Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Grace Duffy, Luke Dunne and Andy Melhuish, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.
So this week, Richard Marquand’s Return of the Jedi.
It is a time to settle old scores. Returning to his home planet of Tatooine, Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker begins the final stage of his journey towards reconciliation with his father Darth Vader. Meanwhile, the Empire has embarked upon construction of another planetary superweapon, as the Emperor hatches a plot to crush the Rebel Alliance once and for all.
At time of recording, it was ranked 86th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Show Notes:
- Recorded 3rd November 2020.
- Note: Due to the COVID-19 situation, this episode was recorded remotely. We suspect, going forward that a lot of our episodes will be until the crisis resolves.
- Return of the Jedi on the Internet Movie Database.
- The IMDb 250 at time of recording.
- Follow Grace on Twitter.
- Read Grace’s reviews at The Mary Sue.
- Read Luke’s work at Film in Dublin.
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- Read Andy’s writing at Eloquent Bear.
- Scott Mendelson at Forbes on the re-release of the Star Wars trilogy in the late 1990s, February 2017.
- Sage Negron at Comic Book Resources documents the changes that George Lucas made to the re-released version of Return of the Jedi, December 2019.
- Alex Kane at StarWars.com revisits Rogue Squadron on the N64, January 2019.
- Games Radar looks back on the legacy of Rogue Squadron as a formative and influential Star Wars video game, November 2015.
- The American Cinematographer looks at the production and development of Return of the Jedi, June 1983.
- Brian Cronin at Comic Book Resources on George Lucas’ argument with the Directors’ Guild of America over credit for The Empire Strikes Back, September 2018.
- Kara Hedash at ScreenRant on Steven Spielberg’s flirtation with the Star Wars franchise, February 2020.
- Will Perkins at Yahoo! reports on how David Cronenberg almost directed Return of the Jedi, November 2012.
- Beatles Guy animates David Lynch’s account of declining to direct Return of the Jedi, April 2016.
- Richard Marquand discusses Return of the Jedi in a previously unpublished interview at Den of Geek, June 2013.
- Pauline Kael reviews Return of the Jedi for The New Yorker, May 1983.
- Roger Ebert reviews Return of the Jedi for The Chicago Sun Times, May 1983.
- George Lucas talks to Empire about The Empire Strikes Back, May 2014.
- George Lucas reflects on the production of the original trilogy with The Los Angeles Times, February 1997.
- Ian Nathan looks back on the troubled making of The Empire Strikes Back for Empire, May 2020.
- Richard Rivalli at The Historian looks back on the impact of the divorce between George and Marcia Lucas, Winter 2016.
- Eric Diaz at Nerdist argues that editor Marcia Lucas gave Star Wars its heart, May 2019.
- Marc Bernardin at SyFy on how Marcia Lucas influenced and shaped Star Wars as a film and as a franchise, December 2012.
- Mark Hamill talks to Home Theatre Magazine about George Lucas describing Star Wars as “a film for children”, September 2007.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist on Star Wars as a saga about the inevitability of generational failure, September 2019.
- Stephen Marche at Esquire explores Star Wars as a saga about “daddy issues”, December 2015.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist interrogates the flawed redemption at the heart of Return of the Jedi, October 2019.
- Jim Hoagl at The Washington Post looks at the politics of Star Wars, December 1977.
- Kyle Smith at The New York Post looks at the Star Wars saga as George Lucas’ commentary on the Vietnam War, September 2014.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist argues for the subversive power of the Ewoks as a metaphor for the Viet Cong, March 2020.
- Ian McDiarmid talks to The Guardian about how the Emperor was influenced by Richard Nixon, November 2005.
- Jenny Drapkin at Mental Floss on Lyndon B. Johnson’s habit of dictating from his toilet, April 2008.
- Elizabeth Sandifer at Eruditorum Press discusses the delightful weirdness of Return of the Jedi, March 2017.
- Emmet Asher-Perrin at Tor.com on the Ewoks and their hunger for meat, July 2013.
- Derek Faraci at Comic Book Resources argues that the Ewoks (and the rebels) implicitly ate the Stormtroopers in Return of the Jedi, March 2020.
