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Star Wars Prequels

Why Return of the Jedi's Last Scene is Darker Than It Seems (screenrant.com) 80

Slashdot reader alaskana98 writes: You may remember it — at the end of Return of the Jedi: Special Edition, a rare glimpse of Coruscant — the seat of the galactic empire — is shown in a celebratory state as news of the empire's defeat at Endor reverberated throughout the patchwork of worlds that make up the Star Wars universe.

One might imagine that most viewers at that time might have thought — "Oh, cool, so that's what Coruscant looks like" — then went on with their lives rarely to think about that scene ever again. In a recent ScreenRant article ,they take a deeper dive into what happened on Coruscant...

Yes, it turns out that both the later movies and licensed books revealed that Darth Vader's Galactic Empire survived: [C]itizens who set off fireworks, toppled statues of the Empire, and attacked stormtroopers were met with violent retaliation from Imperial forces, resulting in numerous extrajudicial killings and executions of civilians. Coruscant continued to serve as an Imperial stronghold until its liberation by the New Republic, which happened a year later in canon and two years later in Legends.... [T]he X-Wing novels mention that the Empire brutally quelled this initial uprising, and the Star Wars: Mara Jade — By the Emperor's Hand comic series showed Stormtroopers executing civilians via firing squad. Aftermath similarly describes civilians fighting against Imperial security forces after toppling a statue of Palpatine....
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Why Return of the Jedi's Last Scene is Darker Than It Seems

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  • Oh, wow...um... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @09:51AM (#62808373) Journal

    Don't care.

    • The end of the first movie was the actual ending. The additional 8 movies were just fan service to make more money. The first movie was the only one in the with a distinct beginning and ending.

    • by xevioso ( 598654 )

      Then why post?

      • by jddj ( 1085169 )

        Because I'm mystified.

        Of course people will have different tastes than mine, that makes complete sense.

        And I didn't really dislike Star Wars - at least the original films. Kinda liked 'em in fact (though having to watch the last 8 minutes or so of Ep. 4 over, and over, and over during Christmas shopping season while working in a video store the year it came out on CED left something of a bad taste).

        What's baffling to me is that a popcorn-muncher film created as a nod to crummy '30s Flash Gordon serials crea

        • I have to agree with you. But what I find funny, is how much time people spend analyzing something that, like Star Trek, was obviously just made up as they went along.
          Oh sure, George Lucas talked about having all this written out, but it's pretty clear he was just bullshitting one thing after another.
          "The princess is actually your twin sister!"
          "The bad guy that we already said killed your dad, IS actually your dad!"
        • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

          Jeebus, people even started a religion. Based on a sci-fi movie.

          Sci-fi books can't have all the fun in creating religions. You need to have something for all those people too lazy to read a book after all.

        • by Jerrry ( 43027 )

          Jeebus, people even started a religion. Based on a sci-fi movie.

          Reminds me of the classic Star Trek episode A Piece of the Action where the Enterprise visits a planet whos entire culture was based on a book about Chicago mobs of the 1920s left on the planet by an earlier Federation visit.

    • by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @10:45AM (#62808461) Journal
      You should care that it is wrong. The end of the Return of the Jedi I saw at the cinema was set on Endor. The only way that would be darker than it seems is if it turned out that the reason the Ewoks were celebrating was that they were now finally going to eat Luke, Leia and Han.
      • by jddj ( 1085169 )

        This.

        With a fine Chianti.

        Mod parent up.

      • Re:Han Shot First (Score:4, Interesting)

        by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @11:43AM (#62808563)

        The only way that would be darker than it seems is if it turned out that the reason the Ewoks were celebrating was that they were now finally going to eat Luke, Leia and Han.

        Remember, the Ewoks had a dress in Leia's size. We didn't see any other human women around during the celebrations.

      • by tragedy ( 27079 )

        Of course, the end to Return of the Jedi set on Endor was actually pretty dark if you think about it. Even if 99% of the exploding second Death Star was somehow annihilated in the explosion, the remaining 1% of fallout would have ecologically devastated it. So the whole Ewok civilization should have been doomed.

        • The Ewoks were using storm trooper helmets as percussion instruments. Did those helmets have heads still in them?
          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            The Ewoks were using storm trooper helmets as percussion instruments. Did those helmets have heads still in them?

