Another Pass at Another Pass at Return of the Jedi

Case and Sam are looking back at the earliest episodes of the show! Check out their thoughts on the pilot episode when Case first sat down with Ben and Addy and chatted about Return of the Jedi!

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Transcript

(Subject to errors)

00:00
Case
One, two, three. Cool.

00:05
Sam
Thank you, case. Thank you for all the work you do. Remember that I love case more than case loves case.

00:10
Case
That's not hard.

00:17
Sam
This is the outbrand. Really?

00:20
Case
Yeah. So this is actually going to be. All right. Let's see how this goes. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another pass podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as it has been the case for the last couple years, I am joined by my co host, Sam Elisea.

00:38
Sam
Hi.

00:39
Case
And today we are launching our series of retrospectives on the early episodes of another pass, which is why I mentioned for the last couple of years, because it's going to be a while before we get to when Sam actually joined the show, because the show ran for four years.

00:53
Sam
Before that, it had a solid run. And we're going to go over all of basically.

00:59
Case
Yeah. Yeah. So we figured that this would be a good way to, one put out something that people can get on the off weeks for our show. And also, I had noticed that a lot of podcast players have limits on how many episodes back they'll allow you to scroll to. So, like, for example, on my phone, I could not listen to any of the first 50 episodes because there was 100 episode limit. So it seemed like a good time to polish off some of the old episodes, see what still worked, see what we thought about them, particularly on these early ones, we'll get kind of a sense of me figuring out my shit.

01:32
Sam
Yeah. What the format really will be.

01:34
Case
Yeah. Especially for this one, because. Oh, my God. Yeah. So today we're going to be looking at the first episode, which is return of the Jedi. And because this was a spin off a certain point of view, we wanted it to be Star wars, but we also wanted to have it feel like a thing people were already checking into the podcast for. So it also made sense for Ben and Addie, the hosts of certain POV, to be my guests for that episode. So we wanted this to feel this first episode to feel like a certain point of view episode, but I'm the host, and that's. It made sense to do it that way, I feel.

02:09
Sam
Yeah, it is a great episode in the fact that it feels like it's an episode of, like, crossfire, where everyone's just kind of yelling at each other. And also, I will say that I think people have listened to this podcast before, especially a few episodes back. I do not get down with Ewok hate and disclaimer, there is a lot of Ewok hate in this episode. Not cool with it, but we'll get into it.

02:40
Case
Yeah, we don't need to have too much of a preamble. I think we're doing this the same way we did the proto episodes of another pass that were just full on episodes of certain point of view, and we'll be getting into all of these episodes when we decided to spin them off. So this is the first official episode of another pass, which is return of the Jedi, and that is cool. But it is also intentional. Like, we deliberately chose to do a Star wars thing because the show was spinning off a certain point of view and initially was on the certain point of view feed. So it was expected that it would be Star wars related. At this point, certain point of view had not fully branched out into broader nerd pop culture stuff.

03:23
Case
And with some exceptions, I think we had probably done a few, like, oh, this movie just came out. Here are our thoughts kind of episodes.

03:29
Sam
Right?

03:29
Case
So there was very much a vibe of like, well, let's make it explicitly Star wars for the first one, and that will help it feel like a good transition from a different show. Yeah, a nice little bridge, but let's get into it. The listeners, you should all appreciate that while there's a little bit of, like, you can hear mic issues where cables are being pressed on because were all in the room together. It's the kind of scenario where you get a little bit of static from just, like, something like, interfering with a microphone. The sound quality is pretty good, which will not be the case for all the episodes we're looking back on, but this one's okay. So enjoy.

04:11
Announcer
Welcome to certain point of View, another past podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

04:23
Case
Thanks, folks, for tuning in to another pass podcast. I'm case Aiken, and today we're talking about Return of the Jedi. Now with me is Ben Milton and Addie Thomas.

04:32
Addie
Thank you guys for joining us. This is sort of a little bit of a spinoff of our certain point of View podcast. We had. Well, case, you introduced a great idea to us of how to, like, reviewing the Star wars prequels and kind of pitching what we would do to change it, actually tell us how that idea started.

04:50
Case
Well, it just started off as a game that I'd play with friends of mine while were working in theater stuff. We'd be doing physical labor, like hanging lights and stuff, and just free to talk about our shared nerd pursuits. So shout out to Jeff Moonin, who was my partner in crime in all of this, and we would brainstorm how we'd do movies better, how we'd take movies that were great and make them even more amazing. And in this case, we're going to talk about Return of the Jedi, which is a movie that we all agree is good. It's part of the original Star wars trilogy. It's a good movie. When I was a kid, I loved it more than Empire. It's a good movie, but it is not great. It is not the best of the originals.

05:32
Ben
Arguably the weakest of the originals.

05:34
Case
Yeah. Some people would argue that's where you could start to see the Lucas problems creeping in. I don't know if I'd go that far, but there's definitely a few things where you can feel it's a different type of movie than the first two. Like, the first one is this wonderful hero's journey, and the second movie is this cool, dark twisting of that parable. The third one does a really good job of being like, here's the closure we wanted, but it stumbles at a few spots. So I've got some thoughts on where it stumbles and what we could do to make it better. What about you guys?

06:06
Ben
Well, I think that's the great thing about this. We had so much fun doing this on certain point of view that were able to spin it off into a whole completely different show because you could do this with every movie. And that's what I love about this idea. And I'm so glad you're running with it, case, because you're perfect to do this show and I'm glad you're hosting it.

06:24
Case
Thank you.

06:25
Ben
I think that with Return of the Jedi, there's a lot of problems that I have with this film overall, now that I'm an adult like you, when I was a kid, I think I really liked this film. It wasn't my favorite. I've always been a huge fan of Empire strikes back. That's always been my number one film, Star wars right behind it, because it was the very first movie I ever saw in a movie theater with my mom. And I was a little kid, and it was just overwhelming, beautiful. And I was in a balcony seat, front row. Like, you couldn't ask for a better introduction to Star wars.

07:00
Case
That's amazing. You're also really old.

07:03
Ben
Yeah, thank you for that, Dick. But with Jedi, it was also in a highlighted time for me where I was really into action figures and Gi Joe, and so I was really into the commercialism. And Jedi does a great job of cashing in on that. Oh, yeah.

07:23
Case
It feels like so eighty s in certain regards, GI Joe is a great example. It's that 80s action movie kind of hero's victory. I think that's the reason I dug it more when I was young. Where it is the closure, it's the winning thing. He defeats Vader, he defeats Palpatine. Like, Luke is such a cool hero. And there's battles with nature, monsters, and these walking robot things, which we got more of it than we did in Empire. There's a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot of things to really latch onto, and that's really cool, but it's just not narratively as strong.

07:57
Ben
Narratively, it's a lot weaker.

07:58
Addie
Yeah. And I was sort of the same. My experience for the longest time, Return of the Jedi was my favorite Star wars movie, and I think a lot of that's because I felt like the payoff was good enough.

08:12
Ben
And you love the ewoks.

08:14
Case
I do.

08:14
Addie
I love will. I still love ewoks. I'm sorry.

08:19
Case
I don't hate ewoks. We'll talk about them later. You want to hear something kind of funny, though, about the Jedi versus Empire thing? So when the video games were coming out, and this was well after the movies had come out, so this was the Super Nintendo series of Star wars games, and the first one was really good. They were pretty good games. You run around with a lightsaber, it's hard to make that bad. Well, I guess that's not true. They've been some pretty bad. They've done it, but on a field.

08:49
Ben
It was pretty impressive.

08:51
Case
So I remember seeing the ad in game pro when they announced the Return of the Jedi, or, like, super return of the Jedi for Super Nintendo. And the ad was the first time you won. The second time they won. Now it all comes on to this. And that was the first time where I realized, oh, my God, the Empire did win in Empire strikes back in my child head, because I was like, seven just was like, oh, all media heroes win every time. And for whatever reason, I was just, you know, they got away, and everything's like, yeah, sure, Han got captured, but that's a win regardless. And I'm like, how did I ever.

09:27
Ben
Think that your whole world just collapsed around?

09:32
Case
I was like, oh, my God, my brain's exploding. And this is all thanks to the ad for the video game adaptation on Super Nintendo, return of the Jedi.

09:40
Ben
And I think that's probably, like, what's warped me as a person is, like, my pure glee that the Empire won in that movie.

09:47
Case
Yeah.

09:47
Addie
See, I still don't feel that way. I don't love that.

09:51
Case
I love that they can make a movie like that.

09:54
Ben
That was so ballsy for its time.

09:56
Addie
Absolutely.

09:57
Case
And that actually is one of my notes when we get into the nitty gritty. But I think we touched one of the problems that I think people usually touch on, which is ewoks. There's some roughness there. And the other one, I think, is the Death Star. People reference how it's like, oh, they made another Death Star to the point where it has now tainted the franchise that when they made the Force Awakens, they had to do another Death Star. Like, sure, starkiller based, but it's another Death Star. They had to do a trench run. They had to do all of that. The fact that the broader story idea that Lucas had was like, climax is a death Star and they have animals on the planet. Or however true that story he told is, it feels weird that they didn't modify it.

