Return of the Jedi

• 1. Introduction

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  Return of the Jedi opened in American theaters on the 25th of May 1983. Lucas booked that date deliberately, exactly six years after the original Star Wars had premiered in 1977. Richard Marquand directed it from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas. It closed out the trilogy that began with Star Wars and continued through The Empire Strikes Back. Luke Skywalker sets out to free Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt's palace, where Han remains frozen in carbonite. A harder task follows: convincing his father, Darth Vader, to abandon the dark side of the Force. Around that rescue, the Rebel Alliance moves against a second Death Star, guarded by the Emperor himself. It grossed $374 million worldwide in its first run, enough to make it the highest-grossing film of 1983. But that finished film almost went to a completely different director, and carried a title its own writers hated. For months, its own writers weren't sure Han Solo would survive it. This is the story behind Return of the Jedi.

• 2. The Director Who Almost Wasn't

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  Lucas wanted Steven Spielberg to direct first. A feud between Spielberg and the Directors Guild of America blocked him from taking the job. Lucas then approached David Lynch, who had just been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Elephant Man in 1980. Lynch turned it down, saying Lucas should direct his own creation. David Cronenberg also declined, since he preferred directing scripts he had written himself. Lucas considered Lamont Johnson, director of The Last American Hero in 1973, before settling on Richard Marquand.

  Marquand had little experience with special effects, so Lucas stayed on set through much of the shoot. Marquand joked that directing Jedi felt like "trying to direct King Lear" with Shakespeare waiting in the next room. Lucas, in turn, praised Marquand's kindness and his skill with actors. Marquand had signed on to direct before Lucas and Kasdan had even settled on what to call the finished film.

• 3. A Weak Title

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  Lawrence Kasdan told Lucas that Return of the Jedi was a weak title. Producer Howard Kazanjian agreed, and the film's name changed to Revenge of the Jedi soon after. The original teaser trailer for the film carried that new name. In December 1982, Lucas decided the word revenge did not fit, since he believed a Jedi should never seek revenge. He restored the original title, but thousands of Revenge of the Jedi teaser posters had already been printed and distributed by then. Lucasfilm stopped shipping the posters and sold the remaining stock, 6,800 of them, to Star Wars fan club members for $9.50 each.

  The finished screenplay itself was not locked until late in pre-production. That was unusual, since a budget, a schedule, and even a director already existed by then. That late-arriving script still carried one question its writers had not settled: whether Han Solo would survive it.

• 4. Should Han Die?

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  Harrison Ford was not contracted for two sequels the way Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were. Raiders of the Lost Ark, released in 1981, had made Ford a much bigger star. Producer Howard Kazanjian said Han was frozen in carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back partly because the filmmakers were not sure the character would return. He also said Han was initially left out of the Jedi script entirely. Kazanjian, who had also produced Raiders of the Lost Ark, ultimately convinced Ford to come back.

  Ford himself felt Han should die through self-sacrifice in Jedi. Kasdan agreed, and suggested placing the death near the start of the third act, so audiences would doubt whether the others would survive. Gary Kurtz, who had produced Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back before Kazanjian replaced him, said Han did die in an early draft of the script. Kurtz has suggested Lucas rejected that ending partly because a dead Han would hurt merchandising. Kurtz has also claimed an early script ended with the rebel forces in tatters and Leia adjusting to her new duties as queen. In that version, Luke walked off alone, "like Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti Westerns."

  Elsewhere in early drafts, the Ewoks began as Wookiees and the Millennium Falcon was written to land on Endor. The ending was even going to show Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker returning to life instead of remaining as Force spirits.

• 5. Behind The Ruse

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  Filming began on the 11th of January 1982 and ran until the 20th of May 1982, six weeks shorter than the Empire shoot. Kazanjian's schedule pushed the start early, to give Industrial Light and Magic more time on effects. That timeline left some crew members doubtful they would be ready in time. Working from a budget of $32.5 million, Lucas was determined to avoid the overruns that had hit Empire. Kazanjian estimated that using ILM, which Lucasfilm owned, saved the production about $18 million. Lucasfilm's non-union status made booking filming locations harder and pricier, even after two hit films. To hide the shoot from fans and press, the production carried the ruse title Blue Harvest, tagged with the line "Horror Beyond Imagination."

  The first stage of filming spanned 78 days at Elstree Studios in England, using all nine of its sound stages. Shooting opened with a Tatooine sandstorm sequence that was later cut from the finished film. For the rancor, Lucas first wanted a stunt performer in a suit, in the style of Toho's Godzilla films. The team could not make that work, so the rancor became a puppet filmed at high speed instead.

  In April, the crew moved to Arizona's Yuma Desert for two weeks of Tatooine exteriors. Production then shifted to Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park near Smith River in Northern California for the Endor forest scenes. Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam, personally shot the forest backgrounds for the Endor speeder chase, filming at less than one frame per second. Walking at around 5 miles an hour, his footage played back at 24 frames per second. That made the on-screen motion look closer to 120 miles an hour. Vader's funeral was filmed at Skywalker Ranch.

