rank things, right? You, sir, are the rank-or. That's true. It's all I do. Dwelling in your rank-or pit. I personally think that Star Wars is the best one because it's the only one that's a complete movie, but that's just me. That's a good argument, actually. I'd say this was, Return of the Jedi was my favorite Star Wars film until I was about 14 years old, and then I was, like, Wow. Empire Strikes Back is so deep, man.

And so, and people did, when I heard people criticizing the Ewox at some point or another, I was really confused at first because I thought, man, the Ewoks are awesome. What's wrong with the Ewoks? You know, but I was a kid. So, but I mean, if we're talking about ranking the films, I'd say this is, but we are now, apparently. This is, it's got to be in the top. The top three. That doesn't help.

The top three of the original trilogy, I am inclined to agree. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, you know, Star Wars is really about the hero's journey. And I think the true hero's journey inside all of us is learning that Empire Strikes Back is a better movie than Return of the Jedi. But that said, even though this is not a great piece of cinema for various reasons, it's not like a timeless work of art or anything like that. It's very fun. It's a very enjoyable movie. It is, it is hell of good popcorn, which is more than you can say about the prequel trilogy, which was much more George Lucas's vision, which is, he's an interesting guy. He has a lot of really good ideas, a lot of technical innovations under his sleeve or under his belt, up his sleeve, yes. Beard. Yes, hidden inside his beard. Have you ever noticed that George Lucas, at this point in his life sometime in like 2005 or so, he started to look exactly like the Howard the Duck puppet. It's really amazing. What are you going to say?

Like, check it out. Did you ever notice that George Lucas is 30% beard? He's really not. His beard is actually pretty trim. But his hair, he's got the white hair and like the curly thing. And it's exactly like Howard the Duck. Like, did he deliberately style himself to look like Howard the Duck? It's a great mystery.

In any case, that is not the point. The point is, oh, hell, I don't know. Oh, yeah, just that George Lucas is not that great at storytelling when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of dialogue and things like that. He needs an editor, yeah. That is one of the big weaknesses of Return of the Jedi is that by this point, he and his wife, Marsha Lucas, I don't know what her maiden name was that she reverted to, but, you know, she was kind of the secret weapon for the original Star Wars script. and she was no longer in his life. That's actually a big part of why Return of the Jedi was merchandise to hell, because Lucas lost a lot in the divorce, if I believe.

I'm getting the timeline right. He was hit really hard with the divorce settlement and needed to make some scratch. So, you know, he could lean on Star Wars because he basically owned everything about it because he had independently financed it so much. It was no longer part of the student. studio system and he, you know, had the merchandising rights and the video game rights and everything locked down. So, yeah, this was his, you know, if I'm not mistaken, and it's possible the divorce was like finalized later, but I do know that he was pretty strapped for cash for a while in

the 80s. This isn't like the first time that Star Wars was merchandise, though. Oh, no, no, no. It was merchandise from the beginning, but that was just like a, oh, sure, yeah, you can make some toys, whatever. But in this case, you know, Empire Strikes Back was also merchandised, but it was next level for this one. And, you know, that's really woven into the fabric of the film where, like I said, you have Ewoks and their names are never mentioned. Their species is never mentioned. And yet everyone knows what an Ewak is, what Wicked W. Warwick is. because, you know, they were created to be appealing.

It was, you know, like focus-tested critters. Originally, Ewoks were going to be wookies, but wookies are big and scary. And, you know, the story there is that Lucas really wanted to tell a parable about, you know, freedom fighters, guerrilla warfare, inspired by Vietnam, meaning that the Ewox were the VC and the empire is America. And maybe that's true. And he felt like, well, you know, if you have the. you know, the EWR, or the Wookiees who can pilot spaceships fighting back against the Empire.

It's less impressive than if it's little dudes with sticks and rocks. So he downscaled the EWox or the Wookiees and swap the syllables around and you got EWox. But, I mean, I really think that these characters, these creatures were created and designed specifically to be as sellable as possible. Like, if Yoda had made his debut in Return of the Jedi, he would have been way cuter and less of like a weird little green frog thing. Like they would have gone with the original gnome version of Yoda as opposed to the wrinkly frog. Yeah, they're definitely there to sell toys, although I think it actually shows at least a little bit of restraint the fact that you mentioned that, you know, their name is not mentioned in the movie. Like there's no exposition dump of these are the Ewoks. They're awesome.

go buy them now. You know, they, like, it at least, like, just works them organically in. They just kind of show up and, you know, Leia interacts with them like she would something. She doesn't really know what they are. And there's no, there's no look at here. Here are the Ewoks. Aren't they great? They're just kind of there.

Yeah, there's just a lot of challenges, I think, around the production of this film. And I think it really, it kind of suffered from the colossal scale of the success and popularity of the first two films and what a cultural juggernaut they had become and how many expectations were imposed upon this film. And, you know, the stars were like, is this what we want to be typecast as forever? I mean, they spent the first 30 minutes of the movie rescuing Han Solo. just because Harrison Ford was like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. Like, I don't want to be Han Solo for the rest of my life. Is this going to kill my acting career? And I think they waived enough money at him.

We're like, hey, please take like 1% of the EWalk licensing rights or, you know, whatever. And he came back. But then they had to spend, you know, that entire section, that sidebar in Jabba's Palace, rescuing Han, which doesn't really tie into the rest of the movies. So, yeah, it just, it feels like. It serves some purposes. It sort of sets up like the place that Luke's at. now, which is very different from where we left him.

He's way more goth now. It's like he's returning home, a changed man, having undergone some kind of hero's journey. Yes, but he wasn't yet a Jedi. So that was not the return of the Jedi. It tricks you that way. He introduces himself as a Jedi, though. Oh, that's true. He does.

But then Jabba's like, whatever. Jedi Knight and friend of Captain Solo. He is, oh, yeah, he's saying. But Jabba doesn't actually believe him. Jabba doesn't care. Jabba's just like, I eat Jedi for breakfast. now there are no more Jedi so finally a snack thank you yeah all Jedi have like got murdered like 20 years ago and then a dude to them and goes by the way i'm a Jedi knight

like no you shouldn't believe him he's he's clearly lying yeah yeah point yeah no one oh anyway so thank you uh bit fortuna um so as basically what i was getting at is just that I feel like there were so many expectations around this movie and, you know, just so much happening behind the scenes, turmoil in the creator's lives, just everyone really, really kind of dealing with the fact that, wow, this goofy little movie we were in five or six years ago is just colossal. It's massive. It's so much bigger than we ever expected. And suddenly we're like very wealthy and very popular and everyone in the world knows us. And is this going to be like our lives? forever. So, you know, I'm sympathetic to a lot of the weirdness that kind of emerges in this movie. And, you know, I think despite all those things, there was still this kind of clear through line. Like, we've got to resolve Luke's story. We've got to figure out this whole rebel versus empire thing. And it propelled the film forward, made tons of technical advances, you know, with special effects and so forth in the process. And it is just a pretty good rollicking fun

tale, even if it does have some pretty goofy parts. And I think one of the things that ended up doing well is that so obviously at a high level, you know, as we're repeating a few, some story beats from the original film, we've got a new death star, all that. But it's, you know, it's one of those things where these things were already insanely popular and now we have to top it somehow. So, you know, we have to make it bigger and better. And it really does a lot, especially in the beginning and some of the empire scenes to sell

the scale that, like, you know, the things we've seen before in these movies are like, small corners of the empire and bits of it. And now we've got like the whole thing. Like there's these huge gorgeous mat paintings in the intro with the new Death Star. You've got like tons and tons of squadrons of troopers lined up. It's just everything is at a bigger scale than than we've seen before in these movies. And I think it really sells that. I kind of love that there's a second Death Star in this movie because like if something, if you have some super powerful thing that the good guys like barely beat in a million to one shot, you like try it again you got a good chance like statistically that's true and you know i do appreciate

the fact that like while they were creating death star to the re the deathening uh as like their ultimate super weapon again that's going to be even more ultimate and more super uh it is ultimately uh i just use the word ultimate too many times it is secretly uh being designed just as a trap so it's kind of two things in one it's uh you know one a lure to take out the rebels once and for all. And then once they're gone, then you've got this Death Star that no one's going to be able to beat because the rebels are all gone and you, you know, basically hold the galaxy in your hand. So it's not, it's not the worst plan. It definitely loses some of its... Yeah, it loses some of its shine when, you know, you get to the sequel

trilogy and they're like, well, we did the Death Star, but now it's a different, it's actually a planet itself. Well, we did the Death Star, but actually now it's just on Star Destroyers. Like, at some point, you just have to kind of go back to the drawing board and say maybe, maybe this is not the ideal use of our resources. I agree. It's ridiculous. I'm just saying if Cobra Commander had tried to dominate the weather three or four times, you probably would have gotten in there. Fair enough. All right. So, let's, uh, let's talk about the, uh, let's talk about the, uh, the structure of film. I mentioned that you have the whole Jabba's Palace thing at the beginning. And that really exists,

like I said, to kind of wrap up the whole, is Han Solo going to live or die? Because Harrison Ford doesn't know if he wants to renew his contract. And in fairness, the Star Trek franchise, the following year, would dedicate an entire movie to saying, oh, yeah, actually, Leonard Nimoy is going to keep making Star Trek movies. We even let him direct one. So, you know, you have the search for Spock, entirely created just to resolve a cliffhanger sort of story beat based on a contract uncertainty. So in that sense, only dedicating like a third or a quarter of the movie to Harrison Ford's uncertainty is, you know, admirable restraint.

