[Movie Club] “Return of the Jedi”: All Those Damn Aliens Everywhere

(Foreword: Screenshots courtesy of Starwarsscreencaps.com)

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi had so many damn aliens everywhere. From the opening scenes in Jabba’s Palace all the way to the fireworks celebrations in the Ewok Village, there’s more new creatures and weird-looking dudes than practically every other Star Wars movie combined. If you’re really cynical about it, you’d probably say that it was all a marketing ploy to sell more action figures. But I’ll be optimistic and say that, because of the success of Yoda and other special effects masterworks in A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, ILM and George Lucas decided to go overboard with the costume and effects work and make some crazy-ass shit.

[Movie Club] How Dense is “Revenge of the Sith”?

Foreword: All screenshots courtesy of http://starwarsscreencaps.com/.

When George Lucas said Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was going to be the last one, I don’t actually believe he ever meant it, but I do sincerely believe he wanted to go out as if it were. Because Revenge of the Sith is one of the biggest-scope movies ever made. It doesn’t seem like it from the exterior– its budget was only $115 million, which was big but still not mega-budget size, even in 2005, and it seemed like it was going to mostly expand on Attack of the Clones. What we got, however, was something that could only be the product of advanced CGI, and something that has never been replicated on this scale, aside from maybe Avatar.

While all six Star Wars movies are very well-known for their tendency to cram as much worldbuilding into the background of every single scene possible, Revenge of the Sith takes this philosophy and ramps it up by about three hundred percent. The concept artists behind this movie must have gone absolutely crazy while working on this movie, because there’s just so much stuff in this movie.

Like I described in my previous essay on Attack of the Clones, the prequels do a very good job at showing off worlds, and then expanding them in later instances by showing more layers of those worlds. Revenge of the Sith returns to all three of the planets that were featured in both Episodes I and II (though its visits to Tatooine and Naboo are brief), but it suddenly decides to go insane, and show off the entire rest of the galaxy to us.