- Nola Taylor Redd at Space.com argues for the “Endor Holocaust” in the wake of the destruction of the Death Star, March 2016.
- Warwick Davis talks to Bristol Bad Film Club about the legacy of the Ewoks, Mary 2017.
- Owen Nicholls at NME on the addition of blinking Ewoks to Return of the Jedi, September 2011.
- Jason Guerrasio at Business Insider on the addition of the computer-generated musical number to Return of the Jedi, November 2015.
- Ryan Lambie at Den of Geek on the evolving face of Sy Snootles and the Max Rebo Band, June 2017.
- James Greene Jr. at Crawdaddy! on the attempts to turn “Lepti Nek” into a disco hit, May 2011.
- James Greene Jr. at Crawdaddy! on the removal of Anne Arbogast from the subsequent editions of Return of the Jedi, May 2011.
- Femi Taylor talks to Fantha Tracks about playing Oola in both the original and remastered Return of the Jedi, September 2020.
- Darren Mooney at the m0vie blog on the weird and strange sexual energy of the Star Wars saga, December 2019.
- Wired looks at the cult that has developed around Leia’s chainmail bikini in Return of the Jedi, July 2006.
- Emmet Asher-Perrin at Tor.com looks at Carrie Fisher’s response to the legacy of the chainmail bikini, October 2013.
- Laura Bradley at Slate reports on rumours that Disney will be retiring Princess Leia’s slave bikini from marketting and merchandising, November 2015.
- Carrie Fisher talks to The Wall Street Journal about her own feelings on the possibility of retiring the chainmail bikini, December 2015.
- Carrie Fisher offers advice to Daisy Ridley via Entertainment Weekly not to “be a slave” like Leia was, October 2015.
- Noah Berlatsky at The Guardian argues in defense of the chainmail bikini from Return of the Jedi, November 2015.
- Kelly Faircloth at Jezebel reports on the auctioning of Leia’s original chainmail bikini, October 2015.
- Reuters reports on the auctioning of Han Solo’s blaster from Return of the Jedi, June 2018.
- Wolfgang Wild at Mashable looks back on the Rolling Stone shoot of Carrie Fisher in the chainmail bikini, January 2016.
- Cyriaque Lamar at io9 shares Wicket the Ewok’s stirring monologue from the novelisation of Return of the Jedi, April 2012.
- George Lucas talks to Rolling Stone about spending a decade of his life on Star Wars and wanting a break, July 1983.
- J.W. Rinzler talks to ComingSoon about how difficult it could be to work with Lucas on Return of the Jedi, October 2013.
- Hugh Armitage at Digital Spy reports on plans for a much darker ending to Return of the Jedi, May 2017.
- Gary Kurtz discusses another possible mixed ending of Return of the Jedi with The Los Angeles Times, August 2010.
- Gary Kurtz talks to Film Threat about Lucas’ original plans for the Star Wars saga beyond The Empire Strikes Back and why they never happened, March 2000.
- Producer Howard Kazansian talks to Star Wars Interviews about cutting Return of the Jedi for maximum commercial appeal, January 2010.
- Harrison Ford talks to ABC News about how Lucas refused to kill Han Solo in Return of the Jedi because he couldn’t sell “dead Han toys”, November 2010.
- Tom Breihan at The A.V. Club looks back on the commercial success of Star Wars as a blockbuster franchise with Return of the Jedi, April 2020.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist argues that Return of the Jedi reduced Star Wars to a repeatable and reproduceable formula, November 2020.
- Darren Mooney at Escapist Movies argues for Return of the Jedi as the movie that reduced Star Wars to a formula, November 2020.
- Tim Bissell at Premiere explores the strange, strange cult of Boba Fett, December 2007.
- Darren Mooney at Escapist Movies on the difference in how fans think about Boba Fett and how the franchise portrays Boba Fett, December 2020.
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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: andy melhuish, blockbusters, Boba Fett, dad stuff, ewoks, formula, george lucas, grace duffy, luke dunne, Luke Skywalker, princess leia, return of the jedi, saga, star wars, vietnam |
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