The first part of the movie kind of reminds me of what they did with the Temple of Doom where it has a whole different section at the front of it, a little mini adventure that's actually really good. yes but it's it's much longer than that though it is much longer yeah it's longer and you don't have kate kapshaw singing anything goes in chinese which is disappointing

sure yeah you have you have max brebo singing whatever max's keyboards msice noodles sorry who by the way has a huge part in like the clone wars TV series it's the it's a wild universe folks weird

I wish I could go back and watch this movie not knowing from staring at storybook cover for my entire childhood that Luke was going to bust out a second lightsaber because like he shows up and he doesn't have it and you know he lost it last time that's true you got a man cut off yeah there were yet there were a lot of spoilers from the merchandising like probably people knew because I was I was so rewatching the movie I'm like wait if you were watching this cold you wouldn't know that bounty hunter with chubacca was lea like that would be a big reveal when that happened but like if there were toys of her out

already. Yep. I remember that surprise, actually, when I first saw Return the Jedi, I didn't know that was Leia, so I thought that was really cool. But I didn't think about the lightsaber thing. That's a pretty cool thing to wonder about it. Yeah, they were much more circumspect with the prequel and sequel trilogy where they were very careful about merchandising not to reveal that kind of thing.

I think the biggest goof they had was on the Phantom Minus soundtrack, there is a track called, like, the funeral of Quigon Gen. It's Quigon's Noble End. Quigons Noble Land is a track, yeah. All right, yeah, he's not, he's not going to make it out alive. But, you know, other than that, like the whole Queen Amadala thing, you know, who is Padme? Like, they were very, very good about kind of making that ambiguous and not giving away the plot twist. So this was where they made the mistakes.

But, you know, I don't think spoiler culture was, it wasn't what it is now where people were just, like, fanatical about it. So, you know, it's fine. But, but yes, the movie does begin with. the, the heroes in that kind of downbeat place. And it just seems to get worse because Luke is there. He says he's a Jedi, but then he just gets totally punked by Java. He doesn't have a lightsaber. He gives away Chubaka, or, uh, sorry, R2D2 and C3Pio to Java.

And Chubaca gets put in prison. And then Leah gets captured and made to sit around naked, uh, while Java eats frogs or whatever. So, you know, the only, the only possible light. in the darkness is that Landau Calrissian is there. But can you really trust Landau? Because he was kind of a bad guy in Empire Strikes Back. He, you know, he betrayed everyone. Maybe this is another betrayal. So it really takes that like, here's the ending of Empire Strikes Back. Everyone's in the worst place possible. The Empire is still out there. Hans captured. And just, you know,

that's the starting point. And it goes down from there before spiking way back up. And that's, That's kind of the point is like to, you know, to say, oh, here's the new hope. Oh, yeah, I see. Like, this is, you know, it seems dire. It's the darkest people before the dawn. I get it. I get it. So, well, let's just, let's dissect this.

Luke's plan is to surrender the droids so that they can launch a lightsaber at them. Surrender like, I think his real plan is to go and ask Java like, hey, give me Han Solo back. We can be allies, you know, we'll be powerful friends. we can team up against the empire. It's going to be cool. But he also, I think, was smart enough to realize that's probably not happening, so he had a backup plan,

which was basically Ocean's 11. Yeah, Luke's big plan is to still see 3bio into slavery without telling him that that's his plan, which had to suck for 3PO. Well, he's weird in this movie. 3Pia is maybe he's always weird how he doesn't know what's going on.

You're right. He's usually so savvy. Yeah, the thing about 3PO is that, Yeah, he's not good at keeping secrets. He talks a lot. Yeah, I think it was much more convincing if he looked like he was genuinely panicking and being tortured by the torture droid. I mean, also, he's also the exposition audience stand in a lot. So in that sense, it helps for him to be discovering things as they happen. He just kind of comments on stuff.

Yeah, that's a good point. I'm just saying, it's rude. It is rude, but in their defense, he kind of deserves it. But yeah, the whole situation there in Java's Palace is ultimately, one, to get Han back into the fold. And also, too, just to show what a great team this is and the fact that Luke Skywalker is not the dumb kid who's impetuously running off to fight the most powerful man in the galaxy on his own. But instead, you know, a kid who can sit back and plan carefully who's confident in his abilities and also knows how to cover his bases. So it makes you much more confident. about the story to come.

That's actually another good point that you mentioned that it shows the whole team working together. This is really the only time in the movie where all our protagonists are together in one place. Basically, everyone splits up after this and stays split up for the entire movie, especially for counting Lando. But yeah, we've got everyone working together here and having an adventure together, and that's kind of something you wouldn't have without this part of the movie. Yeah, that's neat. I like that about this part. So, you know, the whole thing does kind of feel.

like it was very sort of Muppety. You have a kind of a Muppet show vibe to it with lots of goofy puppet monsters and, you know, definitely gives you the sense that they looked at the cantina scene from the original Star Wars and were like, you know, we managed to sell every single one of these monsters as an action figure, except the twins who had likeness rights that they could not work around. So what if we basically take the canina and do that like four times bigger and come up with each? even more monsters that we can sell action figures of. So that's why kids ended up with characters like Wequay and the Skiff Guard, like, you know, the really cool characters that you really wanted to play with, that your parents would find, you know, they had too many of them,

and so they got marked down. So that's what you got as your stocking stuffer. So that's like Pokemon before Pokemon. Yeah, everyone wants to look at you, but instead you get Weewee. Did you guys have the special Sebastian Shaw figure that was like a man? The Sebastian Shaw, Anakin Skywalker figure, it was really rare. Did they release one for the Return of the Jedi era?

Yeah, it was a... Because they definitely had a translucent one with the new line of toys in the 90s, but I don't remember one in the 80s. Yeah, it wasn't translucent. You had to mail it in from like a cereal box offer or something, so it was extremely rare, and it was really cool. I was so proud of owning that for some reason. It's rare. That's the real Anakin. You might possibly be an erred bench.

Maybe. It's possible. Maybe. It's possible. So any other thoughts on the whole Java sequence? I mean, there was the thing with Boba Fett where everyone was like, Boba Fett's cool. Oh, wow.

Okay. Never mind. He just got totally taken out like a punk. That whole sequence had a lot of guys like just basically prat falling into the Sarlack. Not the most convincing action sequences. a lot of the bad guys were just like darr like you know if they had any competence whatsoever uh luke and his friends would have just been stains on the the sand had been terrible i do

really like it when chubaka tells han who who can't say that that boba fat is about to to hit him it's the rate the way that harrison ford says boba fat bobafebopha like it's like a he's never heard it before and b it's the dumbest thing in the world. I love it. Okay. So for all its goofiness, this area, this section of the film does live on in a certain corner of pop culture infamy because of Carrie Fisher's outfit here. And this was something that she requested herself. She was like, I spent all of Empire Strikes back wearing like thermal, you know, winter gear. And you can't really see the fact that I'm in great shape and I'm beautiful. So could you give me something a little less like, you know, winter frock? And, you know, So they took that and said, well, let's put her in a tiny little string bikini. We made of metal. And that was actually more than she really wanted.

