Return of the Jedi/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alas, Poor Scrappy: The scene where one of the Ewoks tries to get another Ewok to wake up before realizing that he in fact died.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Vader's Redemption Equals Death scene.
    • The Rancor's death is rendered unexpectedly moving by its handler weeping over its body.
  • Anti-Villain: Vader, at least in comparison to Palpatine.
  • Badass Decay: Boba Fett. Although strictly speaking he didn't do anything particularly badass in the previous movie, he at least looked cool and imposing. In this one, he's defeated fairly easily (by a blind man, no less) and in the Special Edition he's seeing flirting with some strippers, which annoyed some fans greatly for ruining his mystique.
  • Big Lipped Alien Moment: The band sequence in the special edition, which was really just an extension of the original sequence that was trimmed down to just the part where Jabba threw Oola into the Rancor pen (30 seconds vs about 2 minutes). In the Making Of featurette that preceded the movie, Lucas admitted that he just thought it would be funny to have a random musical number in an otherwise serious movie.
  • Catharsis Factor: In the context of the films as a whole, seeing Vader turn back to the light and strike down the man who manipulated him into betraying the values he once stood for is catharsis in its purest sense. In fact, the Empire's final defeat is more satisfying after seeing the heartbreaking fall of the Jedi order in both The Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith. One of the least controversial edits in the remastered editions takes this even further by adding footage of the natives of a few prequel trilogy planets celebrating the death of Palpatine.
  • Chickification: Some reviewers (especially those in feminist media studies) view Leia's Go-Go Enslavement as this, even though she's more of an Action Girl in this movie than any other.
  • Complete Monster: The Emperor, in contrast to Vader as the Tragic Monster.
  • Contested Sequel: While A New Hope is often considered a solid first outing with room to improve and The Empire Strikes Back is held up as a textbook example of an Even Better Sequel, this movie's got people a bit more split. While rarely considered to be outright "bad", detractors view it as a noticeable step down from the first two movies for being a bit too silly in nature thanks to the Ewoks and in the extended version, the infamous musical number in Jabba's palace. Boba Fett's pathetic defeat and the final epic battle boiling down to "teddy bears with sticks and stones somehow killing boatloads of technologically advanced soldiers" are other points of contention. Defenders however are often of the opinion that this is the strongest of the original trilogy thanks to its genuinely moving emotional core involving Luke and Vader's strained relationship. Vader's inner turmoil as he's torn between his duty as a Sith Lord and his love for his son is cited as one of the series' greatest conflicts, while his redemption and subsequent death are likewise considered to be one of its biggest Tear Jerkers. Palpatine is another point in the movie's favor due to the way he absolutely steals the scenes he's in, as is Luke's struggle against embracing the Dark Side.
  • Director Displacement
  • Ear Worm: Both "Lapti Nek" (the song which plays in Jabba's place in the original) and "Jedi Rocks" (in the remastered version.)
  • Everybody Remembers the Stripper: This entry in the Star Wars series consists of Leia in a metal bikini and...something about some teddy bears.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans consider this to be the canon ending of Star Wars as a film saga, ignoring Disney's sequel trilogy due to it completely overriding this film's happy ending by having the Empire bounce back and return bigger and more dangerous than ever, with every original trilogy hero dying a miserable failure while Palpatine's death didn't even stick, lessening the impact of Vader's Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Boba Fett's loud fanbase liked to pretend that his embarrassing defeat didn't happen, or accept that it did, but pretend that he managed to escape the Sarlaac's stomach somehow. Funnily enough, this would become canon twice over, officially happening in the original Extended Universe and Disney's own EU! It really pays off to have fanboys in high places.
  • Fight Scene Failure: A funny little mistake left in that fans affectionately call, "The Force Kick."
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: An Expanded Universe version. Remember that little bit in the Special Edition, where a mob on Coruscant is toppling a statue of Emperor Palpatine? Well, in the novel Iron Fist, it's revealed that immediately afterward, a massive number of stormtroopers entered that plaza to "restore order"...massacring a good deal of the people there.
  • It Was His Sled: Leia is Luke's sister. Yoda gives the confirmation of the It Was His Sled from The Empire Strikes Back when he tells Luke (and the audience) that Vader is indeed Luke's father as he claimed.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Palpatine not only managed to corrupt Vader, he almost succeeded with Luke and set up a pretty nifty trap for the Rebels to fall into. Too bad he got cocky and underestimated the Power of Love...
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Memetic Sex God: If Princess Leia wasn't already a sex symbol, you better believe she became one after donning the famous metal bikini. Ditto for fellow slave girl Oola, who kickstarted the Memetic Sex God reputation for the Twi'lek race as a whole and paved the way for other bombshells like Darth Talon and Aayla Secura.
  • Misaimed Fandom: This isn't really the case with viewers as whole, but believe-it-or-not, there is a single instance where this happened to Emperor Palpatine, and by a public figure, no less. The Emperor was actually viewed as something of a personal role model by Real Life Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer because of the sheer power he was able to wield over others via his Force Lightening. Dahmer also admired the Gemini Killer from The Exorcist III movie for similar reasons.
  • Moral Event Horizon: When Jabba feeds Oola to the Rancor and laughs at her terror, you'll be begging for this creep to die.