10:37
Case
When we got to the actual final chapter like that, we shot our load on the Death Star in the first one, and we got Chewbacca floating around in space already. So what are we going to do? We'll cut them in half and call an ewoks and we'll have a Death Star that's, like, not quite finished. Okay, cool. Moving on. Both of those are my two big problems. And what are your thoughts on both of those? I think, yeah, let's start with ewoks.

11:00
Ben
Oh, start with ewoks. Yeah, no goddamn ewoks. Just none. Totally unneeded. It's an unneeded plot device. That doesn't help tell the story at all. In fact, all it does is diminish the story overall. And I know you're already rolling your eyes out of it, but think about this. They fought their way out of the Death Star in the first movie when they're, like, running from the stormtroopers and there's real peril involved in that. Now fast forward to return of the Jedi and the Stormtroopers are taken down by a bunch of fucking teddy bears. Yeah, that's ridiculous. That completely discount. That diminishes the terror and the fear and the need to be scared of stormtroopers, but I think it diminishes them. There's no way around that. I'm sorry, there's nothing you're going to say that's even going to come close to making.

11:53
Addie
Well, first off, you've actually admitted defeat at one point in this argument because you showed me images of ewoks being terrorizing.

12:07
Ben
But that's not what we got in the fucking movie.

12:09
Case
Hold on, let's unpack this for a second. Because there's two things you were looking at. One is the actual Ewok that we got, like the little teddy bear creature. And the other is what the role they played in the story. And I feel that those are two separate things. I think the teddy bear part of it is probably there so they could sell it to kids and they could do a spin off cartoon in other movies.

12:28
Addie
The teddy bear part, absolutely. Commercialism. But I think the role they played is. And I understand. Yes, Wookie planet.

12:37
Case
Absolutely.

12:37
Addie
That would have been cool.

12:38
Case
Well, because here's the thing. We saw the extreme version of this in the phantom menace. Then when they go to the Gungans, that's where clearly it's just a giant misstep, where it's like, okay, we found the natives, and they're going to be our distraction and our allies in this whole thing. And it shows us uniting as people together. And that's the Lucas ideal. That's kind of a cool thing.

12:59
Addie
And it's also the idea. I think it's a bigger idea than that. And yes, you could have accomplished this with Wookies if they were willing to spend the money on that. But for me, the Ewoks are charming. Whatever. Yes, it's a kid thing. It works for me. But the whole idea of them not being able to take down the empire, the whole point of that is that the empire is cocky and wasn't prepared for a battle like that. But they had discounted the native peoples there because there was nothing galvanizing them against the empire until the rebel alliance.

13:37
Ben
But the problem with that idea, though, is that the empire was expecting problems.

13:44
Addie
Not for the Ewoks, though.

13:45
Ben
They set the whole trap.

13:47
Addie
They set the trap for the rebels, but not for the Ewoks.

13:52
Ben
That is such a horrible argument. We're prepared for guys with laser guns and giant wookies with bow casters, but definitely not prepared for a three and a half foot midget bear with a bow and arrow.

14:07
Addie
They weren't prepared for Red Squadron in the original, yes, but this time they laid a trap.

14:16
Ben
The whole idea of this death star is that they're laying.

14:20
Case
I think we need to refer people.

14:21
Addie
To the Ewok episode of certain point of view. It's one of the first few episodes because I don't want to get bogged down in an Ewok debate.

14:28
Case
This is true. We don't need to retread it too much. Here's the thing the ewoks do have, like, shades of Vietnam. It's the same way aliens had this element of highly trained military people showing up, native population, or sort of savage population taking them out because they don't expect it. There is this element of american culture from the 80s where it's like lone people in the woods. This is a time where a lot of videos were being put out about swamp fox during the American Revolution. There was a lot of conversation.

14:58
Ben
Well, Lucas wrote one of the original scripts for helped write one of the original scripts for Apocalypse now, and it was told from the point of view of the Viet Cong. So this is sort of like his retconning of the Viet Cong story into.

15:11
Case
Yeah, it's taking cultural elements and pulling it. Like, here's my thoughts with the ewoks to make it a little more palatable, because I think the way they're introduced is they're too soft, except for the detail that they're cannibals.

15:24
Addie
Well, not cannibals. They're eat humans.

15:26
Case
Yeah, it's true. Okay. That they're fleshy eating monsters.

15:29
Ben
It's a fine line, my friend.

15:31
Addie
Well, not eating themselves, because that we know of.

15:35
Case
Kind of the joke. What they're doing is similar to what happens in Galaxy Quest when they have the aliens that look like children, except for these guys are still supposed to be our friends. So what's going on there? Like, they look like teddy bears that aren't monsters but are monsters. I don't know about that. Maybe if they looked a little more competent to begin with because we'd still underestimate, for laughs. Yeah, they're too cute. We would still underestimate them because they're savages and they could still be smaller than humans and only have sticks. But combined with maybe the moon had a few more than just, like, a small squadron. Like, maybe there was a guerrilla war going on before the final battle gets into play and the rebels show up.

16:15
Ben
And kind of bolster their forces.

16:17
Case
No, I mean, maybe there were rebels already there.

16:19
Ben
Oh, yeah. See, and that's how I would rewrite it. I would rewrite it. Know, they know that they've got to blow up this shield to get to the emperor to stop him. So I would send Luke, Chewie, and Leia down in a small squad to fight the shield, to take down the shield. And you just need the rebels. If you frame the fight as sort of like a last ditch, desperate effort to kill Palpatine and end the war, you already have overwhelming odds against a small force of just trying to keep it together, group of people. I don't think you need to have an indigenous, quote unquote primitive people to tell that story.

17:09
Addie
You think it muddies water?

17:10
Ben
I don't think it muddies the water. I just don't think it's necessary. I think that you can tell that story without having to do that and just make it a lot smoother, a lot, because now you're staying with your main heroes. You're staying with the idea of what's happening in that action with them, instead of following know around the forest. I think that this just makes a better, more compelling story for your heroes.

17:35
Case
See, I feel that having them there, though, is still part of this theme. That Addie was like, if you get cocky, that's how you fall. Otherwise, the rebels would have no chance against the empire, because the empire, in terms of actual abilities, is clearly going to win.

17:50
Ben
Yeah, but that's completely discounted, though, by the ewoks. Because they're so primitive, they shouldn't have a chance. They literally have.

17:58
Case
Well, what I'm saying is their presence.

18:01
Addie
We've seen that in history happen, though.

18:05
Case
What we're talking about is the portrayal of the ewoks versus the role that ewoks are meant to play. If you had ewoks were a little more effective and had a few more things going on for them and were more bolstered by rebel forces, maybe that would make it more believable. Yeah, more believable. If they were showing the rebels where things were that were advantages and rebels, were you combining their technology and ingenuity with the Ewoks knowledge of the land and terrain instead of the resources. Yeah, exactly. The Ewoks are a force unto themselves in this, and as a result, it's unbelievable, because, like, oh, man, they just took out an atst. Like, how did that happen? That doesn't make any sense.

18:42
Ben
They happen to have logs swung up.

18:44
Case
Exactly. Those are crazy. But if the ewoks knew more about the terrain and that there were, like, say, certain mosses that could catch on fire and that could be used for some sort of explosive, or that there were things that had strength.

18:55
Ben
The problem with that idea, though, is that you end up getting, like, a half hour explanation about who the ewoks are.

19:01
Addie
You don't have to do that. You just show a brief moment of an ewok, like helping a rebel soldier grab this moss, setting it on fire.

19:10
Case
Yeah. Or the way that their cities are suspended and the trees are based on a type of vine that's just really strong. It only requires one or two details that they use, just, like, show. I'm throwing out a lot of ideas, like, maybe they knew about underground tunnels, but they don't have to use all of them. I'm just saying, take one or two, figure out how to have them make sense for the story. Like, maybe the ewoks actually go underneath and into the base while the rebels are, like, doing the distraction Iwojima style underground tunnel network. So everyone's trying to fool everyone. Those could all be kind of cool things. So, basically, I think I'm in favor of the role of the ewoks in this movie. I just think the execution is the beta test for, ultimately, the Gungans. And that's troubling.

19:54
Case
Yeah, I think the ewoks is one of the areas where you can feel the type of fan servicey, marketing driven stuff that will later dominate the prequels.

20:04
Ben
Yeah, for sure. I don't think they're necessary.

20:08
Addie
But you're also a queer fan of the empire too.

20:12
Case
Absolutely. I think the empire is incredible.

20:15
Ben
Without the empire, you don't have a really compelling story.

20:17
Case
Yeah, I agree. The stakes have to be high. Otherwise it doesn't matter. That's one of the problems with the phantom menace. They don't do a good job explaining the stakes for why this battle is so important, for why anything has to happen the way it does. The fact that it comes down to Darth Maul versus two Jedi is never explained. It should have been a ton of Jedi there. Like, why is it this thing? The empire was such a great job of setting up those stakes. So I do agree with Ben. We have to do everything we can to keep that up there. On that note, let's talk about the Death Star.

20:50
Ben
I don't want another Death Star. I think that was a poor choice. I like the idea of Palpatine being there and laying the trap and them knowing that Palpatine is there. But you could have easily have done that, just having a base there that's protected with a fleet of ships. My idea would have been to just have it discovered that Palpatine's. This is where Palpatine's at. We have one chance to kill him. The rebellion is on its last legs after the beatings that it took from Empire strikes back in the years after that, leading into Jedi. And so it's sort of a last ditch effort to stop the war and win the war is by taking out Palpatine on this base floating above.