That was a lot more skin showing than she intended. Two thoughts here. A, I've been going to comic book conventions for the past 15 years. So if I never see this costume again, that's fine. And B, not to get weird about it, but she looks great in the winter gear in Empire. Yeah. I mean, she's a beautiful woman. woman. She was, yeah, she looked nice, like very feminine, very tough at the same time. It was, yeah, it was a great look. And her, her kind of elegant, uh, Bespin outfits were, were very impressive. Like, she looked, you know, like royalty. So anyway, yeah, the, uh, the whole, the whole thing with the costume kind of like, I think bubbled under the surface, percolating with young men and women, uh, for, for many years until I think it was an episode of friends where, uh,

One of the characters dressed as slave Leah is what they used to call her, and she's no longer called that. She is Leia as Joppa's prisoner, because that is a lot less questionable a name. Anyway, they dressed, like one of the characters, I think, on Friends, wore that costume for the dude she was seeing. And it was a moment that will live in infamy. Yeah, by the way, this is the weird thing about Leah's metal bikini thing is that I first saw this as a kid. And so I didn't, like, I wasn't attracted to it. I didn't know this is supposed to be, like, a sexy woman kind of thing. I didn't, it didn't really occur to me.

And then I actually had a crush on her in Endor. When she was in the Endor gear, I thought she was, you know, pretty. When I was a kid, I was like, wow, she's really cool and tough, and, you know. So I still am perplexed by this, the inclusion of this, like, is this supposed to be sexy? Was it supposed to be, like, something? I mean, it was definitely Star Wars reaching back to its pulp sci-fi roots. Like, that is the kind of thing that Frank Frazetta would have, you know, painted for the cover of a magazine. A lot of times you had, you know, like these sci-fi pulp novels or comic books or whatever where the women actually weren't wearing anything and were always just kind of twisted in very unnatural ways to hide all their naughty bits.

So it was definitely kind of keying off that. But it does seem kind of out of place in Star Wars. It has some real Princess Ora vibes to it, for sure. Has some what? Princess Ara. Princess Ara from Flash Gordon. Right. Yeah.

Sorry, last time I tried to watch Flash Gordon, I made it like five minutes in and said, you know, I just can't. You know, as someone with a podcast called War Rocket Ajax for the past 15 years, I take this very personally. I asked my wife to watch. She was like, oh, hey, do you want to watch a movie? back when we first started dating, and I was like, yeah, have you ever seen Flash Gordon? Like, I love that movie. It's really fun and campy. It's got great soundtrack. And we watched it.

And when it was over, she was like, that was 17 hours long. It was like the ring cycle. Yes. Okay. Fine. Sorry. But, but basically, yeah, that's, like a callback. But, you know, it's only a like 10 minutes of the movie, basically, that she's in that outfit. And at the same time, she also uses her chains to kill her captor, which is very, very good. Like, that's very satisfied. When she's the one that kills Java, not Han,

not Luke the Jedi, but seemingly helpless Leia chained to this giant slimy slug and uses the tools of her enslavement to murder him, that's good. That is really good. It is. Very much.

She's a badass. Yes. And, you know, she has a pretty passive role in this movie for a lot of it partly because of the writing and I think also just because of her circumstances Carrie Fisher's circumstances at the time but that is kind of the one scene

where she really gets to take charge and basically resolve a dangling plot thread from the very beginning of the first movie where Hans Sola was you know kind of his background story was that he was on the run from space gangsters well now he's you know she not only saves him the guy she loves

from the space gangster but also takes care of the space gangster in the process. So it is a good character moment. And I think that's enough about Tatooine because then everyone goes off to the rebel fleet, which is just hanging out, except Luke, who's like, hey, so I'm going to stop by the swamps and ask the little frogman about my dad. And then the frogman is like, yeah, your dad was telling the truth. I'm going to die now. Do you remember when you went in that cave

and he had your face? Because this like that should have been a good sign that this was a metaphor it was the funny thing is doesn't they say unexpected this was when he when he says Vader told him told him did you or something he said

yeah yeah he wasn't he wasn't expecting Vader to tell Luke at least not yet but you know that's the problem with bad guys they drop all the spoilers just you can't trust them but at least Obi-Wan didn't lie to him from a certain point of view yes he was being somewhat truthful I like the fact that Luke

questions that in this film because it's obvious they lied to and so they didn't just let it go and be like, oh yeah, I understand Obi-Wan that you hid it from me. Yeah, it's kind of like, no, no, this is BS. Yeah, I think this is the first time in the

franchise where you really start to think, hey, maybe the Jedi are actually kind of full of crap and they're not just the good and noble heroes of the galaxy that they present themselves at. Maybe there's actually something kind of bad lurking under the surface there. They're manipulating Luke just as much as the emperor and Vader are trying to manipulate him.

They're trying to manipulate him for their own ends, just like the light side ends. They didn't want him to face Vader yet in empire because they were afraid that he would find out. You know, it's kind of the subtext here. They want to be able to train him to take down this imperial, you know, Vader and the emperor before he finds out that, you know, there's this internal conflict. To be entirely fair to old Ben Kenobi. The first time you meet someone is not when you want to be like, oh, yeah, I knew your dad before he killed a bunch of kindergartners with a laser sword. Right.

I cut his limbs off and left him to die in a lava pit. Anyway, it's going to be you. He's going to do a genocide in a minute. Ooh, that's your dad. Yeah, I can understand that, you know, the timing was not ideal. But apparently, like, ghost Obi-Wan could just show up any time. So at some point, he could have been like, oh, Luke, by the way, some things I didn't tell you about you all. father. On the other hand, this unraveling soap opera is one of the coolest things about the

original trilogy, in my opinion. It gives it another layer. The one part that really clings for me is when he's like, oh, gee, there's another Skywalker. Is it, is it Leia? Like that, that part just kind of comes off as really contrived. It clearly wasn't planned from the beginning because of the way they make out and Empire Strikes Back, among other things. But yeah, it just feels like kind of a really clinging exposition drum. They left some sort of hint in Empire Strikes Back that there was another possibility for the galaxy to be saved from the emperor out there. And then their resolution of it is like, oh, yeah, the only woman you've ever met in your

life is actually your sister. Do you think like it was like when Yoda says like there's another? Like do you think it was meant to be Leah and she wasn't necessarily going to be Luke's sister? Or do you think, like, or is there, like, do we know, was there a different plan for that to resolve at some point? I mean, they've, like, obviously, Lucas has never talked specifically about that. But just, you know, people digging through different scripts and treatments and things, uh, feel like the, the, I think the consensus among historians and so forth is that

that was left to be sort of open-ended, just like, you know, create the, the possibility, the real possibility that Luke Skywalker could die. Like, you know, if he does die, that's not. the end of the universe, but it creates a sense of risk for his journey to go face against, you know, face off against Vader. Like, there's, there's a real possibility that he might not make it out alive. And that's bad for Luke, but, you know, the galaxy is not totally without hope if he blows it here. So I think, you know, it did a good job of kind of creating some subtle tension in Empire Strikes Back. And then that's kind of how they resolve it,

which is just like my, the ghost guy who, I met a long time ago. He's just going to sit on a log and tell me about my sister. I don't know. I think that could have been handled a lot better or taken in a more interesting direction. It could have been left ambiguous. They could have just not explained it. And then they'd have stuff to work on 30 years later when they made a new series.

But I think they also wanted to clear the way for Han and Leah to have a happy time together and not have the question of like, well, Luke, you know, do space monks like to have attachments? and trists and things like that? Is it going to be a complication for Han and Leah? No, just give them the happy ending. Luke and Leia, their siblings, they're not going to make out anymore. They've learned their lesson. That's not the family game for everyone to enjoy it.

It does give the opportunity for some of the best like Harrison Ford reaction faces in the entire trilogy when he finally finds out at the end of the movie. You could tell he was definitely kind of over this role because he's, he is so hammy as Han Solo in a way that he was not in the first two movies. I love it, though. The first two movies, he was like cocky and, you know, smirking at everyone the whole time. But here he's just like a big goofball. Something happened to him when he was frozen.

Like that, that carbon freezing process did something to his brain. I love that, though, because I think, like, the thing that a lot of people miss about Han Solo and the thing that I find really, like, charming and appealing about Han as a character. is that when you first meet him, he's, you know, you've never heard of my sweet car. Oh, ridiculous. But then, like, through Empire and Jedi, it's like, oh, no, this, this guy's a dork. He really is. This guy's just a really handsome dork with a fast car. I agree.

He is a dork. And that is part of the charm. But I think Harrison Ford takes it a little too far at times in this movie. But, you know. I agree. I noticed that he's pretty corny, and his big poofy hair kind of sticks out. You really have a thing about the hair in this movie. Yeah, well, I just noticed, when I was a kid, even, I noticed that, like, the hairstyles are suddenly kind of early 80s versus 70s.

