With the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Friday, December 18th, I thought I would take a look back at all of the previous movies from the beginning starting with the prequels and then the original trilogy. If you would like to read any of my previous reviews, click here. Try to ignore this, or not while watching the prequels. I’ll probably be treading through familiar territory with most people as well.
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) battles horrible Jabba the Hut and cruel Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice: James Earl Jones) to save his comrades in the Rebel Alliance and triumph over the Galactic Empire. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) reaffirm their love and team with Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), the Ewoks and the androids C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) to aid in the disruption of the Dark Side and the defeat of the evil emperor.
So now this is the last time that I will be going back in time as this is the third and last film of the original trilogy of films from the late 70s to early 80s. For those who don’t know the story (essentially those who probably weren’t alive), Luke Skywalker hashes out a plan and goes back to his home planet of Tatooine in order to save Han Solo (Ford) from Jabba the Hut. Later on, Luke joins Princess Leia (Fisher) and Solo on the forest planet of Endor in order to disrupt the Empire’s recently built new Death Star. Luke also believes that there is still some good left in his father, Darth Vader (Prowse/Jones) and is on a mission to prove that to him. This film continues along the lines of what I’ve enjoyed in this trilogy so far which is a good story, good characters, and it wasn’t trying too hard. The story isn’t too overly hard to follow as it kept subplots at a minimum. I also thought the film had good pacing as the story moved along nicely. There was definitely a connection between this film and the previous film, The Empire Strikes Back, as it started where it left off and quickly resolved problems which carried over so I immediately knew what was going on. There wasn’t much story setup here as the first two films kind of did that so it started with action right away which was an okay change and continued with that throughout. Even with that , there was still some moments of character development to break up these action moments which were great to see with Luke, Leia, and Han becoming even closer. The story in this one is more about Luke and Leia than it is about Han. The story in the trilogy so far has been leading to this and they each have moments here and it does pay off after all the character development. The effects are a little dated but all of the action in here was great to see and was exciting with speeders, space battles, and some lightsaber battles. The film is a little slow in the middle featuring scenes with Ewoks which I didn’t mind (because they’re so cute) but the ending made up for this giving us some of the biggest moments in film history (obvious but still no spoilers). Overall, the series (so far) ends on a high note giving and is another solid and exciting entries in the series and is one of the greatest Star Wars films ever (so far).
Score: 8.5/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.