21:39
Case
Yeah. What if it was a base that was creating those superstar destroyers like Vader's. Like, was it executor? Yeah. Shipyard like that. That was like. I mean, it'd be kind of the plot of Kotor, where if they had some sort of, like, they developed some sort of thing that would allow them to mass produce not just star destroyers, but superstar destroyers, like, truly terrifying weapons that were far more advanced than what the rebels had been dealing with before. So that would actually kind of work, and it would be very similar, because the Death Star never actually has a superweapon. It has a cannon that blows up a ship, which is cool, but it's not a planet destroying laser.

22:16
Case
So the actual firepower of it is actually kind of irrelevant if they think it's an undefended aside from the fleet that's around it and force field. And then they realize, like, oh, no, those things are actually like gun turrets. They thought that was the energy source, but they could actually shoot energy from it that would have the same effect.

22:35
Ben
Right.

22:36
Case
Yeah.

22:37
Addie
I've never really put that much thought into necessarily the second Death Star. I've always kind of liked it for certain reasons, but I like your guys ideas a lot, and I could definitely. It doesn't take much convincing to move me to those ideas.

22:53
Ben
What did you like about the idea that there was a second Death Star?

22:55
Addie
The reasons the second Death Star does work for me is so there's a little bit of hope and confidence already within the rebellion that they've taken something down like this before and that they can do it again. And then the fact that's true.

23:07
Case
That is one thing I do like about it being the Death Star, but I don't know if that's strong enough, but go on.

23:14
Addie
And then you have the idea of it partially constructed. So, again, that adds to that level of confidence that they can take this down. So then to find out that it is operational and the trap is set is a big moment that I really enjoy. So that's why the Death Star does work for me in that scenario. But I could easily see it changed out for anything that still lulls them into a sense of false security for me, that's the only role that the second Death Star feels. And, of course, knowing the magnitude of what this weapon can do, in a way, it's a cheap storytelling device that saves a lot of time from having to build up the threat of a new superweapon or technology.

23:57
Addie
And this is actually my big complaint about return of the Jedi, is it feels like there's a lot of story crammed into one movie that needed to happen in another two or three movies for me.

24:11
Case
Well, I don't know if that part's true, because. Well, all right, my first line, I completely agree. I completely agree that the trap component like that, it's a trap part, is actually huge because up until that point, the Empire, for the most part, is brute force. Like, they've had some cunning moments, like, they've followed the rebels back to Yavinfort. And Vader is really good at Vader has unto himself. But for the most part, the Empire as a whole is perceived as this onslaught of power and strength, but not necessarily cunning. And the first time you actually deal with the Emperor, all of a sudden it's like, oh, he's way smarter than everyone.

24:49
Case
We haven't dealt with him before because you guys aren't that big of a threat yet, but now you've pissed him off and he's brilliant, and he'll lead you into a trap and just destroy. Like, that part is really cool. And that makes the emperor so much more compelling as a villain than he would have been if he was just like, hitler being like, I'm going to attack. It wouldn't have think that.

25:13
Ben
I think that there's a way that they could have fixed a couple problems to get to that point. So I'm going to back up. Earlier in the movie, Han should have died in that. I would have killed Han on Tatooine.

25:29
Addie
And I actually totally agree with you on that. I would have also made that first. Again, one of the problems I have with this movie. Sorry. And I'll turn it back over to you. I'm sorry. But you have, like, there's this one half of the movie that's Tatooine and Jabba, and then the other half, it's very clunky in its structure.

25:47
Case
Yeah, that's actually what I was going to say when you were like, too much is crammed in. I'm like, well, but really, there's only two things that happen. Stories.

25:53
Ben
Yeah.

25:53
Case
And the first one is sort of like a little bit of a, hey, the gang's all getting back together. Let's go save the day. Which sort of makes the second part better and worse at the same time.

26:04
Ben
So you can bridge those two with the death of Han.

26:08
Addie
Right.

26:08
Ben
If the empire is involved and knows that there's going to be a rescue attempt on han and tries to sabotage that rescue attempt in the process and sends, I don't know, Boba Fett along, and actually Han ends up dying at the hands of Boba fet in order to save Luke or Leia. And in the process, they learn that the emperor is at this one spot. You now have Leia, who's grief stricken and revenge motivated to lead the rebellion into a full, hearty move to try to attack Palpatine, to enact revenge for the death of Han, which I think now bridges those two events, adds recklessness and adds recklessness of a skywalker into the story. And I think that makes sense. I don't know that I would have made her a skywalker, but, yeah, that's.

26:57
Case
Actually a thing I have to say. Yeah. All right, let's talk about that one.

27:00
Addie
Because that was always clunky.

27:01
Case
Yeah, I think it's horribly dumb. I think it is dumb. We have 33 years to get used to it, and we have all this expanded media, and then that all got wiped away, and then we have more expanded media working with that.

27:14
Addie
But the interesting thing, I remember, I read something that sort of. Well, there were supposed to be three more movies after this, and they were playing with the imagery of Luke going to the dark side but never really moved him there.

27:28
Case
Yeah, there's a bunch of that at the.

27:30
Addie
That was. That was always a problem. And then Leia is like, it felt like. Well, that we teased that there's another Skywalker, so. Well, we want to wrap this thing up, guys.

27:39
Case
No, but they didn't. That was added.

27:41
Addie
There's another.

27:42
Case
There's another.

27:43
Ben
But they didn't say.

27:49
Case
And also, wasn't that something that they didn't put in the original cut? No, I thought that was added for special edition. No, I'm not saying that it was a CGI thing, but I thought that was not in the cut the same way that the scene with Jabba and the first one was shot. They just didn't use.

28:08
Addie
What I read is that. So Gary Kurtz, who had produced it with, know, the original three with Lucas, had said there was sort of a split with the cast and crew. And so while there were supposed to be three more movies after it, what happened is, because of the divorce with George and Marsha Lucas, that they stopped.

28:30
Ben
It just died.

28:32
Addie
They decided to rush the ending of this story and kind of compact it because Boba was supposed to.

28:37
Case
Boba was supposed to be the bad guy. The later stuff. Yeah.

28:40
Addie
Right. And Luke potentially would have killed Vader there and fallen to the dark side, and then this other Skywalker would come and it would be a totally new.

28:48
Case
Character or just other person.

28:50
Addie
Right. Well, it was sort of hinted at another Skywalker still.

28:53
Ben
But it wasn't intended to be.

28:57
Case
Guess like. All right, so let's talk about the Leia thing. I don't think it does anything for the movie Return of the Jedi. Whether it does anything for later stuff is a totally unrelated point. I think it was just poorly handled and doesn't do anything. So why even have it? I think the biggest thing it does is it actually makes the relationship with Han weaker because all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, she really loves Luke, but they're related, so I guess she's with idea.

29:30
Ben
Should we not do incest in space? Is that a thing?

29:34
Case
It is actually a very lindsman thing if they wanted to tie it in with that bit of Sci-Fi universe stuff. But I think Game of Thrones.

29:44
Addie
No, it doesn't work. It's wrong even there.

29:47
Case
Every Targaryen is either brilliant or mad or both could work for skywalkers. All right, so I think we just agree, like, just ditch Leia as she.

29:56
Ben
Doesn'T need to be a skywalker.

29:57
Case
I mean, there could be a hint of just someone else just being out there with some force stuff, and that could have been just introduced in there. Yeah. It could have been Chewbacca. It could have been anybody.

30:07
Ben
Chewbacca as a Jedi would be pretty bad Lobaka.

30:12
Addie
As long as it's not lumpy.

30:15
Case
There is another.

30:16
Addie
It's lumpy.

30:18
Case
You know what? Never mind.

30:19
Addie
There's not.

30:20
Case
Yeah. It just awkwardly forces the canonicity of.

30:25
Addie
Bastards.

30:28
Case
We have saved Return of the Jedi. Unfortunately, we've destroyed the franchise.

30:33
Addie
Actually, that's something I need to ask you. What would be worse, ewoks or making the holiday special canon?

30:40
Case
Oh, the holiday special. Okay. Yeah. I think we're all agreed there. Yeah. So here's a thought about. You brought up. Think about it, though. I know you brought up, like, Luke kind of looking like he's going towards the dark side at the beginning, which. Yeah, those first couple scenes have that in there, and I was thinking about this one. So Luke, I don't feel, is suffering the type of ptsd that he should be from the fallout of empire. I think that maybe that is the thing, the through line, that should carry him into this battle, which we don't get. I think he shouldn't have a lightsaber at first, they kind of tease us with that, but then, you know, that moment when r two pops open and shoots the lightsaber out, and that's a really triumphant moment.

31:22
Case
The audience all gets really excited, and it's like, luke's got a lightsaber again. He can now do anything, and he can win any fight. And that's so cool. But you know what? That felt just like. It felt like that moment in phantom menace when they're like, this droid's call sign is r, your majesty, and the audience went nuts because it's like, it's r for real. Yes. We know it. It's that fan servicey kind of. It's a cool moment, but when you think about it, doesn't really drive the story forward. I know they shot some stuff that they cut of Luke, like, building his lightsaber. I think I would have rather him still be working on it earlier in the movie and feeling kind of broken. He lost his hand. He's lost other things at this point, but he's lost his hand.