This is where 80s anime hair came from. This is where it was invented, right here. Well, I was just thinking, like, I wrote in the notes, like, is there, there's an obvious style difference between 1977 and 1983, but is there, that much of a style difference between like episode 7 and episode 9 you know well we look back and say oh man you know Daisy Ridley's hair is so

2014 whatever year that came out I think she just has her hair pulled back into like you know tails or braids or whatever the entire time I don't remember anything about what characters looked like in episode 9 I just remember leaving the theater and thinking you know this pandemic can't happen too soon we deserve it

I never saw Rise of Skywalker And, no, I haven't seen it. What? Ejected. No, I encourage you to. it sounded like it was going to be bad go go into it with the mindset that it's it's actually pretty bad and i think i think there's some fun to be have where you just like you know pick it apart

there's some interesting stuff in it but it's yeah yeah i really like the idea of uh ray just being a nobody but and i'm going to tie this back into return of the jedd i don't worry i really like the idea of ray being a nobody because i think that's narratively like a much more satisfying story you know, it's the, you know, you don't need to be part of this grant. You know, you don't need to be a chosen one to be, uh, to be a hero. But at the same time, like, I do recognize that Star Wars is essentially the story of one family. Uh, so.

It's like the godfather in that way. Yeah. Like, I kind of get it. Like, I can't argue with that as a, as a theme. But, you know, it's like I can, I can make up a better episode nine in my head, I think. I think most people did actually. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to get too.

far into the sequel trilogy. But for me, a big disappointment was my vision of what the Force Awakens meant before I knew anything about the movie. And, you know, just saw like the, you know, some preview trailers where you saw Finn with a lightsaber. It was like, wow, the Force Awakens means that, like, there will be lots of people awakening to the Force. And it's going to be, you know, something that, that kind of spreads throughout the galaxy. And it's going to be about, you know, how, how does this work logistically when people are suddenly, you know, kind of coming into possession of the Force. And and power all of a sudden, and it goes back to more like what it was, where things were like in the prequel trilogy, but even better.

Like, that's really interesting. And then it just turned out to be the exact opposite of that, where it's like, no, just the Skywalker's, they know force. Yep, that's it. Yeah. And the palpitines. Frustrating. By the way, I want to mention something about characters about Return of the Jedi that I found

interesting when I was just watching this again, is to me, Luke in this film just stands out like he's in a different movie the whole time. Like, he's just a different type of character than the others. The others are, like, cornering around and goofing around and whatever. And Luke is all stoic and serious. And he's like, no, I have a deeper path I must follow, you know, while they're like, the shields are going down and whatever. You know, do you guys get that sense that they're like, he's like a parallel track,

not the same? I mean, yeah, I mean, he obviously comes out of empire of very changed, man. Like, you know, he's been through some shit. found out the guy who's been trying to kill him as his dad got his arm cut off and yeah I feel like the the way it's played and again this something I really like about this movie but like I feel like it's Mark Hamill playing Luke Skywalker playing a Jedi you know like he's acting like he thinks a Jedi should act because he has no like real example to go by other than Yoda who he's not going to wander around just say weird stuff

all day but I really like that about him because because he clearly has been through stuff. He's clearly, like, you know, trying to be the person he thinks he needs to be. And there are bits and pieces where you see the cracks in that. Like, you know, at the end, when he's with the Emperor and Vader, like, I think Mark Hamill, again, I think his performance in this movie is really, really underrated. I think his performance as Luke in general, like, as much as, you know, he's a pop culture icon that we all like, like, it's really good. Yeah, I mean, he takes a lot of it. He takes a lot of lumps mainly for the way Luke behaves early in, you know, the first movie where he's a dumb kid.

And he's supposed to be like a gormless little dork. But, you know, as the films progress, yeah, he does laid a lot more, you know, a lot closer to the chest. And, no, binge, I think you're completely right. He does kind of seem like he's in a different movie. And the story is actually structured that way. Like, he's kind of this force, I mean, this force that sort of sweeps. through the opening section with Java, and while everyone else is kind of bumbling around, he has the master plan and kind of guides everyone to success. And then he splits off,

goes and sees Yoda, gets back with the rest of the team very briefly to meet the teddy bears. And then he splits off again to, you know, go do family stuff. So basically everyone else in the movie is trying to resolve the empire versus rebels, you know, conflict with space battles and shooting and stuff. Whereas he's very focused just on. like, I got to figure out what's going on with my dad. And it just happens that those two do kind of converge. And, you know, at the end, the empire blows up and also the emperor blows up, thanks to kind of Luke, but mostly because of, you know, him getting through to his dad.

So, yeah, there are basically like two parallel tracks. And that is probably the most technically impressive thing about this movie is the way that, you know, the final third of it, basically the final act of the movie is essentially three parallel story tracks that all intermingled together. They all have an impact on one another in various ways. And they're all, you know, kind of paced and staged in a way that they, you know, they sort of reflect on one another, but also they sort of reach the same kind of beats of tension and release and, you know, resolution around the same time. So it's very, very tightly crafted in that respect. And I really, really like that. And they really, you know,

Like, they looked at that with Phantom Minus and we're like, let's do that, but add another story track and it all falls apart. But here it works. I think Chris is a good point, too. I also really like Mark Campbell's performance in this. Like Chris was saying, you know, he's playing someone who's making himself be what he think he needs to be. And if you watch his expressions in it, you can see, like, a lot of the time he's clearly following his plan. He's got things in him. But then sometimes stuff happens and you can like see the doubt flicker. across him. Like, you know, in Jabba's palace, he's executing this whole plan. And he's like, yeah, okay, even if you capture me, I'm going to kill you. It's going to be fine. But then, you know, he gets dropped into the ranker pit. And there's some moments there where he's like, shit, I wasn't planning on this. Now what? Got to figure something out. And I think that happens several times throughout the movie. And he plays it really well. That, you know, there's still this, this kid in him who's in over his head, even though he's playing this

character who is, you know, pretending to be a Jedi that has it all together. Yeah, when the the, uh, the biker scout spots him and Leah on indoor when they first get there and basically is about to blow the entire plan. It, you definitely get the sense like, like, this is not under his control. He's like, Leah, wait, don't do that. And he just kind of has to play along and, you know, make the best of it and, you know, ultimately succeeds. But even then it doesn't go quite according to plan because he's like, oh, gee, where'd my sister go? Whoops. I lost her in the forest. I really like that the end, like it's, it's these three parallel tracks and they're all oriented. around the same, like, larger goal, but they all have implications for the others, because

like, if Leah doesn't get the shield generator down, then Landau's not going to be able to get into the Death Star. But if Landau does get in the Death Star and blows it up, then Luke's on the Death Star. So there's implications and an escalation of danger that I think is really, like you said, it's really tightly crafted. And making any kind of story where your, your team of protagonist splits up, and they have to work on different aspects of the same thing. Like, you see it in superhero comics a lot because, you know, obviously, superhero comics are about teams with varying degrees of being bulletproof. And it's really hard to do that well.

And I think this movie actually, like, you almost don't even notice what it's doing because it all comes together. Like, it's a very logical progression of events. We need to do this thing so we can do this thing, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and even Luke's conflict with Vader and, of course, the emperor, like, he's trying to sort things out with his dad while a weird guy makes fun of them. But, you know, eventually his dad kills the weird guy, is like, stop making fun of us and drops him into a pit that just happens to lead to, like, I guess, the core of the Death Star. I don't know.

I'm not really sure why people have open pits in their throne rooms, but I don't rule the galaxy, so what do I know? Drama. But, you know, sort of the accepted fan novel canon, the sub-canon, I guess, is that when the emperor died, that's when the imperial fleet falls into disarray, because he had like this all-consuming, controlling will, just kind of pulling all the strings and making his fleet work like clockwork. And once he died, there was no one to kind of call the shots. And so you have things like the biggest spaceship in the world. crashing into the surface of Death Star 2, the new, the new DS2, the new 2DS, the new Nintendo second Death Star. The other thing is, like, Luke goes there knowing he's going to die, or at least believing he's going to die, he is prepared to go in there and die, and also for the emperor to die,

and also for his dad to die. And he's like, hey, by the way, we're all going to die soon, so you might want to get right with Jesus. Basically, yeah, he's really there to see if he can talk. his dad into not being an asshole anymore. Yeah, he was hoping to talk his dad around, like, on Endor before his dad took him up to the Death Star and the Emperor, but that didn't pan out. And then he was like, well, oh, well, we're all going to die.