            Probably not, since that would ruin the sound. Of course, that does raise the question of what happened to the heads, as well as the rest of the stormtroopers. The Ewoks were obviously quite willing to cook humans (whole and alive no less). The exact fate of all those stormtrooper bodies is unclear though. Too much to eat them all at that celebration at the end. So, unless the Ewoks have good food preservation techniques (not likely for people who cook animals without skinning and gutting them first or prop

  • Is there a real point to discuss? Perhaps why they needed a Special Edition to begin with - your answer must not be marketing or money related.
    • by xevioso ( 598654 )

      I think the idea is that there's a parallel in this fictional world to our own, in that it's really hard to overthrow established empires. The end of ROTJ was a nice coda to the fight against a tyrannical regime, and once the 2nd Death Star blew up the empire would crumble. Except that's not how it works in real life. Ukraine may very well fight back successfully against the Russians, for example... and might even kick them out, but Ukraine will be dealing with hateful Russinas trying to take their terr

    • Maybe you’d prefer some bitcoin news?

      • by cstacy ( 534252 )

        Maybe you’d prefer some bitcoin news?

        Coinbase. They're on Coinbase.

        You're far too trusting...

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @10:04AM (#62808383)

    And then there's "no" news day.

    How did this get promoted to the front page? There's literally no content in it.

    • And the fake content it's trying to push has been relegated to the legends (aka non-canon) section of star wars lore.
      • And restored by the new canon. Of course the Empire didn't die in a day. If Trump dies on his toilet today, does anyone think we wouldn't see every MAGA hat in existence being worn tomorrow? And that's without holographic proof that Garland didn't throw him down the toilet and explode Mar-a-Lago.
        • It was eplaced by the new canon. If it was restored there wouldn't be a need to, uh, completely eliminate characters, create new storylines, and introduce new ones. Outside of Wedge Antilles, the characters referenced, directly and indirectly, in the summary don't even exist in the new canon universe.
    • by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Yeah, it's about as non-news as it comes: Fiction mimics real life in that victories against oppressive regimes are almost never quick and painless. It's even less interesting when one considers that the sequel books and shows and movies would have almost no distinctive story to tell without the vestiges of the Empire in place and kicking. They would be generic science fantasy.

    • This happens every Sunday, if you look at the story posting times they are an hour apart and at the same exact times every Sunday. Slashdot is fully automated and the editors just fill in the weekend's automated posting times with whatever content they can find to fill the list on Friday.
    • We ran out of bitcoin related jokes.

  • Screenrant, not sure this marketing investment will pay off for you..
  • At first I thought this was going to be about Disney's Financials, but maybe it's about their creativity being crushed along with the rebels.
  • I am old enough to remember before that was the final scene of _Jedi_.

  • by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @10:29AM (#62808417)

    That's not a question. I highly doubt that George envisioned what the supposed "canon" mentioned above says. More to the point, this is illustrative of what's wrong with science-fiction writing and most of Hollywood writing these days. Everything is dark. Everything ends on a sour note. One might go so far as to say that writers are all suffering from some form of depression. People want a happy ending. Maybe if these writers wrote more happy endings, there would be a lot less of a dim view of the world.

    • If it was in Legends, then Lucas approved the story line, even if he didn't write it. Wait a minute, why are we having this discussion on Slashdot?
    • Expecting serious, deep thought from a Star Wars fan is about the same as expecting serious, deep thought from Star Wars.

      It's a universe where every asteroid, every ship, every planet, every moon has exactly the same gravity as Earth. It has no internal consistency. It's a fun set of movies and that's it.

    • by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @11:46AM (#62808573) Homepage Journal

      "Dark and gritty" seems to be popular among audiences now. People don't want to see stainless heroes saving the day and ushering in mega-happy endings. They think that is silly and old-fashioned, and far too unrealistic to be believable even in fictional universes full of magic.

      People want to see flawed heroes screwing up and revealing their own toxic sides, and their weaknesses. They want to see the stars struggle with addiction or debt or relationship stress or other identifiable problems, and screw up and hurt people, and then struggle to deal with the aftermath. And especially they don't want pure heroes and pure villains, but people who are pressured into being a good mix of both for understandable reasons.

      This has the added advantage of never truly resolving a story. There is always good and evil coming from every action, so always material from which to create more drama in sequels. It makes good business sense.

      Personally, I don't care for it. I DO like complex characters that are multi dimensional, with a story that makes you think (e.g. Blade Runner). But I also like to see the hero express noble intentions and succeed through noble action (e.g. Blade Runner). Heroes that start out flawed and overcome their flaws to be better people make for a good story, but it has to be well-written otherwise it just seems like the heroes are acting out-of-character, which makes the narrative feel chaotic and random (e.g., Luke running away and hiding when his friends are in need, attempting to assassinate his own nephew in his sleep, etc.).