32:04
Case
All of his ambitions seem to be tainted, and now he knows his father was Darth Vader. He should be much more scarred at the beginning, and he might be trying to fake it. He might be trying to pretend to be a hero, but we don't actually really get those scenes. We get a few scenes where he's, like, doing dark side things, but it's not what a broken person does.

32:23
Addie
It isn't really that dark either.

32:25
Case
No, it's a choke. It's not enough of the teasing of the dark side, and it doesn't carry.

32:33
Ben
On or the temptation.

32:34
Case
Yeah. You never feel like he's going to lose it and go over it should have been a stronger. Like, him feeling betrayed by Obi Wan and Yoda when he actually goes and sees them again. And it should have been that in the earlier parts, he's a little more desperate, and maybe he does a little bit. Goes a little bit darker. Like, maybe he doesn't act fast enough to save Han because of some point of jealousy over Leia or something like that.

32:57
Ben
Or he's busy killing some.

32:59
Case
Yeah, exactly. Where he's distracted, and he actually kills Boba fet in a real fight or something like. Like, those are all things that could have been done to sort of strengthen the character of Luke. Another thing in that early period, because that opening story has nothing to do with the second part, besides getting Han back, is maybe Jabba is doing stuff for the emperor. Like, they're actually finding out information about what if Han dies, so that they can get the information that they need to do whatever this big problem is. Thus setting up something that isn't the Death Star or another Death Star, but setting up something, the base or whatever you want it to be. You can introduce it earlier on and just explain, oh, my God.

33:39
Case
With those ships, no one can oppose them, or they'll be able to create force fields that can block out all interspace travel. And so every world will be cut off unless they allow people to go in and know. Set up whatever threat to clinch. Yeah, like, whatever the MacGuffin is. But set that up earlier in the movie. Have Jabba be tied to it. Because he's an international crime boss. He might be smuggling materials in or out or providing the right connections, or he's a trap, too. I mean, that might be a little too early to introduce it. Like, the idea that the empire is actively after them, but have Jabba matter to the next part.

34:18
Ben
Jabba should be tied to the empire. And that's why I was saying, having the empire there with Jabba, knowing that there's going to be a Han rescue attempt, makes a hell of a lot of, like, they know how important Han is to these people, and they have.

34:33
Addie
The connection with them. We've already know.

34:35
Ben
And they just like, all right, whatever. Jabba has Han, he's frozen, so I guess nobody will ever come and get like that. Doesn't make a lot of sense from.

34:43
Addie
The empire at that point. The empire is too cocky.

34:45
Ben
Yeah, they should have laid a trap. That should have been an empire.

34:53
Case
Mean, that's an obvious point.

34:54
Ben
Yeah. I love the idea of Luke being tempted and struggling with the dark side. I even would like a fall of Luke in this movie.

35:07
Addie
And it doesn't have to be necessarily like, it could be he defeats Vader, and maybe even he strikes down the emperor, and he strikes down Vader and in the process falls. I felt like that was my theory is that's what they would have done if they did intend to do more, that you do have this moment. Or maybe he doesn't take down Vader. He takes down the emperor, and he and Vader join forces, that he accepts him as his father. But you see the two of them.

35:41
Ben
Continue sort of belief of, I'm going to hold on to good, to upset his evil and create balance in the force.

35:48
Addie
There are attachments.

35:49
Case
I mean, we do have to embrace the fact that this was thought to be the last movie when they're making it. We're not talking about the longer. Yeah, this is not the modern world where everyone thought, we'll just do, like, a series of.

36:00
Ben
Right afterwards, they were talking about doing seven, eight, nine. I remember as a kid thinking there was going to.

36:04
Case
Well, they were leaking a lot of this information, but they wanted to do a wrap up movie. You can't argue that return the Jedi is done as a wrap up movie. Like the fact that they might have been. Like we could then start a new sequel that carries a different story arc.

36:19
Addie
I think you still can have him. Let's say he slays the Emperor and he and Vader continue on are both alive at the end of it. Do you think that's not a satisfying ending to that?

36:30
Ben
Or slaying Vader and takes up.

36:35
Addie
Well, the only reason I like the idea of him taking on the emperor is that you're defeating the Empire and you're hoping that you're bringing good out of Vader, and there's hope that there's enough good in Vader and him with Luke together can make a change in the galaxy. That's the only reason I would.

36:53
Case
Here's my question. Do you think a continuing story feels like the best choice for the franchise or not right now? I should say 15 years ago?

37:05
Ben
Probably not.

37:05
Addie
Yeah.

37:06
Case
At the time, the idea of a trilogy that wrapped it up, and here's the big win, felt very satisfying. We got to see this whole.

37:13
Addie
You already had the sort of dark ending.

37:15
Case
Yeah, exactly. We were thinking in a model of doing sequels, but in the 80s, only a few series were really starting to push into that sequel territory. And even then, a lot of those were after Jedi came out. Prior to that, sequels weren't as big of a thing.

37:32
Addie
Right.

37:32
Case
So doing a series like this would have been kind of just unheard of. So it wasn't even in the mindset.

37:39
Ben
Yeah, but why?

37:41
Addie
And the only reason why I side with that is because Lucas had talked about doing those movies, doing a nine.

37:47
Ben
Part series, and look, I mean, let's be mean. Like, these had become a huge money grab. So the idea of being able to do another three movies and do more merchandising is a huge win for.

37:59
Addie
But let's go back to your point case of wrapping up the story for a satisfying.

38:02
Case
Yeah. If we wanted to do the satisfying story, we have the broken, tempted warrior who we saw his big damn hero moment in the first one, we see him thinking that he's getting his shit together and being even better and finding out that a lot of it was a lie. In the second one, this one should be him coming to terms with what that means to him and what his actual code is and finding the unified view, which is what they do. He says he's a Jedi, and he declares and he resists the dark side that moment, I think is strong. I think it's just not earned in the movie itself. Most of the payoff comes from the movie before.

38:40
Addie
I think having Vader survive the movie, even if he's maybe injured, I think, can still work for a satisfying ending. So let's say that's still the last.

38:48
Case
Let me have a rebuttal on that one.

38:49
Addie
Sure.

38:50
Case
Because I think the fact that Vader dies does tie together that hero's journey really well for him. Because he opens his quest to be a Jedi, because he wants to be a Jedi like his father before him. And him finally meeting his father, realizing that he has fallen, that whole arc, like him burning his father and seeing his force ghost at the end, does have that payoff of being like, I am a Jedi, and I'm not only doing being like him, I'm continuing the good in him and redeeming him or his own legacy and continuing it even better.

39:24
Addie
Well, my suggestion is Vader's still surviving and helping Luke take down the emperor.

39:28
Case
Did you see the Star wars infinity with the white Vader after he turns to the light side and rejoins his kids?

39:34
Addie
Well, see, I'm thinking more like a Vader at that point. Let's say you do continue that story. At that point, Vader's going to have to go on trial for war crimes. I mean, he did kill.

39:43
Case
Oh, I think. I think really, for this story, Vader's got to die. But if the emperor has to die or just be. But then you're just doing Star wars again, like, if the Emperor gets away, I think the big win is important to the finale of the series.

39:57
Ben
Let me throw another idea out for you. It ends kind of in the way that we're familiar with and with Luke's defeating both Vader and the Emperor. But in true hero's journey and sort of the idea of this being a space western or a samurai film, oftentimes in those films, the hero is then.

40:19
Addie
Sort of like, he has no place in.

40:21
Ben
He has no place. And he's just sort of like. He just kind of wanders off sort of disenchanted with the whole thing, and everybody's left wanting him to stay and be part of it, but he's just unable to do so. And we're left kind of seeing Luke head out into space to kind of figure out what he's going to do to reestablish the Jedi Order.

40:41
Case
What if he just stayed on indoor and started teaching the ewoks?

40:44
Ben
That's an awful idea.

40:45
Addie
No, I like that Ewok school. With Luke, because then what would happen is then when the Jedi school gets defeated, you get all of your slain ewoks. Well, you haven't thought about this. That's true.

40:56
Ben
I would need that, actually, and I would need that scene in order.

41:00
Addie
Kylo Ren kills all the ewoks.

41:01
Ben
Oh, it'd be the best.

41:02
Addie
You would be the biggest Kylo Ren fan.

41:04
Ben
I already am.

41:05
Case
With the thought of it, I don't know if I want to talk about it being just, like, where Frodo isn't fit to live amongst his people anymore. He's seen too much, and he has to go off into another world. But he could be a man outside of his world. He doesn't have to just physically leave it. How do you, in one move, exactly.

41:33
Ben
How do you tell that story in a scene or two of, like. Well, Luke's just awkward now. I like the idea.

41:40
Case
Here's the thought. What if everyone thought he was dead? What if everyone thinks he was dead, but he landed on Endor and he's living as a hermit, just like old Ben?

41:50
Ben
The problem is, the title of the movie, Return of the Jedi, insinuates some sort of establishment of the Jedi order again, and that's not really dealt with either in the way we know the movie.