But, but yeah, I mean, his original plan, or at least, you know, the optimistic side of his plan was that he could turn his dad before that. Yeah, I just, I really like the, the way he goes on to the, the Death Star at the end, I think, is such a really nice parallel with how he goes into Jabba's palace when he has this, you know, a secret plan that he's got all of these moving parts and it's all going to, it's all going to come together and they're going to rescue everybody and get out safely, whereas this part is, he's got this big plan and his plan is, I'm just going to stand here and then I'm eventually going to explode.

Well, I think that's another part of his plan that he didn't really, you know, he couldn't really account for is the fact that the emperor being, even though he's just like a weird old man who's all like, you know, decrepit and everything. He also, like, is super magical and kicks ass. Like, I don't think Luke really understood just how powerful the emperor was going in there. Because what had he seen before? He'd seen, you know, Darth Vader swinging a sword around and throwing some boxes through the air by not touching them. He'd seen Obi-Wan, like, influence people's opinions.

And, you know, at one point, Yoda lifted his ex-wing fighter out of the swamp. That's very impressive for a little guy. but he did not expect anything on the scale of the emperor. And really, you know, when you go back and watch the movie fresh, not having seen the prequels, not having, you know, known about all of this, no one really expects the emperor to be, like, when this movie first came out, no one expected the emperor to be like this cackling wizard who could control the elements and basically fry people just by pointing at them and giggling, like that was not really kind of expected.

So what does it mean to be a, you know, the master of the dark side of the force? Apparently that, like, that's, you know, different and unexpected. So it was a big surprise that clearly Luke did not account for. He has a limited power. So, yeah, the final act of the movie, like I said, it's those multiple parts intermingling, it's tying together. It's very convenient that they did not take out the Death Star Shield until Luke was able to talk his dad down from the dark side. But, you know, the final resolution, like really, even though the rebels win, the Death Star blows up, everything's cool, hunky dory. The real, I would say, core resolution of the film is the moment that Darth Vader is finally like, you know, this weird old dude is being really rough on my kid and my kid's kind of a nerd, but I love the little guy.

I'm going to stop this from happening. And, you know, that's also kind of the big twist. Like, it was a big plot twist when Darth Vader's like, actually, you know what, I'm your dad. Obi-Wan's a big liar. But the other big plot twist, you know, in this movie is that he is Luke's dad and he actually does care. And he does, like Luke was right all along. Like, he could save Vader. And there was still, you know, a little bit of good in him, as he said.

It puts Vader at the end of empire into a different context where you realize like, oh, no, he really did want. to rule the galaxy his father and son he actually wanted that that wasn't like a trick or a way to like lure Luke into being bad it's like no check it out we can do it come on it'll be fun we're going a road trip

that'd be fun if they actually did that and went on a whole other trilogy about the evil Skywalker duo have I got some comics for you I'm sure really? Oh yeah yeah I think those are probably all in the Marvel

comics app so you could probably read them for like you know as many as you want for 10 bucks or whatever Marvel Unlimited's great, and they never advertise it. I don't understand why it's like the best deal in comics. It's really good. Man, I love to, this is totally a sidebar, but I love to just go back and read 60s Marvel comics, you know, the kind of foundational superheroes comics.

And it's always a test. Like, is the premise of this interesting enough that I can keep reading it before Stan Lee's just aggressive sexism turns me away from this plot line? I've made it with... You're reading some old X-Men, huh? Yeah, Fantastic. Yeah, X-Men is a tough read. I always like to just kind of read the first few issues and skip ahead to giant size.

But, you know, I powered through Fantastic Four. Iron Man got me. I'm kind of skipping around Incredible Hulk. Avengers is tough. Like, hey, Wasp, you're the woman. Go make us some coffee. It's rough. Anyway, it's, you know, from a different time.

It's very interesting. Somebody did a, I forget if it was, but somebody did a thing where they stripped Stan Lee's captions out of a sequence from X-Men. You could just see what Jack Kirby drew. It's in like X-Men number three. And it's like, yeah, if you read the dialogue in this, it's all Professor X telepathically telling Gene how to use her powers. If you don't have those captions, it's just Gene escaping from being blindfolded because

she's telekinetic. But fortunately, we're talking about Return of the Jedi where Princess Leia kicks a lot of people's butts. And Hansolo's like, whoa, she's really cool. I mean, if it weren't for Leia, They wouldn't have met the teddy bears and everything would have gone to hell. They all would have died. I do like the bit where like, she pulls out.

She's like, hey, don't worry. I have a gun. And he's like, oh, I'm into this. And she gets to send back the I know line, which that's just beautiful. Really good stuff. You know, it's actually kind of the model of restraint that they did not make those little nutrient bars or whatever. She feeds Wicket. They did not turn those into actual.

merchandise or like an actual product you can sell. Like these days, they absolutely would have done it. I'm surprised they didn't turn raise like inflatable bread into a product. I guess it's just impossible to do that without special effects. But I would have, I would have gone hard on that inflatable bread. It looks delicious. It does. It looks so good.

By the way, I read that it was a real edible thing that they actually concocted, but it tasted terrible. So I think that's why it never became a real product. So edible quote unquote, I see. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, the little nutrient bars made me hungry when I was a good. And the way he kind of nibbles on him without eating him is funny too.

The Muppet eating. I'm not running them. Yeah, Muppet. I mean, it was early technology. Now they have amazing technology where they'd have like a little suction or something to pull the crumbs into the puppet's mouth. Wait, does Cookie Monster actually eat cookies now? He doesn't eat cookies at all.

He eats fruit and vegetables because eating cookies is a bad example for children. Cookies are sometimes food? He became the veggie monster. monster, yeah. Yep. We all know that. So, anyway, yeah. Like, they, they used up all their, their amazing puppet technology on Java, and it was amazing. Like, it's like, what,

eight or twelve people controlling this one puppet that weighs thousands of pounds? It's just a ton of clay. Like, literally a ton of clay. I'm pretty sure people got heat stroke in there. It was just a big bag full of slugs. Nob, no.

Huck! Hey, talk. All me, to be chicken, to look at me, to be chicken, to look a lot about the movie. All right, so we've talked kind of a lot about the movie. I don't know if it was a meaningful conversation, but we definitely talked. I don't know that we said anything new, but we talked. And that's the important thing. That's what people are here for. That's why people love podcasts because we talk.

Anyway, any final thoughts on Return of the Jedi, the film? What do you guys think of a special edition? Terrible. Released in 1997 as a 20th anniversary and also a sort of like, hey, go see the prequels in two years. So that's what I actually just watched last night because I just brought it up on Disney Plus and that's what you get. So, yeah, the lack of yubnub is a crime for the ages, for sure. It makes me angry. I refuse to watch the special edition

and Return of the Jedi, even more than the other ones because well, I do not like what they did to change the songs at the end and the, what's the one that Jedi Rocks replaced? What did they call that song? It was called Laptie Neck. Oh my God, why do I know that?

Someone take away my media. Jesus. I know you'd know that. God, so embarrassed. And there's some other things about it, I can't remember, but it's so heavily adulterated, in my opinion, because Richard Marcant was dead when they did the special edition, and he was the director of, you know, Return of the Jedi. And this is just my speculation that since Irving Kirchner was alive during when they remastered Empire Strikes Back, special edition, that there weren't as many crazy changes. In fact, I like all the changes in Special Edition Empire Strikes Back. I think they're good.

But the ones in Return A Jedi Even the No And Luke Falls That doesn't bother me I like the added stuff With the hawth monster And the better best-pins shots

And whatever And you know It's really restrained You know But Return of Jedi It What do I I should know what I'm talking about

But the two song The changes I don't like the fact Oh They put Hayden Christensen at the end too Which is like the worst guy ever Sorry Hayden I mean, he's actually, he's not that bad.

He was badly directed. No dialogue to work with. Yeah. Like, he personally is not bad. His character was bad. Yeah. Because of George, you can't, you can't hand someone a bowl of shit and say, give me steak.

It doesn't work that way. You can't turn it backward. So, yeah, I don't think Hayden Christensen is actually a bad actor. I've seen him in other stuff and he was fine. To be fair to that choice, it's like, well, that's what Anakin Skywalker looks like. Like, we did not have any Anakin Skywalker when Return of the Jedi was made. Now we do. It does make more sense for it to be Hayden Christensen at the end so that we can recognize, oh, that is Anakin Skywalker.

Because I remember as a kid being like, who is this guy? Yeah, yeah, I definitely didn't get that the first time watching as a kid. I thought it was awesome that you got to see the real Darth Vader, Anakin. Yeah, with hair. Sebastian saw, Shasha, yeah, with hair. And I like the fact that you get to see him without a helmet on. He says, let me see you with my own eyes. That's actually very controversial.