      Those are just my opinions, though. Some people just want to watch the world burn.

      • People want to see flawed heroes screwing up and revealing their own toxic sides, and their weaknesses.

        I guess that's why they didn't like the latest trilogy's main protagonist...

        • She's a Mary Sue.

          And the sad thing is that there's kind of a plot reason for her being that way, but you don't find out about it til Episode 9 and by then it's too late to save the character or the trilogy.

          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            She's a Mary Sue.

            Superheroes are, by and large, pretty much always Mary Sues. They're just usually male, so one seems to notice. Luke Skywalker learned to block blaster fire with a lightsaber during a short hyperspace trip.

            • She's 100x worse.

              • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                She's 100x worse.

                100X worse than what? Luke Skywalker? Sorry, you're saying that she blew up 100 death stars in her first movie in a military spacecraft she had no training in flying? Funny, it seemed to me like she basically got kidnapped and, despite being able to free herself from one incompetent guard, still needed to be rescued from an enemy base. Then she did beat an experienced force user and lightsaber wielder in combat, but only barely and only after he had suffered major trauma, injury and had come close to being

            • https://youtu.be/JN8Qm5o0oSY?t... [youtu.be]

              Please use the timestamped link to avoid the stupid ad at the start of the vid. But it's a solid comparison of the two characters, and why Rey is ultimately much worse of a Mary Sue.

              • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                That's a pretty long video. It seems pretty ridiculous from the start though. Superman is _not_ a Mary Sue, but Rei is? Riiight. The argument about Luke vs Rey? Stuff like he was a whiny farmboy and therefore would have learned awesome combat skills, whereas someone growing up all alone on a hostile planet, spelunking in dangerous shipwrecks would not? Seriously? The creator of that video actually believes that uncle Owen, who is desperate for Luke not to follow in his father's footsteps, would have taught

                • He explains it pretty well in the vid. Personally I agree with the guy.

                  • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                    He explains it pretty well in the vid. Personally I agree with the guy.

                    You're certainly entitled to your opinion. My opinion is that the video tries to make its case by trying to define things early on to mean that the story universe bends itself in favor of the hero. This is pretty difficult to accept though. Pretty much all action story universes bend themselves in favor of the hero all the time. Consider every superhero who patrols the city looking for crime to fight. Unless they have special senses (which many of them admittedly do). They should spend most nights not findi

                    • Not really, you need to watch the entire vid to see where he's going with it. A tl;dr comparing Luke in ep4 and Rey in ep7:

                      Luke gets his ass kicked, constantly. He can't fight worth a damn. He nearly dies multiple times, and only survives thanks to his friends/travel companions (or in the case of the trash compactor, dumb luck). He can't really do anything right except pilot ships, which is established as something he can do, though he also has experience working on some computer systems on the farm. D

                    • (yes I'm aware that a novel finally explained a lot of why Rey wound up where she did etc. and that she wasn't a direct creation of Palpatine's but that's really beside the point, none of this is covered in Ep. 7, or even hinted at, which was a terrible mistake on the part of the writers that could have made it a central part of her story arc throughout the entire trilogy, but instead chose not to do so)

                    • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                      Luke gets his ass kicked, constantly. He can't fight worth a damn. He nearly dies multiple times, and only survives thanks to his friends/travel companions (or in the case of the trash compactor, dumb luck). He can't really do anything right except pilot ships, which is established as something he can do, though he also has experience working on some computer systems on the farm. Droids, moisture harvester equipment, power converters, blah blah blah. He's obviously a rural tech geek. He never displays any real command of the force in Ep. 4 despite training under Obi Wan, until the final moments of the movie where he uses it to enhance his already-excellent piloting skills. All this despite him having the blood of one of the most-disruptive Force sensitives in the history of the Inner Rim.

                      With absolutely no significant training whatsoever, Luke is able to use a lightsaber to deflect mini blaster bolts from a hovering drone at close range. Ever play baseball? Blindfolded? It's clearly an impossible feat for a human being and yet he does it easily. The plot doesn't hand him an opportunity to actually get into hand to hand combat, but he is clearly demonstrated taking to supernatural power like a duck to water.

                      Rey never loses any fights unless the script inexplicably calls for her to lose, and in the one instance where she drops out of the fight (allowing Finn a rare opportunity to shine), she wakes up and starts kicking ass again.

                      Sorry, so she never loses or needs help except for when she loses and needs help? I d

                    • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                      Wow, a Star Wars movie with a nobody from some backwater who emerges as a hero and finds out in a later movie that they're secretly descended from galactic royalty/nobility with a legacy of power in the force? How unprecedented!