42:05
Case
But what if it is revenge of the Jedi?

42:07
Ben
If it's revenge of the Jedi, what.

42:08
Case
If it's revenge of the. Of the Jedi?

42:11
Addie
Also needs a darker ending.

42:12
Case
Well, a lot darker. No. Well, here's my thought. What if the movie ends? The rebels go off thinking they've won, but they think that Luke died when whatever, this thing is, destroyed, and Luke actually made it off with his dying father, and he stays with his father as he then. And then is just left to sit there and watch. The last shot is him watching as the ships are leaving, and then you see their hypertrails going off in space, and he turns around and just walks off into the wood, and then that's the credits. Yeah.

42:45
Addie
That's a very ominous ending, and I like it.

42:47
Case
Yeah.

42:47
Ben
It's a similar idea of him just not being able to because he could.

42:51
Case
Come back on the dark side because he felt abandoned, or he could have just gone off to be at peace. Now that the Jedi Order has had its revenge on the Sith for destroying them. Let me stop. Hold on. Not the Sith. Because at this point, the only thing that's referred to the Sith has been the Star wars novelization, which is no one knows anything about in the real world at this point in time. But the dark side, like, the Jedi were destroyed. The last ember of the Jedi come back and destroy the things that destroyed them and made the world okay for people, just ordinary people, not force users to go and find their balance.

43:28
Addie
Yeah, there's no idea truly, of bringing balance to the Force at this point either, since that's a prequel idea.

43:34
Case
Right?

43:35
Addie
With the Chosen one prophecy. Yeah. I guess I just wish there was more play with Luke being broken and having a chance to legitimately be tempted by the dark side.

43:50
Case
What if, at the end, Luke had another body part missing?

43:54
Addie
I don't think that's necessary for a chance. The reason why I like the idea of shortening the top end of it with Jabba and the rescue of Han and all is because I want to spend more time with Luke and Vader and the idea that Luke may even seriously consider joining up with Vader and see that as, you know what? This is my only option, especially if he sees what the Emperor is able to do. Like, if the Emperor starts taking out even more ships and he's like, you know what, Vader? I will join you. And we've got to take this monster down.

44:34
Addie
I think the chance for more of that play in those scenes or even in the lead up to the throne room scene is something that will help legitimize the actual temptation of the dark side, because you kind of get it in just, like, a couple moments of rage from Mark Hamill and not really.

44:51
Case
Yeah.

44:51
Ben
It always feels like Vader is more tempted by Luke than Luke is tempted by.

44:56
Case
Right, right. And I do think that Vader's turn is very well done without the nose. Even with the nose, it's not that bad. And the later dubs of it, I think the Vader watching Luke being tortured is a very good scene. I don't want to get rid of that. There's so many good moments. This is the thing. It's a movie that's so good, but isn't quite great, that. This is why it's interesting to talk about. How do you push that a little bit further? Because that's a problem that a lot of movies have, and this is a great example and has the best pedigree going into it. Right. You think about all the other great details going, backing it. Like, it had the huge fanfare, it had the amazing special effects.

45:33
Case
Like the special effects in Jedi are, bar none, the best of any Star wars movie. Yet in terms of the spaceflights and everything, it looks so much better than the CGI. And JJ Abrams did a really good job with his. But there's still moments. The star battle over the Death Star is so geometry, the physics of everything moving. Sure, it's not quite how space works, but it still looks so good and the ships look so good and all those details. There's never these puppetee kind of moments in that. Unlike Empire, where the asteroid field and the ships. Yeah, exactly.

46:12
Ben
Some guy's hand in the sock.

46:14
Case
Right. Jedi is really where they're firing on all cylinders for the things that people were really counting on. So the fact that the movie hits a lot of the notes, right, but not in a satisfying sequence is the thing that bugs me about it.

46:30
Ben
But that happens a lot. Like, I see that happen a lot with special effects movies where they put so much attention and so much detail and effort into the special effects that they forget about the, like, well, Michael Bay is like the king of that, where he just doesn't even care about. Care about plot, where plots are relevant. It's all about the special effects. And how does it look? There seems to be, like, this weird balance in making big budget movies like this, where it's really difficult for directors and studios to produce a movie that is visually stunning and still able to hold itself together with a decent plot and storyline that makes any sense.

47:13
Ben
I don't know why you have to choose, but it seems like 90% of the time, there's some weird choices involved in, like, well, we really want to do this really cool special effect, and so let's just do whatever we got to do.

47:28
Addie
I think that's more true recently. I mean, I guess I don't have that many things to compare it with in the late 70s, early 80s, but I think that's definitely true now when you have the pressure of, like, all right, well, there's not a lot of instances where people are willing to push back the release date of a movie now, and because they got to churn it out and because the emphasis is on the big action, that often happens. But before, it was like, what? It was like three years between every Star wars movie.

47:59
Ben
But there was a lot of financial pressure on Lucas to make this film. He was going broke financially, and so there was a lot, because he had invested most of his money into Empire to get the money to make that movie himself, and it worked really well. But there was still a lot of financial pressure on him just to get Jedi maiden as quickly as possible, and he had to get the divorce. And so there's all sorts of reasons why you can justify the few problems that this movie does have.

48:32
Addie
Yeah, I think it's more an issue of collaboration than necessarily because of a focus more on technology. Because the thing is, we did talk about, yes, Empire is a little bit more hokey in some of those effects than before, but I think there is a very good balance of it. I look at the original the Lord of the Rings trilogy from Peter Jackson, and I still look at that. And as much as those effects now look dated, I still amazed by the attention to the detail in those effects. Combining models, combining CGI, the way they layer the CGI. And I still feel it looks better just in terms of the attempt of what they're doing and the balance of story and effects that I still think it's better than a lot of sometimes the special effects movies that we get.

49:20
Case
Today, I think what kind of sucks is that it sort of comes down to if a movie is a fight to make, then there's actually a decent chance that everyone is working as hard as they can and getting the things that really matter to them through. I don't mean because there's a lot of times where you can talk about studio interference, ruining a movie, like pushing something too hard, or there's a lot of times where a director has too much power. I mean, that's the prequels, right? Like, if a movie is a struggle on everyone, but they're pushing to do the best they can and what matters most to them. Like the original Star wars is a great example. Like, Lucas had to fight to get it, but he had this big vision and that compromise and that collaboration really makes it work.

49:58
Ben
Same with apocalypse now.

50:00
Case
Yeah, we're talking about movies that are very difficult to make, and movies are just hard to make. And having it feel like a team effort where maybe no one's happy the time they're making it, but eventually they produce a great work. That's where you have these really solid things versus ones where it's like, well, I really want to showcase this idea, or I really want to showcase this technology, or I really want to talk about the time that woman cheated on me and she's a bitch. Those are the types of movies that fall apart. They might have one glorious thing pushing them forward, but ultimately there's something missing there. And I think that's the teamwork component of movie making. And I think Jedi is when Lucas starts having a little more control.

50:42
Case
He had the least to do with Empire, and Empire is great, but he had a huge part of it. And like we all know, Star wars was a fight from start to finish, right? But Jedi is where it starts to get easier. And then later movies, it's too easy, right?

51:01
Ben
I think that there's not a lot to fix in this movie, which is great because like you said, it's a good movie. There's not a lot to fix in it, but it's not a great movie. I love the ideas that we came up with. I hope I live long enough to see them reboot the Star wars.

51:20
Addie
Do you think reboot would happen with this series? That almost sounds sacrilegious to reboot the original Star Wars.

51:27
Case
I don't know if it could be reboot.

51:28
Ben
You got to wait till Lucas is dead.

51:32
Case
I'm going to say that I don't know if it could be rebooted, then people are going to be like, oh, but there's so many examples of things that were rebooted that seem to be reboot proof. Like Star Trek, Star Trek. It was just like, oh, we're just going to move on to the next ship and the next crew. How about we just go back in time? Let's just go back in time. Going to redo it all, baby. That might be it. They might do a soft reboot. Yeah. And there's stuff out there. Star wars does not have the type of time traveling stuff already built into it that Star Trek does, but it could happen. You could have, like, waves of the force reshape how things move and then.

52:06
Ben
Or just run into a different alien race that has this technology that allows that to occur.

52:12
Case
I like this idea better, but what I mean is that Star Trek, since the first season, has had time travel in play. Part of that was budget because they kept on having issues, and they'd shoot on the green acres set and other locations that were other CBS products, and that was just like a fact of life. But that meant they had time travel from the get go. And so they've been doing time travel. They had it in the original movies. They had it in next gen. They had it in the next gen movies. They've had it in Voyager. They had it in deep space. Every single series of Star Trek has had time travel in play. In fact, one of the series, Enterprise, is entirely about time travel.

52:50
Case
So it's a series that when they did a time travel story to reboot it didn't feel alien to the world because literally it was so ingrained in the world that time travel was a thing, that nothing was portrayed. Star wars, as far as I know, has never done, like, a real time travel story. Like, there have been stories in the expanded universe of things, I think. I can't even think of one.

53:10
Addie
I don't know.

53:11
Case
There's been a lot of flashbacks and stuff, but I can't think of a true time travel story.

53:14
Addie
But I like the idea of using the. Yeah, something such a critical moment happening at some point in the future, right?