There are a lot of fans who are like, I wish they had never shown Vader's face. But I think it's important to, you know, symbolically to remove the mask and let Luke have that one face-to-face interaction with and it is not Vader. That was the whole resolution of Luke and Vader's arc. Like that had to happen. I love that because it goes there.

It does something. It doesn't just leave him some mysterious half-robot thing. they take his mask off it humanizes him he actually changes he says leave me behind whatever he says and you know and Luke loves him and wants to drag him out but he's gigantic

he's a big dude although Luke has the force you know if Yoda can lift an X-wing Luke can lift Vader now if JJ Abrams made this he'd pick up his body and fling him around in the air with the force and take him to the ship Luke does take Vader with him

because at the end he burns him on the funeral pyre or at least burns the armor. The suit or something, yeah. He probably, I mean, he already had him on the, on the, like, gangplank up to the shuttle. I assume he dragged him in. The armor was a lot lighter without. It's weird that he takes the helmet. Anyway, that's all kind of incidental to the special editions.

Yeah, the big changes for the special editions are mostly in the Java sequence. And then in the ending, they show more of the galaxy being liberated from the empire. They show Choracont, which was the first time Choracant had ever been shown. the Imperial Center, it was, you know, they show other places where it's just like, oh, by the way, it's not just a bunch of teddy bears dancing around, getting drunk in the forest, like everyone in the galaxy is pretty stoked that the weird old man is dead. Which they figured out instantaneously. News travels fast.

But, yeah, I mean, so watching the special edition, like the two musical numbers are really the only things that stood out as particularly messed with. I actually like the new ending music better, the one that's just more. of like a champ? No. That's fine. I think it's fine. As a song, I don't hate it, but I want my yub-knob.

Yeah, me too. I want my yub-knob-knob. But I will say Jedi rocks, the blues traveler piece that they threw in, that, like, the name is contradictory. Like, as of that moment, the Jedi do not rock in any respect anymore. That's the end. It's all over. Like, that can't possibly be any universe name of it.

That song is terrible. That's one of the reasons I hate that. But at the end, I like the smaller ending of the Ewarks because the whole trilogy is about these characters. And they're all right there at the end. That's all you need, you know, to see them celebrating. Yeah, they're finally back together up to the beginning of the movie. It's their story. It's the end of their arc and everything.

I don't need to see the whole galaxy celebrating. That just makes it too ridiculous to me. Yeah, the rest of the galaxy would be like, oh, whatever, emperor, who cares? It's all the same. We don't have to see that. Democrats, Republicans, there's no difference. We don't have to see it. That's what I'm saying.

For it to be effective. We're the Spirit Hunters, and we're a show that treats Hunter Hunter and Yu-Hakishu's author as the center of the universe. Some weeks, we do linguistic analysis, so the Chinese meaning of this character is to smelt or refine, but so the changed meaning in Japanese it means to temper. Other times, we get absolutely smashed. So we take one shot every time. Yus Gay uses the ray gun. One hour later. This is the least coherent episode.

I think your pirate is haunted. I think you... We're right. You can find out more about the spirit hunters right here on the Greenlit podcast network. Hi, Stu. Do you fancy doing a podcast covering every segment of every episode

of the beloved 90s cartoon Animaniacs? No, I hate animaniacs. Join me, Luke, the Warner lover, and him, Stu, the Warner Resistor, Animani Chat, covering every segment of every episode of the hit 90s cartoon Animaniacs, as well as its many spin-offs, including comics, video games and the movie, not to mention the recent reboot, it's going to be explaining to the max. So anyway, that is Return of the Jedi, the movie. But now there are Return of the Jedi, the video games. There is Return of the Jedi, the video games?

In any case, there are some video games. There actually are not that many based directly on Return of the Jedi itself. There's only, really three and then binge put one here that I think is a somewhat questionable connection. But it's the best one. Is it? Okay. Well, I mean, is it specifically tied to Return to the Jedi or is it just a Star Wars in general kind of game? It is a Star Wars lightsaber battle simulator kind of thing on the Atari 2,600.

We're speaking of Jedi Arena, released in 1983 by Parker Brothers. But it's not Return of the Jedi Arena. So this was, this conversation was limited just to Return of the Jedi adaptations. Like, Star Wars Games is a category all in its own. That is multiple episodes. We've already done one on the X-Wing series. And there's so many more. There's like the whole Dark Forces series.

There's, like, we could do five episodes on Yoda's desktop adventures. I just want to say, if we can't talk about it anymore, I just want to say that Jedi arena is awesome and don't listen to anybody who says it's not good. All right. I thought we were talking about Masters of Kassai today. We always talk about Masters of Terrorist. Casas. It's always with us, like the force. It guides us. It

binds us. It turns us into butter. The Jedi Arena game is cool just because it's a great, it's a really good two-player game on the Atari 2,600. It's a paddle game. Each person has a paddle, you know the little rotating thing with the buttons.

And it's just, my brother and I played this a lot. We played this probably more than any other 2600 game, even though we had a bunch of and you try to you basically each side has a shield that's kind of like a breakout wall and you swing a lightsaber back and forth and the lightsaber serves as sort of a like a deflector to deflect the other person's lightning bolts that come from this flying drone it's sort of like the training drone in a new hope but um you can direct lightning bolts out

of it by pushing the button and you can sort of aim them so you're aiming bolts at their shield and they're trying to block you at the lightsaber and it has really cool sound effects and it's just a really intense two-player game anyway it's good all right um there is jedi arena and then speaking specifically of the games that are branded star wars return of the jedi um and i i do think jenni arena can you know be kind of lumped into that because it did release in 1983 the same year as return the july so everything that year was like return of the Jedi. Oh my God. It's the biggest movie. It's the biggest thing ever. By the EWox. But so did Death Star Battle.

Death Star Battle. The same. Yeah, this is a really interesting game that I had never played before, but... I want to talk about this one because it's so weird. I just had to keep, like, looking at different videos of it. So it's this weird genre mashup kind of thing. So this is, this is all Space Battle versus the Death Star. But like it starts out, you're basically on the bottom half of the screen and playing Space War, essentially. You know, you've got... your little ship that has inertia and stuff, which has got to be incredibly frustrating on an Atari. But so you're the Millennium Falcon, and there's like Thai fighters and stuff flying around, and you've got to avoid and shoot them. But what you're actually trying to do is, so on the top half of the screen, there's this

image of the Death Star that's just up there. And in between, there's this weird abstract shield thing. Yeah, it's like a grid that descends into the distance. And actually, it's a very impressive visual effect for the Atari 2600 because it's a very tron looking. There's depth to it. Yeah, there's like a gradient of color, so it's not just like a solid single color. It actually becomes darker as it goes back. Yeah, it's this very tron-looking neon 3D grid looking thing

there. And like it periodically gets a hole in it in some square in the grid. And so while you're playing Space War down here, you have to be paying attention to that. And then when you see an opening where like the shield is down and there's a hole, you got to fly through the hole. And then you go to the second phase where you're actually now, um, The Death Star is accessible, except not really. It's still on the top half of the screen. You're still on the bottom half of the screen. You're still being harassed by Tie Fighters, Invaders Shuttle, and whatever.

But meanwhile, you're now playing breakout with the Death Star at the same time, which is fascinatingly weird. Yeah, I feel like it's more like Yars Revenge. Or like, yeah, like Yars Revenge. So the Death Star, you know, it's conveniently, it's the Return of the Jedi Death Star that's half built. So it's all in these weird blocky shapes. But like you're shooting up at it and so you can knock blocks. out of the Death Star, although, meanwhile, it's reassembling itself from the top down at the same time, and it has the Death Star laser is represented by just this green dot that can

follow you to slide back and forth along the bottom of the Death Star and try to shoot you with the Death Star laser, so you have to kind of lead it away and then come back to try to like break out your way to the Death Star core by shooting it from below. And so there's like a million things going on at once, and basically it looks like this is really intriguing, but would be insanely frustrating to actually play because you're sitting there trying to avoid the Death Star Laser and shoot at the core. And meanwhile, a tie fighter runs into you from the side every two seconds. Yeah, I tried playing this on my Analog and T Mini, which you know, you use NES pads to control with. And it just, it didn't quite work for me. So I could not do anything

in this game. But, you know, watching videos of it, it seems ambitious and definitely pulls together a lot of kind of popular game concepts from the time does something a little bit new with them and again has some very nice graphics so it's it's interesting just kind of tough to play without the proper hardware yeah for 2,600 it's got some really cool effects like when you go through the through the shield you kind of warp to the star and there's this really cool warp effect and yeah it's got a lot of cool stuff going on yeah I played it this morning in a rare fit of research for this podcast bench did research wow it's mark it on the calendar folks

a full moon. So it's funky. It's difficult, very difficult and slightly frustrating, but I think that if you had this in 1983 and you had no other game to play, you could sort of master it and enjoy it. That's a lot of caveats. Well, I mean, if you go back in time and you, well, it's got good production values. You mentioned that already. So it's neat.