                      Sarcasm aside, the only variation in all three trilogies is that Anakin is not descended from galactic royalty/nobility, but rather from the Force itself. All three of the trilogy central characters have thematically similar stories. It's really a pretty ancient story. Variations are

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I always thought there should have been a scene after Jabba's barge gets wrecked where they sit around the table in the Falcon and blame each other for having a terrible plan that went badly wrong. Then they make up and go to the second act.

        Would have fitted in with their later plans being to pretty much wing it, because hey it worked last time, eventually, after everyone nearly died and god knows what happened to Leia.

    • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

      The whole concept that the end scene is dark because of what happened after the end of the movie just doesn't hold water anyway. The things that come after the ending of the movie may be dark but that doesn't retroactively make the ending of the movie dark also.
      By that reasoning any happy moment isn't really a happy moment because something sad or "dark" will eventually happen in the future.

  • There, I fixed the headline for you.

  • by Maxwell ( 13985 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @10:35AM (#62808439) Homepage
    because the 'special editions' were stupid. RoJ ends with Luke seeing some ghosts at the party on Endor, and Hayden Christensen is not one of them...
    • by dfm3 ( 830843 )
      The Special Edition OT was cringey back when it was released, and even worse now.

      The first three movies had their flaws, and certainly had their critics, but for about a decade and a half they stood on their own for what they were, and actually had pretty amazing special effects given the technology of the time. Then Lucas wanted to retroactively modernize them and change the whole aesthetic to match the prequels, and (IMO) was rightly criticized for what resulted.

      On rewatch of the OT recently (the kids w
      • The Special Edition OT was cringey back when it was released, and even worse now.

        *raised fists* "NOOOOOOOOO" on retconned rotj is what killed star wars for me.

        Greedo actually getting off a shot was egregious enough - but that Big No.. x.x

        I'm starting to understand why some artists, sometimes, would throw a sore or a painting at the fire.

        When I want to remember Star Wars, I just watch some Robot Chicken Star Wars tomfoolery. They got it right.

      • Mm. I was bored and tried to rewatch this recently, and the inexplicable new music number in Jabba's joint felt so awful I just stopped the movie. It was awful when it came out, and time didn't help it any.
      • The THX remastered versions on VHS were the last good release of the original trilogy. Everything released since then has added special effects or changes like Greedo shooting first.
  • For me, personally, there is no such thing as "Star Wars Legends". It is still the "Expanded Universe" (EU), thank you very much.

    As to what happens after ROTJ, what is told in the EU comes first for me.
    The post-ROTJ timeline of the EU consists of literally hundreds of novels, comic books and video games in total that fans had enjoyed for over twenty years.

    In July 2013, the recently acquired Lucasfilm had officially promised to sort out the inconsistencies in the EU and pull it into canon.
    They did not keep t

    • The biggest insult was letting those authors create these stories only for them to be "didn't really happen". They should've been canonized from the beginning. Such a slap in the face these folks that maintained the fanbase when George was doing nothing.
  • by Lohrno ( 670867 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @12:43PM (#62808701)

    They were celebrating with the ewoks and Luke saw the ghosts of Yoda and Obi wan. Credits

  • It was Palpatine's Galactic Empire not Vader's. Palpatine was the emperor not Vader.

    I guess you could maybe argue that Vader inherited the empire after Palpatine's death but he would have only been the emperor for an hour at most (not sure how long it took Luke to drag his father to the launch bay).

  • So, I am shocked, shocked! If we only had...something, like a star maybe, that would put out death to a whole planet at once. That would certainly reduce the suffering of the citizens of Coruscant. Coruscant? Coruscant!

    I'm 50 now and I got stuff and and stuff to do and stuff on me. I've trimmed my interest back to only the good Star Wars. The way I left it in my mind is just great. I lived the wonder and fascination, magic and tingle. Sent in for the pre-order action figures stood in all the lines. And now

  • How do they define a year with so many star systems and so many different orbital periods of planets?
  • Holy shit...between star wars and batman...I just don't give a shit anymore. Another cgi crap film about flying people with magical powers. I did watch patterson's 'the batman'. 3 hours long, this was a movie that just didn't need to be made. No purpose. A story that's been flogged to death...it's now...'rebooted.'

     

  • Second death star lost would be a defeat, but the empire still had destroyers, and troops, and other weapons. Rebellion was still a rag-tag group compared to the empire.

    The empire was obviously well structured. No doubt there would be others to replace Palpatine.

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens. -- Bengamin Disraeli

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