53:23
Case
Yeah. And the force being able to be able to see before and after, and maybe the Jedis of yesteryear see something really big. Like, it doesn't have to be something that intentionally changes time, but the Jedis of before feel the future in such its enormity that all of a sudden things start to shift and then something changes. That would be a way to reboot it that doesn't feel alien to the world that they've presented.

53:48
Ben
Or you could just reboot it, right?

53:50
Case
Yeah. You could just do a prequel and run the prequel into the timeline of the original movies.

53:54
Addie
That's true.

53:54
Ben
You could fix the prequels, run it right in.

53:57
Case
You could talk to us. We can fix the prequels.

54:00
Addie
Yeah, we got episodes on it already, guys.

54:01
Case
Okay. So anyway, here's my takeaway for when we're talking about Jedi. We think that Luke should have had a little bit more of an arc dealing with his pain and turmoil and dark side calling, whether that's him actually falling or just being more like a PTSD soldier, we could kind of play around with that. We feel that Jabba should have been more tied in to things that happened later in the movie, like that first story arc is completely unrelated to the rest, whereas the original Star wars has no chaff. Everything is super important to the plot of the movie and Empire. Everything sort of builds around it, but it's all part of setting up the stakes for the end of the movie, whereas the opening of Jedi does not set up the stakes for the rest of the movie.

54:41
Case
We think that Han dying is an idea that could work. I don't think you have to kill him, but I think that his presence there really doesn't help or hurt the movie. That Leia being Luke'sister is dumb, and that it being the death Star, probably a little weak. You could have done something else, and you could have made the ewoks count a little bit more and be a little less laughable. And then if you wanted to have the big ending and wrap up the series, that's cool. Or if you wanted to set up sequels, you had plenty of material to work with.

55:11
Addie
Right?

55:12
Case
If were in 1983 and we wanted to make a fourth Star wars movie, there was a lot we could have done, but if we wanted this to be the swan song of the series, there's also a lot you could do there. So I feel like we have a really good idea for how Jedi could be slightly tweaked. But like we said, it's a good movie. Well, thanks, guys. Let's wrap this up. Tune in next time. We're going to be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. And thanks, guys, for checking out our pilot episode. Bye. Until next time, stay scruffy, my nerf herders.

55:41
Ben
Hold on.

55:47
Announcer
Thanks for listening to certain point of.

55:49
Announcer
View's another past podcast.

55:51
Announcer
Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes.

55:56
Case
Just go to certainpov.com. And we're back. So, Sam, that was the first official episode of another pass.

56:23
Sam
Yeah.

56:24
Case
And I feel like we should talk a little bit about the growth of the format and a little bit about does it actually hold up as a good episode of the show?

56:33
Sam
Well, I actually think that it's a very entertaining show. The three of you have great chemistry together. Cannot get down with all of the views. Of course, as stated before, as my trigger warning going into this episode, iwa Kate is not a place I want to be. But I think for the most part, it's a fun episode. I think that the format that we have now is so fine tuned. Right. We have a discussion and we talk about it a lot, and then we kind of give our pitches, and it's very clean where this is like, I felt like it was more like a room with a whiteboard, where you guys were just building on stuff, kind of like tacking things. Like, what about this? Yeah. Death stars are dumb. Yeah. They should have done this. Oh, you know what? Have been cool.

57:20
Sam
Oh, and what about this theory? And so it was almost like you were three men in a room with a whiteboard and string.

57:29
Case
Yeah. Because it is the first episode, and at this point, we had a pretty good kind of routine in the main show of just shooting back and forth ideas and really having good energy. And then when we got into this episode, I think even more so than the prequel ones, it was like, all right, we have thoughts, but none of us have set pitches, and we're throwing ideas and seeing what we can kind of assemble together, which is fun. And there are times where I miss the episodes of the show that had more of that. We tend to be a bit more locked in, if only so that we keep ourselves sane, because these episodes could spiral out ridiculously, very easily.

58:13
Sam
Yeah.

58:14
Case
Especially with more people.

58:16
Sam
Yeah. I think what is also challenge for this particular movie is, and this is said during the episode, and I totally agree with it, is that this movie is a good movie. It's like a minor tweak movie. And I think even when we've done our more recent episodes, those are always a little bit harder to do because it's like, well, there's like minor things you can change. Is it the worst thing that Leia turns out to be a skywalker? No, it's awkward. It's awkward writing, but it's also so part of our cultural phenomenon now that it would be hard for me at this point to not imagine her as a, you know, absolutely the Ewoks, because there's only one person that was right. There's Addie. The Ewoks are completely right.

59:07
Sam
And honestly, there was something one of you, I don't remember which of you said this, but they were like, why would something this small be able to defeat the empire? And it's like, bro, that's like all of Lord of the Rings. This is like a tenant of fantasy. Like a tenant of fantasy is the smallest thing, the lowest person, the person that was never expected, the person who seems to pose the least risk just by having hope, just by having whatever charm. And the Ewoks are fucking charming. I don't care what anyone says, that they help to defeat forces. And so I'm going to say, by rule of just basic fantasy laws, the ewoks make total sense. And I get it. An Ewok planet, Wookie planet, would be very cool. But ewoks are just. They're amazing. And I love mean.

01:00:01
Case
Ben had made a stance on ewoks.

01:00:06
Sam
A running gag, I'm aware.

01:00:08
Case
So were definitely trying to reference that, considering that the show was on the same feed. We felt that we wanted to allude to a lot of stuff that previous episodes had, even though I was then the host of this particular show, on that note. So I had all these notes about return of the Jedi when I sat down. And I knew from episode one that I wanted the outro to always be the next time. We're talking about Highlander two. Yeah, I always knew that was how it was going to be, but in terms of where the other format bits. So I kept stay scruffy, my nerf herders. And that's going to stay that way for quite a while.

01:00:49
Case
I think it was around, like, maybe episode 50, maybe even later, when I started to differentiate the outro from certain point of view, the stacecraft part. And then when we actually started recording, there was, like, this half a moment of, like, oh, God. I've never introed the show before where were sitting around a table together, and I'm just so used to the episode starting. Addie taking the lead to open with, like, hey, this is the show. I'm Addie Thomas. And then point to Ben Milton and then point to me, and we'd introduce ourselves. But Addie always started it right. And all of a sudden, I was like. There's a serious pause where it's just like, hey, everyone, we're talking about return of the Jedi today.

01:01:42
Sam
Well, you're a pro now, so it's fine.

01:01:45
Case
Yeah, it is really funny. The repetition of certain sentences that have become very ingrained when dealing with a bi weekly show for six years.

01:01:53
Sam
Yeah. Now you can welcome anyone, but at.

01:01:57
Case
This point, completely off the cuff. Like, I was like, oh, yeah. All right, here's the intro.

01:02:03
Sam
This is what it sounds like.

01:02:05
Case
Yeah, but I mean, from the beginning, we had the same intro music, which came from Vin Macrie, the same outro music from Matt Brogan, and we had the earlier version of the voiceover before we added you to the show that was done by Jeff Moon. And that part, aside from changing what he says so that it includes you, that part has remained the same, and the intro and outro music has remained the same since the beginning. And I still stand by them. I think it's perfectly fine.

01:02:31
Sam
Yeah, I think all of that's great, honestly. I hope that everyone did enjoy listening to this episode. I do think that there were some really fun ideas brought up. I don't know if you guys fixed return of the Jedi, but I do feel like there were certain things that you brought up that were, like, good questions. Why make another Death Star? I mean, in my head, Canon? The reason is that the empire feels that they've won from Empire, and because they're fascists, and fascists just like to rub it in people's faces, they would build exactly what was destroyed the first time to be like, see, not only did we win, but we are going to rebuild it. That does not explain what happened to the future with new death stars. But that is not the point.

01:03:18
Sam
But, yeah, I thought there were some really good things we made. I hate the idea of Han dying, but it does make sense. Damn you all.

01:03:28
Case
Yeah, it's so wild because this was the type of movie where it was like, we all are super familiar with it, but also, there's so much media that has come since it that is so tied into it all. It's like, all right, how do you divorce yourself from everything that has come since and look at it with fresh guys from a creative perspective? And that was a big challenge for that. And we have dealt with plenty of movies like that, particularly right now, we're recording this in the midst of our Planet of the Apes marathon, and that's a lot of like, okay, so now look at the third movie and ignore the fourth and fifth. Don't even think that those have happened yet. How are you going to approach that movie?

01:04:10
Case
And I think that's a really fun exercise because it is so difficult to do normally. It is so easy to look at. Here is the bulk of the franchise and everything that's added to it and taken away from it and all that, and lose the individual artistic elements in this larger quilt that is made of each property you're looking at?

01:04:31
Sam
Yeah, I think two of my favorite points of this episode, though, was the conversation about Luke's trauma and not really addressing. Know, not really addressing what that would do to a person because he does face this huge failure at the end of, like, not just physically losing a hand, but his friend is gone. He basically failed after being the golden boy of the first one. All three of you were right. That's not really addressed. I don't know how we address it because the other good point that you made is that this is meant to be the wrap up movie.

01:05:02
Case
Right.