Also for the Atari 2,600, a third title, but this one never actually happened. This was EWalk Adventure for Atari 200, and it was canceled. And I want to say the reason why is because it is the E.T. of Star Wars, if that makes sense. Yes. I played this this morning, too, the prototype. EWalk Adventure is really trippy, but it's enjoyable somewhat in that way. I did not think to pirate this unreleased game. So how does it play? It plays terribly, but you're basically, I think you're controlling an EWalk glider, kind of like the one that drops rocks on top of stormtroopers. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And you are flying around these different screens, and of course, everything's extremely low resolution and blocky because it's the 2600. So you have to sort of understand what you're looking at. There are some ATSs and some stormtroopers on the ground or something. And speed of bikes, too. Yeah, you run into a speeder bike at one point. I ran into a speeder bike, and suddenly I was on the speeder bike controlling. Well, yeah, because Wicked Steel is a speeder bike. Yeah, but it's all wild and crazy, just like the, yeah, Wicked getting on a speedway.

Just like it would have been for Wicked, yeah. Yeah, so, and then somehow I got, I crashed and got out of it, and I was an EWalk walking on the ground, and then I had to go find the glider again. I got back in it, and I don't know if you can shoot from the glider or not, but. I think you can dump rocks, like, yeah. When you're... Yeah, so this is basically Grand Theft EWalk. right sort of yeah when your when your iwok dies does it play that sad music from the the movie when the one the one ewalk dies in the entire battle that song yeah that one it's just like a little

sting in kind of the battle the overall score in that section no it doesn't that's a shame that's a shame All right. So that was it. I mean, obviously Atari 2,600 was the big platform at the time, or, you know, had been the big platform at the time. And then video games were in the process of dying in America. So it makes sense that Star Wars, you know, Return of the Jedi tie-ins initially came out on 2,600. And, you know, the deals that Lucasfilm made with Atari and so forth are why we did not actually have Lucasfilm limited, you know, Lucasfilm games or LucasArts games about Star Wars for another decade. I don't think it was until it was X-Wing or Dark Forces in like 94, 95, 93, somewhere around in there. Like a decade after Return of the Jedi is when we finally started seeing Lucas make their own Star Wars games. So in the meantime, everything was licensed out and had a little less quality control.

And we see that really clearly with the arcade game Return of the Jedi, which, you know, you might think, wow, Atari made that amazing Death Star simulation for Star Wars. And then, you know, they came up with the conversion kit for Star Wars that let you play Empire Strikes Back. And both of those were really cool. So I bet they did something really amazing for Return of the Jedi. something even better. Like maybe you're the Falcon. You're flying around amongst all the Star Destroyers trying to take out the Death Star, you know, flying through the tubes.

Well, you are absolutely wrong. That is not what this game is. It's poop. It's high speed, three-quarters perspective bumper cars. Does anyone want to stand up for this game and defend its honor? Because I am more than happy to besmirch it. You're talking about the Atari arcade game. Yeah, the Atari arcade game, yeah.

Yeah, it's not that great. You know what? Actually, I can't say that because I've never actually played it. But I just watched a video, and I'm equipped. I am fully equipped to pass judgment on this game as per current internet laws. It looks like a Star Wars licensed version of Zaxon to me. It doesn't look that fun to me, but that's all I know because I haven't played it. It's way too fast to be Zaxon.

Like, it's recklessly fast. I mean, yeah, it starts out with a speeder bike, and then the second level is, flies the falcon through the Death Star tunnels. But it's always through this isometric-ish perspective. And it's just, it's all bitmap graphics, not vector graphics. It's not really, I think, what anyone wanted from a Return of the Jedi game. I don't know why they moved away from the vector style. I guess that was kind of being phased out in favor of more colorful bitmap graphics. But I remember seeing this back when it was not brand new, but, you know, a few years after the movie came out and just thinking like

I loved Atari Star Wars game. What is this? This is terrible and I played it and I hated it. I just not did not like it and I've played it more recently on the arcade one-up Star Wars trilogy cabinet and I'm happy to say that it is still garbage. Yeah, I mean like I can imagine a game that's designed around like bumper cars body-checking speeder bikes into trees being fun. But this is, like, that is a mechanic here, but that's not really this game. Like, it really looks like it's designed to just basically eat your quarters as fast as possible by going way too fast for you to not run into trees every 20 seconds.

The wild thing is that this game is just as brief as the vector game. Like, it seems like with this style of graphic, it should be more substantial. But a single looper of the game is like three minutes. It's really, really short. They did this weird choice where it skips half the levels on the first time through, I think, because they didn't want people to not be able to even make it to the Death Star. So like the first time you play it, you play the Speeder Bike level and it's pretty short. And then you go straight to the Falcon doing its trench run only. It's really a tunnel run this time into the Death Star. And it's only if you blow up the Death Star and then it starts back over at the next time. If you blow up the Star, then you have to fly backward. Well, you have to fly out. Yeah, fly out. They didn't bother to redraw the Falcon Sprite to reflect the, the, the that you're moving in the opposite direction. So it's just like flying upside down. Yeah.

And you have to chase this, outrace this wall of fire while dodging, you know, the oncoming tunnels and conduits. Yeah, while basically playing the Battletoads, annoying level. Yeah. And so, but yeah, so only if you beat all that, do you then, you then just start over and you're at the speeder bike level again. And then this time, you get another level in the middle, which is also very weird, which is so the same, like, weird, isometric perspective.

but now you're Chewbacca and the ATST, like, shooting logs for some reason, only then it, like, also cuts to the Falcon fighting tie fighters just kind of at random without warning. You're playing these two levels at once, which is a really weird choice. Yeah, it's really strange. I have never made it that far, but watching videos where it's just like, you're in the ATST, now all of a sudden you're in the Falcon, flying with some X-Wings. Now you're back, like, it's instantaneous, and you only see the Falcon and the X-Wings for, like, five seconds at a time. time. It, it does not make any sense. It seems really disorienting and weird. That's because it is. Okay. Well, anyway, so a big dud. And we would not see another return of the Jedi game for another decade. When finally, the third and final entry for

the Super NES, sculptured software and THQ, who took over the publishing rights for this little franchise from JVC, Super Star Wars Return of the Jedi launched for Super NES in 1990. And if you have played any of these Super Star Wars games, you know exactly what to expect here. It's exactly the same just with, you know, new levels and also two new playable characters. You can finally play as Leia. And you can also play briefly as Wigat W. Warwick, for some reason. And all kinds of random stuff that was not actually in the movie. Like, it starts out with a mode seven, like, landspeeder thing going to Jabba's Palace, which was nothing we ever saw.

So you know. Like a climb up the hill. In the original script, and I think they even filmed this, originally you did, there was a scene with Luke in, I think, Obi-Wan's hut where he was making his own lightsaber with R2. But they cut that from the movie, and I think that was the right choice because it takes away the surprise of Luke having his own lightsaber. And then there was also another scene that they cut just because it didn't come out well, where after defeating Jabba and blowing up the barge and everything, The whole group went back to the falcon in a sandstorm, but because of the sandstorm, like, it's just incoherent. Like, it looked terrible. So they cut that from the movie also.