    • To moviegoers at the time, Palpatine electrically torturing Luke was his big on-screen crossing, and was such a vile act that it gave Vader the motivation he needed to finally turn against his master. Though as the prequel trilogy and decades worth of expanded universe materials would later show, it's just one of many disgusting atrocities the man has committed over the course of his long life.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • The idea of the Sarlacc digesting you over a thousand years.
    • Palpatine's Electric Torture of Luke, which is creepy both because our hero is crying out in pain and screaming for his father to help him, and because the old geezer seems to derive some sort of perverse enjoyment from doing it.
    • Not seen in the film itself, but some of the methods that the Ewoks disposed of the Imperial Stormtroopers, according to Hume Tarl in The Essential Guide to Warfare, during the battle of Endor reeked of this, including using arrows to shoot out several Stormtroopers throats, or worse, firing the arrows into other parts of the body that causes them unbearable suffering due to them using a neurotoxin, and even utilized punji stake pits for the Imperials to end up being impaled in. All of a sudden, you may view the Ewoks significantly differently than you have before.
  • Ruined FOREVER:
    • George Lucas adding Vader's "No. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" to the scene where Vader kills the Emperor in the 2011 Blu Ray release has provoked this reaction from the fans. Ignoring the hammy, unintentionally funny line delivery, it was a scene where Vader's silence and body language already spoke for him. It's hard to find anyone who thinks that dialogue was necessary in that moment.
    • For many people, Hayden Christiansen being inserted (very poorly) already ruined the film in 2004, which would make this of very little consequence.
    • A possible case of the creator making Memetic Mutation backfire and getting revenge? Think about it...
  • The Scrappy: The Ewoks were obviously an attempt to introduce "cute" aliens into the film, but many fans ended up hating them or at least finding them annoying for their ridiculous Rock Beats Laser victory.
    • Their Scrappy status gets even worse when a later interview has Lucas stating that he based the Ewoks on the Viet Cong.
    • Time would be kinder to them, with the Ewoks developing into Base Breakers. Still, if you're talking to someone that's critical of this film, nine times out of ten you can expect the Ewoks to be one of their biggest complaints.
  • Special Effects Failure: The Max Rebo band in both versions, especially with Sy Snoodles. In the original, she was a very static puppet. In the SE, she became a more detailed and mobile (albeit cartoonish) CG model that didn't blend properly.
  • Take That, Scrappy!: Not in the film itself, but the 2012 guidebook The Essential Guide to Warfare has a section about the Battle of Endor from an Imperial soldier's perspective, and the way he described the Ewoks and their actions during the battle reeked of Nightmare Fuel, almost painting them as being similar to a bunch of Complete Monsters. For some, however, this helped rescue the Ewoks from Scrappydom because it paints them as hardcore Badass Adorables that can believably topple an army as powerful as the Empire's.
  • Tear Jerker: Vader's death and funeral.
  • Theiss Titillation Theory: Was there any more to Leia's slave girl costume beneath the panels of cloth hanging from front and back of the waistline? According to Carrie Fisher on the commentary, there wasn't, and at times, the cast and crew standing behind her could see "all the way to Florida", as it were. Oola suffers a wardrobe malfunction as she is being dragged towards Jabba the Hutt, and again as she falls through the trap door. You can still see a short bit of the first malfunction in the current special edition. Older editions have longer scenes.
  • Unfortunate Implications: In an interview later on, George Lucas insinuated that the Ewoks were supposed to be based on the Viet Cong (aka, the Communist backed guerilla group within South Vietnam during the Vietnam War), which causes a lot of negative implications about Lucas' views on America when the Ewoks were fighting and basically slaughtering the Imperial Stormtroopers.
  • Vindicated by History: To a lesser extent than the prequels since it wasn't as widely hated, but people have come to look at this film more fondly in the wake of Disney's controversial film trilogy. While yes, it does have its silly moments, people have come to accept them as no more silly than other ridiculous aspects of the series, even embracing things like Sy Snootles' song and the Ewoks as opposed to shunning them. And since the movie's already got a strong emotional conflict between Luke and Vader, as well as a bombastic villain in Palpatine, it has a solid foundation that helps it gain favor with even those who are still critical of its goofier aspects.
    • A lesser example exists in Hayden Christansen replacing Sebastian Shaw as Anakin's force ghost in the 2004 rerelease. It was unanimously hated at first thanks to it being viewed as disrespectful towards Mr. Shaw, while poor Hayden was saddled with the reputation of being unable to act his way out of a paper bag. But people warmed up to it over time due to The Clone Wars and even Revenge of the Sith making the Wangsty Hayden Christiansen version of Anakin a lot more likeable, while Hayden himself has been acknowledged as a genuinely good actor often given poor direction and dialogue in the prequel trilogy. It also helps that it adds not only a sense of continuity between films, but even catharsis since we get to see Vader's troubled younger self finally find peace. Fans of the original are still rubbed the wrong way by Sebastian Shaw's removal, but even then there's still a lot less pronounced hatred on their end.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome:
    • Of course this applies to all the films, but this one stands out for the Sarlacc Pit fight, the speeder bike chase, and the battle royale at the end, capped off with the Falcon outrunning a massive fireball, Raiders of the Lost Ark style.
    • The crew involved with the speeder bike chase said in particular that the script just said "They jump on the bikes and take off at 100 miles an hour." They had to make it happen.
  • The Woobie / Unintentionally Sympathetic: The Rancor keeper crying over his dead pet.
  • Woobie Species: The Ewoks, considering they gladly agree to fight with the Rebels, only to lose badly.
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