01:05:04
Sam
And that may bring way too much story into the actual story, but I do think that it is something, especially with something that's as iconic as return of the Jedi. That is just one of those. It's a fun movie. This is a fun movie. Overall, the idea that, oh, yeah, there are some themes that you didn't really get to explore because we need to wrap this up. It's something that I haven't really thought about. And so I thought that those were two really great points brought up about this particular film during this episode.

01:05:43
Case
Yeah, I rather like a lot of the ideas we put forth in this episode. While I did criticize an aspect of the Ewoks, mostly because there is a portion of fandom that dislikes them, and I was like, all right, how do we address that proactively? I really liked me throwing out a bunch of ideas of like, all right, well, what if they knew about tunnels or what if they knew about this specific thing that was either incendiary or was really strong or something? And I realized actually, in retrospect, oh, that's actually kind of like, just avatar, where it's like, oh, well, they've got minerals that make their arrows really strong, and they're very big, so they can shoot these big pylons. But where the natural components of the world is a reason why they are able to actually exist and rebel effectively.

01:06:37
Case
And I do think that could have been in the ewoks in Jedi. I think that there could have been a few spots that would have made for visually interesting scenes that could have been used to sort of set up more rationale for why these cute teddy bears are so able to be an asset.

01:06:58
Sam
Yeah, I think there is something already within the unspoken text of making them feel like they would be hard to catch. And also, the empire kind of looks down on most creatures as subhumans. So, like, leaving these little teddy bear creatures on this forest moon alone, as long as they stay away from the base, I could see them kind of ignoring them. But I think there's something to be said by the idea of there's something supported, even within the battles that they understand this land so much better than the empire does, who are like, these interlopers who are just taking up a space to host the shield. Right.

01:07:40
Sam
So I think that it would be kind of cool to see them lead, and you don't really have to do much and have them lead someone through, have the rebels sneak up behind because of a tunnel or something like that. So I thought that was good because it's like an add on of a scene or two. That's not actually going to hurt the overall runtime of it, and you're already in the forest knocking people over. It's just part of the action sequence in general.

01:08:12
Case
Yeah. Like I said, in the episode itself, the movie is good. So it's really just a question of how you polish it and what things stand out to you.

01:08:23
Case
One thing I really miss from these earlier episodes, and that it goes away by virtue of the fact that there are multiple people, and a lot of people are coming in cold to the show, is the roundup at the end where it's like, okay, here's all the ideas we presented and where it's like, okay, how can we address the issues that were ultimately a part of this movie and things that we thought could have been handled differently and actually tried to summarize it, which I thought was a really good way of taking all of our pitches, but also just, like, general thoughts about the movie and really creating, like, all right, here is a finished thesis at the end of it all of each episode.

01:09:06
Case
And that starts earlier and will continue for a while, and then it kind of shifts into, like, all right, bring your pitch. I got my pitch. And then it's fun when we've got overlap, but we don't really ever try to mesh them together. And part of that is just our episodes have gotten way longer than where they used to be. So a wrap up at the end would just add, like, an extra 20 minutes, and Matt would want to kill me more than they already do.

01:09:32
Sam
Yeah, poor Matt. Let's not do that to Matt. He's already a hero. He doesn't need to be a victim.

01:09:42
Case
But on that note, this is also pre Matt coming on the show that happened at the start of 2020. So were pretty well into. I think were three years in at that point.

01:09:53
Sam
Wow.

01:09:54
Case
When they fully took over doing that. So this is all me at this point. And I am learning how to use some equipment in this case, because the audio file was recorded at the, quote, unquote, certain pov studios, which was, like, the studio setup that Addie had in his basement that he shared with Jmike, which was awesome. I missed those days so much of just being able pop in. We'd record a couple of different things all in one night, kind of like cool sessions, but that's why the audio quality was pretty good. But then once I start recording remotely with people, especially, like, doing sit down interviews with a Tascam, there were some audio issues, such as a mic that was dead that I didn't realize was dead.

01:10:35
Sam
Oh, no.

01:10:37
Case
I was wearing an omnilov. And so oftentimes, I would have everyone's audio, but I would be like, why are they so faint? Oh, that's why. So the timelines for the first couple of episodes that, particularly the ones that were not done in studio, are painful to look at because it's so much cut audio of, like, okay, here's the guest. I'm bumping them up, or here's me. Because it took forever for me to realize that one was bad, and so I didn't even notice it because I was just unfamiliar with the equipment. Task game is like a personal recorder for people who are listening, who are not like av people. And it was an older model, one that was also a problem also. And obviously also not affecting this one yet.

01:11:25
Case
The one I had initially had some issue where it would glitch out if the recording was longer than, like, 20 minutes. So I would always have to make breaks in my recordings. Like, we would pause, and then I'd stitch it together. So lots of technical things that were a big issue then that have not really been a factor, particularly since the pandemic and all of it just becoming, let's do a Zoom call record locally. It's all fine.

01:11:50
Sam
Yeah. And of course, Matt. I'm just going to give Matt credit also.

01:11:54
Case
Matt?

01:11:54
Sam
Yes.

01:11:57
Case
I mean, I had figured out my shit by the time that I passed it off to Matt, but definitely not at the beginning.

01:12:04
Sam
Well, now you don't have to worry about. Just the only real worry you have is when we go over too long and you realize that it's a monster episode for him to edit.

01:12:16
Case
Right. But, yeah, I am glad to get this back out there for people to listen to. I'm glad that we have a format that we can kind of re explore some of those old episodes because some of them were fun. And like the Jedi one I probably revisited more often just by virtue of it being a Star wars thing. So I've refreshed my memory on, like, oh, what did I say at the time about a thing?

01:12:42
Sam
Do you feel like the things you said are still true for you today? Which is interesting because now we've gotten more Star wars stuff, right? We've gotten more shows, more stuff. I mean, not that we didn't have a lot of stuff then, but we have even more stuff. Do you feel like it's still like. Do you feel that you feel the.

01:13:00
Case
Same for this one? For the most part, yes. I really liked Obi Wan, for example. I thought it did a really good job of fleshing out the conflict between Vader and Obi Wan and really sort of making that relationship feel more real and feel like it had more encounters. To the point where while I was reluctant to embrace it as a show, once I did, I was like, oh, no, this actually helps a lot. I do think that a lot of the material that has been put out there has really helped smooth out the rough edges that were looking at in Star wars canon as the Force Awakens. Coming out like, this is before Rogue one even dropped, or thereabouts. I forget exactly.

01:13:46
Case
It may have been, like, right after, but either way, we hadn't really started to flesh out the broader Star wars canon. The thing I really like about the Disney era has been we have all these actors from the prequels who can play older versions of characters that now the original actors are dead, for example, like Mon Mothma and so getting Bale organa as an older man in Rogue one, and then also an Obi Wan and being able to help make the prequels feel more part of this larger story as opposed to this side project that had a very different aesthetic and just didn't feel like the first three Star wars movies. Now there's more of a. Here's a totality of it all.

01:14:35
Case
I was really into the Machete Order at this time, which is watching Star wars in order of four, like OG Star wars five, Empire strikes back, then watching episodes two and three, and then six, Return of the Jedi. And looking at the movies from that perspective where you get the prequels as, like, a flashback in the middle, and now it's a lot harder for me to say, like, oh, that's the way to watch it, because there's so much additional material that I think is worthwhile. Where in that order, would you put rogue one? Not before OG Star wars, because OG Star wars is such a great gateway for an audience into the world of Star wars.

01:15:11
Sam
Right.

01:15:12
Case
But would I say wait until later? I don't know, because Return of the Jedi is such a perfect end of the trilogy. Maybe not perfect is the wrong word, but a good conclusion that I don't know if I want to mess around with that order too much. And then you get into the sequel trilogies and, like, the.

01:15:34
Sam
Much. There's so much. Oh, Boba fett.

01:15:40
Case
I love Tamara Morrison. But, man, the second that Mando is back on screen, you're like, oh, right, this is a stronger lead for how they wanted to handle it.

01:15:52
Sam
Just, yeah, I mean, honestly, the first half of that show is just a mess, but I don't think it's the performers themselves. I think everyone gives a solid performance. I think it's the pacing and the. Yeah, and it doesn't get better till Mando shows up.

01:16:08
Case
Right, well, and also, just like Tamor Morrison comes worked, he honestly feels like one of the other clones who's just a little bit nice and has done some bad things, versus Boba Fet had just had such a reputation, and clearly, when we're talking about him in, like, he was at one point thought to be the next main antagonist, which fucking blows my mind now to think about.

01:16:36
Sam
Yeah, honestly, I feel like. I like how so far there's just been a lot of things that kind know cleaned out the edges. And I will say that Obi Wan made me appreciate the prequels more. We all know where I stand on the prequels. I am not a fan of them. I know that the Internet will say that's not cool of me, but they're just so flawed. There are good things about them, but they're very flawed and I do not enjoy them. But I do think that Obi Wan gave, like, that show gave it meaning and actually was like, the first kind of sequence that's edited in that kind of gives you a before for what the prequels were.

01:17:26
Sam
To sum it up for you, I was like, man, if the movie was just that, if those movies were just that would have been so amazing. I was just like, maybe I should go rewatch them. And then I remembered when I tried to rewatch it, because we talked about them, and I was like, no, they took the best part and they edited it the best way. But it was so good. It was so good. I think that right now, the team that's working is doing really nice work to try to tie everything as much as they can together to smooth out the rough edges on all of the movie projects. And so, kudos to them. I hope it continues. I hope knocks on, yeah.