So I would say that the tattooing wastes where you're in the landspeeder, the mode seven sequence, is probably drawing on that element, like the kind of script element, which also shows up in the novelization that I remember from when I was a child and spoiled the movie for my aunt. It says that they're in the, I just played this this morning, too. It says that they're, like, Han and Chui and, not Han, sorry, Luke and Chui and Leia were all in their way to Jabba's Palace together. So I think they just made it up for this. Yeah, and then you've got, like, climbing the mountain full of monsters to get to Jabba's Palace. And basically, it's all just excuses to have these big sprawling Euro platformer levels like they're going to do because it's Super Star Wars. I mean, they're not really that's sprawling. They're much more kind of, like, linear left to right.

like it doesn't it doesn't really do the it doesn't really do the thing where you're like aimlessly rambling around inside you know this towering structure it's not so much like the indiana jones games these these are much more of just like go from left to right kill everything and then die the boss i do that i mean there are some big there's some big interiors in like in javas palace and in other places where you have a lot of vertical movement too but i guess it's it's probably still more of a path yeah it's been a while since i have played this i you know rented it back when it first came out. So I will take your word on that. But I definitely don't remember these games as being like, you know, just the, the airplane hanger, as they call it, style of

game. Yeah, they're not that bad. But yeah, and then, of course, they have to make up more bosses because there's not that many bosses in the movie. So, like, the little eyeball century that lets 3PO into Jabba's Palace is now this huge 500-ton eyeball robot that tries to crush you and yada yada but uh although although i do have to say that that of all the the things they expanded into weirdness um that warrior princess slave lea is kind of a hoot like you've got lea in her in her sorry in her uh labor laia as java's captive yes lea as job as captive but with her with the like you know chain broken off of java that she's now using as a mace and like doing like deadly pirouettes through a level like it's it's kind of that sounds cool i never got that far yeah

do you play as lea in the forest sections no i think you're always wicked in the forest sections weirdly yeah no there's no i don't think there's any end or lea in there you get lea in the bounty hunter outfit at the very beginning um and you get to play as that for a while and then you get to play as as mace bikini lea when do um but yeah the end's all wicket yeah okay That's a shame, because that's a huge disappointment for Venge who's in love with Pancho Leia. Yeah, yeah. Pancho Leia is Pancho Villa's sister, by the way. Okay, yeah, Poncho Leia is my favorite Leia.

But this game is cool because in Super Star Wars, the first one, I was always frustrated that you start off with a blaster as Luke and you don't get a lightsaber immediately. But this game, you start with a lightsaber if you choose Luke. But the unfortunate thing is you just have to hack away at guys over and over again, like it's a bat. but that instead of like slicing straight through them which is what would probably happen in real life quote unquote that's why Luke needed energizers because you know keep the lightsaber powered up anyway yeah so so generally

um super star wars return of the Jedi follows the same beats and style and rhythms as the first two uh games in the series has that mix of mode seven vehicles and shooters and stuff like that has a lot of just like what is this type type materialism they added in, and is also just, as I recall, brutally, unenjoyably difficult. I have to say there is kind of a crazy ambitious mode seven sequence for the Death Star run at the end.

Have you made it that far? Oh, no, I watched it. Oh, okay. I was like, wow. I have not actually made it that far. It takes stamina. No, but if you somehow actually make it that far, they do this thing with Mode 7 where they must be streaming backgrounds in because Mode 7 actually works on backgrounds, but they're

doing this thing that was reminiscent of Sega's streaming sprite, what was the name for that, when they did the 3D screener? Sprites, Super Scalar. It looks kind of like Sega Super Scalar stuff where they just keep swapping in new sets of, you know, superstructure beams for the Death Star, which then zoom out towards you. It looks pretty cool. I'm sure it's a pain in the ass to play, and of course no one's ever actually made it that far, but it's a cool effect.

Yeah, I don't know. As with all the Super Star Wars games, I just can't really find it in my heart to like these. They were fun to rent back in 1993, 94, and, you know, play for a few hours on a weekend and then never touch again. But I just don't feel like they hold up. I just don't think they're that well-designed. I actually bought the first two. I bought the first two back in the day. And, yeah, I never made it to the end of either of them.

And I think by the time the Return of the Jedi One came out, I'm like, no, I can't do this anymore. I mean, they had really, really great graphics. Like, they looked good. They had perfect sound. Like, everything sounded like it was from the movies. Really good use of the Super NES's audio chip to recreate the score and the sound effects and everything like that. Yeah, the cinematics are gorgeous. Yeah.

So, you know, I have to give a props for the aesthetics of the thing, but it really does kind of embody that whole looks over content, kind of trap that a lot of license games fall into. too. Chris Sims, do you have opinions about Super Star Wars Return of the Jedi? Not too many. I do think that those games are,

there's a weird little paradox in those games where I think they get worse the more powerful you get. Because I remember just juggling all the force powers was really difficult when there were only like three that were useful for the game.

But yeah, I remember, I don't know if I ever finished this one, because I definitely finished Super Star Wars. I definitely finished Super Empire Strikes Back, but there's a lot that you were talking about that I do not remember at all, like playing as Wicked or even playing. I don't really remember playing as Leia, but that would have been at the beginning.

Well, I guess you could choose your character on some of the stages. You know, I really think the shine had kind of worn off the series by the time Return of the Jedi hit. And Binge took a moment to make a note in the notes that there was. was no NES conversion of this or all, you know, NES equivalent to it because of the timing. And yeah, I feel like at this point, everyone was just kind of like, ah, you know, we're good.

Probably so. So anyway, I think that's about it. Really not much else to say about Return of the Jedi, the film, or the games. But there is more to say about Star Wars. I'm sure we'll do more Star Wars episodes in the future because we've got to talk about episode one racer. Oh my God. That's the one game people actually like.

No, that's video gaming. And that means we get to have Jar Jar Bing's discussions. I'm sure Shane Bettenhausen will be angry if we don't invite him on for that. So I don't know how that's going to work. Anyway, I think we're done. So thanks everyone for listening. This concludes our trip through the original Star Wars trilogy. It's been sprawling and aimless, much like the video games that are based on Return

of the Jedi. So really thematically appropriate. But with this, I will say farewell. And also, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed Retronauts this episode, you can find other episodes, including our Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back episodes on the internet at Retronauts.com. You can find Retronauts on the Greenlit Podcast. network. You can find us on mini podcatchers, and you can support us on Patreon at

patreon.com slash Retronauts, where if you subscribe for three bucks a month, you can listen to every episode we do for the public feed, a week early with better audio quality and no advertisements, or you can bump that up to five bucks a month. And in addition to all that stuff, you get biweekly bonus episodes, patron exclusive episodes. And every weekend, There's a column and a mini podcast by Diamond Fight and occasionally some other stuff just for patrons. So please check it out, patreon.com slash retronauts. All right, gentlemen, pitch yourselves. Let's see.

Let's go in reverse order five letters in your name. That would be Chris Sims. Yeah, I'm Chris Sims. You can find all of my stuff at t-H-E-isb.com, the ISB. That's my website that now is mostly links to other podcasts that I do, things that I have written, comic books that I have written and co-written that you can buy at your local comic store or online at Comicsology.

If you have enjoyed my appearances on Retronauts, which I know one of you has... That's me. There's always someone. That might be it. But one person did email me. It was extremely nice. Then you might be interested to know that I am

currently writing a series of reviews where I am reviewing and ranking every Metroidvania I have or will ever play. that is exclusive to the War Rocket Ajax Patreon for bonus content backers. I've gone through six games. There's four columns, six games. So if you want to know where I think Super Metroid ranks on the greatest Metroid Vannias of all time,

then by all means, check that out. I'm filled with trepidation. All right. Benj. That's awesome. I got that email too. It was really nice. Someone said that Chris and I are the heart and soul of keeping it real on.

on Retronauts or something like that. It really made my day. It was a little bit there. Yeah. Anyway. I'm more like the spleen of keeping it real. Yeah, the spleen. I'm Ben Jedwards.

You can find me at Ben Jedwards on Twitter and BenJedwards.com. And my final thought on this, I just wanted to say, I forgot. My daughter was watching Return of the Jedi last night. She's 10 years old. She said, when she saw the Death Star and everybody marching around, she said, why would somebody want to work at a place like this? Have you seen the economy? Good point.

Yeah. Don't work for Nazis. As if it's a choice or something, I guess. I don't know. But she also said there's a constant risk that someone will murder you with their hands. That is very true. That is not a good workplace environment. No, I mean, Death Star HR has got to be fielding so many complaints.

Yeah. Anyway, thanks for listening. And Ben? All right. And I'm Ben Elgin. You can find me on Twitter at Kieran, K-I-R-I-N-N. I don't have too many side projects going on at the moment. But, you know, if you ever need a CNC milling machine,

hit me up and I'll hook you up with my day job. And finally, I don't use milling machines, but I do play one on television. I'm Jeremy Parrish. You can find me on Twitter as GameSpite. And you can find me doing stuff at Limited Run Games. You can find me, of course, here at Retronauts. And also on YouTube, look up my name, Jeremy Parrish.

And you will find many videos, sometimes live streams, mostly me talking about the history of NES games. I guess at some point I will get to the Super NES, Super Star Wars games and have to deal with those. So look forward to that, I guess. Anyway, that's it. That's this episode. Go away, everyone. No, just kidding.

We love you very much. And next time we'll tell you about our little maneuver at the Battle of Tanab. I don't know. Thank you.