Until 1999, Return of the Jedi had a reputation as the weakest movie in the Star Wars series. It's fairly hard to argue with that. There's a lot of fun in the movie, but it's nowhere near as good as Empire Strikes Back, and I'd have a hard time ranking it alongside A New Hope as well. There is, however, one thing that Jedi did better than any of them.
It's a Trap!
Sure, the Admiral Ackbar quote got a lot of coverage on the internet. It's practically begs to be made into a meme. The part that always got my brother and I, though, was the nonchalant way that Lando says "fighters coming in", only for the camera to pan out to see an enormous wave of enemy ships coming in to intercept them.
The entire space battle is still great. They've done a lot of cool stuff with CG over the past decade or so, but I'll still take this battle over just about any space battle on film. From the 'surprise' Death Star blast (yeah... couldn't have seen that coming, Chekhov generally keeps his guns loaded with ammo) to the great scenes with the heroes dodging and weaving amongst the bigger ships trying to both stay alive and scramble for a way to turn the tide in their favor, this scene delivers.
Enjoy this decently well-edited look at the entire space battle. I've watched it twice tonight already. Damn, I loved this.
Agreed that it's an awesome space battle. I've always felt, though, that either one of Han or Lando should have died during the battle.
ReplyDeleteYou and Joss Whedon are of an accord.
ReplyDeleteReturn of the Jedi? Oh, dear.
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