  Kenny Baker was cast as Wicket the Ewok, but fell ill with food poisoning on the day of the shoot. Warwick Davis, who had no film acting experience, took the role instead. On set, Marquand clashed with Anthony Daniels, which led Daniels to record his C-3PO dialogue with Lucas rather than Marquand. Carrie Fisher also disliked working with Marquand, who yelled at her often enough that she once burst into tears. The tears ruined her makeup so badly that it took an hour to redo it.

  Once filming wrapped, test screenings inside a commercial theater showed that ordinary sound systems muffled much of the finished mix. Lucas later solved that problem by founding his own cinema sound certification company, THX.

• 6. Breaking Box Office Records

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  Return of the Jedi earned $6.2 million on its opening day. That beat Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan's earlier record for the biggest single-day gross in film history. That record for the highest pre-Memorial Day Wednesday gross held until 1996, when Mission: Impossible surpassed it. The film opened in 1,002 theaters and made $23 million in its opening weekend, topping The Wrath of Khan's earlier $14 million opening. Over its first full week it grossed $45.3 million, a record at the time. Its $22,973 per-theater average stood as a record, adjusted for inflation, for 36 years, until Avengers: Endgame passed it in 2019.

  A 1985 re-release added $11.2 million, lifting the worldwide total to $385.8 million at that point. The 1997 re-release brought in $16.29 million in its opening weekend alone. When the film returned to theaters in 2023 for its 40th anniversary, it earned $5.1 million, placing fourth at that weekend's box office. None of those numbers settled whether critics thought the film deserved its crowds.

• 7. Cheers And Complaints

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  Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, gave Return of the Jedi four out of four stars. He called it "a complete entertainment, a feast for the eyes and a delight for the fancy," adding that Lucas and his team "keep topping themselves." Gene Siskel, of the Chicago Tribune, matched that top rating, describing the film as a "childlike delight" that features "every facet of filmmaking at its best." Gary Arnold, in The Washington Post, called it a "feat of mass enchantment" and "an imposing landmark in contemporary popular culture." Colin Greenland, writing in Imagine magazine, argued the series should have grown worse by then but instead "is getting better." Sheila Benson, of the Los Angeles Times, wrote that the film carries "a weight and a new maturity" without losing its fun. She likened its characters to close friends the audience must leave behind as the trilogy ends. Time magazine's Gerald Clarke ranked Jedi better than The Empire Strikes Back but less exciting than the original Star Wars.

  Variety's James Harwood called the film a "visual treat" full of striking creatures. He doubted Mark Hamill could carry the drama, and felt Fisher and Williams underperformed compared to their earlier work. He also thought Ford was given too little to do. Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, dismissed it as the "dimmest adventure" of the trilogy. Pauline Kael, in The New Yorker, found its imagery lackluster and called it "an impersonal and rather junky piece of moviemaking." Christopher John, reviewing for Ares magazine, branded it "a cheap and tarnished crown for the series which shook the world of film when it started out."

  The film picked up several Academy Award nominations, including Best Original Score for John Williams. It also received a Special Achievement Award nomination honoring its visual effects team: Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston, and Phil Tippett. It earned British Academy nominations for its sound and visual effects work, plus a Hugo Award nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation. At Rotten Tomatoes, 84% of critics have rated it positively, with critics giving it an average score of 7.30 out of 10. Metacritic lists a weighted score of 58 out of 100, while audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a rare A+ grade. In 2021, the Library of Congress selected Return of the Jedi for the National Film Registry, calling it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

• 8. A Film That Keeps Changing

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  Reviewing the 1997 Special Edition, critic James Kendrick called Return of the Jedi the weakest of the three original films. He said it depended "too much on the slick commercialism" of the franchise, but still praised it as "a magnificent experience in its own right." James Berardinelli went further, describing it as the least enjoyable and least innovative film of the trilogy. He still considered the Special Edition a "must-see" for fans, as the trilogy's conclusion. Some fans have questioned the realism of the Ewoks fighting Imperial troops with primitive weapons. Lucas defended the scene, saying the Ewoks' role was only to distract the Empire's troops, not defeat them outright. He modeled that idea on the Viet Cong's success against the technologically superior United States during the Vietnam War.

  In 1997, for the 20th anniversary of the original Star Wars, Lucasfilm released the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition. The changes to Jedi included new aliens in Jabba's throne room and a different throne-room song. The Sarlacc gained a beak, and the ending added shots of celebrations across various worlds after the Empire's fall, plus new closing music. That version, and every release since, runs about five minutes longer than the original 1983 cut.

  The 2004 DVD box set added further changes from Lucas. It replaced Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen as Anakin's Force spirit in the final scene. Christensen had since played young Anakin in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. The 2011 Blu-ray release went further still, giving the Ewoks blinking eyes. It also had Vader shout "No!" as he throws the Emperor to his death, a change that drew sharp criticism.

  Lucas waited sixteen years before writing and directing a prequel trilogy tracing Anakin Skywalker's fall into Darth Vader. After Lucas sold the franchise to the Walt Disney Company in 2012, Disney built a sequel trilogy. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher returned, alongside new arrivals played by Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac. Streaming series like The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and The Mandalorian are set in the years bridging Jedi and The Force Awakens. They are still filling in what happened next.