01:18:19
Case
That is a franchise that it's so interesting to look at. Every phase of my life, there has been some major shift in it, in the way that we see it as a whole. There was the era of like, oh, George Lucas was such a genius for everything. He created that idolizing phase that occurred in the 90s leading up to the remastered editions and then the special editions, because they did ThX, all the sound has been topped off and the film grain has been removed. Refinements first. And then they did the actual. The special editions in theaters. And those had their own kind of like, a lot. I was probably the target demo for like, here's all this extra shit that we're putting on screen.

01:19:01
Case
That era where it's like, look, with computers, we can see into the cockpits of the jets and we can do all the things and those really cool. And it was really cool just to see Star wars on screen again. And that corresponded with the shadows of the empire kind of push that occurred around that time. And then you get to the prequels, and the prequels are like, hey, there's new Star wars to check out. Oh, my God, I can't wait. I remember all of us picking apart the first trailer in my freshman class of high school. The trailer had come out and we're all like, oh, my God, were those Mandalorians that were being dropped out? They were the drones, right? The battle droids. But at the time when just a quick shot, we're like, are those shock troopers being dropped off for combat?

01:19:41
Case
How does this fit in? Because that era had been so verboten in this extended universe, and so all of a sudden, the prequels are coming out, and each one were like, yeah, this is fucking great. And then the movie is no longer in theaters. We're like, was it great?

01:19:55
Sam
Never mind.

01:19:56
Case
And each one was like, oh, this one's finally the good. Like two. It's like, this one's finally the good one. And then we're like, then three comes out. Oh, finally a good one.

01:20:06
Sam
For my money, two is the worst of those three. And I stand by that.

01:20:13
Case
I don't know if I fully disagree or agree. I think the points I made on the actual episode of that, I think I generally stand by, especially because some of those were refined for doing this exact thing. And it was only like a year ago that we did those. The thing that is interesting now is that we have had the Force Awakens, and we've had the whole sequel trilogy, and we've had all the Clone wars tv shows, and we've had the live action tv shows and all of these things that have added to the canon of Star wars in a way that's more directly part of Star wars than the extended universe stuff, because that was mostly books and comics.

01:20:58
Case
And it just felt like while it was at the time considered canon and now the new extended universe novels are considered canon, they're still a totally different medium versus the shows are literally using the same actors. So those feel much more like an authentic part of Star wars and how we look at Star wars. And either way, it's just interesting to be like, oh, well, now my perspective of Star wars is this much more sprawling series of projects that I can't delegitimize anything as much as I used to. I used to be like, all right, we'll just look at the main movies. Don't look at the prequels. But now I can't really look at the main movies and not the prequels.

01:21:41
Case
If I want to incorporate Andor or rogue one or Obi Wan or any of the sequel trilogy stuff, it's become so much bigger as what is, like the canon, and thus the highs don't feel quite as high to me anymore. But the lows also don't feel so low.

01:22:03
Sam
I can see that. I still say the second one is the worst. Other peoples, no, mostly agree.

01:22:11
Case
It just has the more necessary story beats than the first one. And so it's the challenge of, like, well, which one's more important versus which one is better done.

01:22:19
Sam
Well, my indictment of it is that it should have had more beats because I feel like the third movie then has too much heavy lifting, which I said when we did our thing, and I stand by that. I just feel like. I feel that the second movie was the movie of promise, and it let me down wholly. I know. Maybe it's just like my expectations for movies that are going to be trilogies. Thank you, Empire strikes back. The second movie should be the best movie.

01:22:57
Case
But I feel like we're getting away from the Jedi.

01:22:59
Sam
We are. Totally. And this is what happens when we talk about Star wars. So let's get back on track.

01:23:04
Case
Yeah. Well, I think what I would say, looking back at this one specifically, is that, oh, it's surprising from this perspective, six years later, of how much was in place at the get go and then how much you can hear me kind of still figuring out how to do a podcast myself as opposed to being a guest on a podcast. And it's cool. And it's cool to be like, oh, yeah, I actually had my shit together, which I can't get over.

01:23:35
Sam
Yeah, you sound really good. I know that you feel like you were flying off the sea of your plants, but honestly, even your intro, it didn't feel like it was just something that you realized like, oh, no, I've got to speak now.

01:23:48
Case
Yeah, we clipped out the, like, 10 seconds of us just, like, looking around at each other and then being. Mouthing the words you.

01:23:58
Sam
Well, no one would know, except now they do because we talked about it.

01:24:03
Case
Yeah. I missed that era of certain point of view where it felt like it was this little studio project that were all doing together, because now that we're all recording, for the most part with Zoom calls, and a lot of that was the pandemic. But also a lot of that was, like, certain point of view shutting down as the flagship show, and Ben and Addie sort of, like, going off and doing their own things for a while. It's just an era I miss. It was a lot of fun, and it felt really creative and cool, even if it was just like, three guys sitting around a table bitching about Star wars.

01:24:43
Sam
And that's all that matters, really, that it felt cool.

01:24:48
Case
It was definitely very invigorating, because for me, it was like I had moved from New York, and I didn't have anything that was like a creative project. And then my last couple of years in New York, I didn't really have a creative project either. I'd been doing theater and screenplay stuff and just working on random things for the first six years I lived in New York. And then the last two, I was just trying to get by. I was barely making enough to pay rent and I couldn't do a whole lot. And then I moved back to DC to take care of my grandfather and it was like, oh, I've got nothing. That's like, I got a job relatively quickly, but I didn't have anything that was like, here's my creative project.

01:25:30
Case
And then certain point of view popped up on my radar and all of a sudden it was like, oh, here is a thing that I can do and do in a way that was manageable. First my schedule and keep putting stuff out because we had just wrapped up the last normal Farrogate movie at that point and that while it was a lot of fun to do, it was arduous. And it took like five years for us to get the edit done because it was just a big project.

01:26:00
Sam
Right?

01:26:02
Case
There was drama, and I didn't want to be super in the weeds on some of that because it wasn't my baby. And then here, this was a thing. I could be like, oh, I own this. This is my show. And this came out at the same time as nerve hurders. So both of those spin offs were like, cool, I can do both of these things. And they're really fun and they're getting different itches that scratched that I needed. So it was really invigorating. And it's fun to look back on that first episode and be like, fuck, yeah, I can do this.

01:26:37
Sam
Yeah. And we're so glad you felt that way because now it's been four years later. Six years later. Gosh darn it.

01:26:46
Case
It was four years when you came on.

01:26:48
Sam
Six years later. Maybe I've just rebooted everything. No, it's been six years later. It's a time loop. That's Star Trek.

01:26:56
Case
Yeah, we've had so many episodes that podcast players make it difficult to see these episodes, which is like a wild thing show that only comes out once a week or once every other week. Pardon me.

01:27:05
Sam
Yeah, I had to go to our website because none of the things I use to play podcasts would play it. So I went to the podcast site to listen to.

01:27:15
Case
This is the base Libson page. You can eventually scroll to it. But, yeah, podcast apps just wouldn't load this far back. So now it's like, oh, cool. All right, well, let's get these back out there because I think while there are technical issues and there are format issues that are being developed as we go, it's still worthwhile and it's cool to see. And this is just bonus content anyway, so it's not like we're taking anything away from our audience.

01:27:42
Sam
Right?

01:27:43
Case
I hope you all enjoy.

01:27:47
Sam
Absolutely. Me too.

01:27:51
Case
But, yeah, like I said, this is on our off weeks, so as of when this dropped, it's kind of going to depend on how quickly I get this out. Either this is between episode 150, which is our Planet of the Apes spectacular finale, or this is one after that.

01:28:10
Sam
Which I'm sure will also be spectacular, just a different movie.

01:28:16
Case
So next week will be another regular episode of the show, but then the week after the next one of these will drop, which will be going to our second episode, which will be Mallrats, which we will be talking about more format stuff. We'll be talking about some technical stuff. It's also a fairly short episode, so I think that will be fun for everyone to look back at. And that's with Moonan.

01:28:40
Sam
Yay, Jeff.

01:28:41
Case
Excited to re explore that. Know, I'm just glad that this is still going strong.

01:28:49
Sam
Me too. And I'm glad to be part of it now.

01:28:52
Case
Yeah. No, I'm so glad that you're here. Like, God, can you imagine how much better that episode would have been if you were in the room with us.

01:28:57
Sam
Just being like, Addie's right. He walks out. Great. Shut up, Ben. I don't even want to be here anymore. Knock everything down. No. I probably would have just been like, well, what about Frodo? What about Mary and Pippin? They didn't marry there. They didn't marry because Mary and Pippin really changed the fate of the war. Without them, there would have been no. Oh, you see, you were saying that ewoks are not as good as Mary and Pippin, and that would have been my bothering Ben point of view.

01:29:26
Case
Yeah, well, I mean, for old, sound mistakes, I hope everyone stays scruffy. My nerve. Us. And if you enjoy the show, pass it on.

01:29:38
Sam
Absolutely. Stay scruffy, y'all.

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Announcer
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