[EARLY ACCESS] Full Length | Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)

Celebration Scenes: Those final scenes of the planets celebrating at the end were actually added during the 1997 Special Edition re-release, and updated for the 2004 DVD release. George Lucas decided to throw in a bunch of new shots showing celebrations happening all across the galaxy, The original 1983 film had zero celebrations beyond the Forest moon of Endor. First up, you see Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back. Then it cuts to Mos Eisley on Tatooine from A New Hope, the planet where Luke grew up. Mos Eisley’s the spaceport where Luke and Obi-Wan (or Ben, as Luke calls him) head to find a pilot, which of course ends up being Han Solo. Two locations from the last two movies. After that, though, we get a look at two places that hadn't shown up in the movies before. A gorgeous city called Theed, the capital city of Naboo, full of grand, renaissance-style buildings and lush green landscapes. Then it jumps over to Coruscant, also known as the Imperial Capital. It's the massive city-planet packed with skyscrapers everywhere, where you can see a statue of the Emperor being pulled down by the crowds. Both of these planets were originally created for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999). Since George Lucas and his team were already working on The Phantom Menace around the time of the Special Editions, they decided to include these locations in Return of the Jedi as a subtle teaser of what was to come. So you'll see these two, now iconic planets moving forward. However, it's worth noting that Lucas had envisioned a city-planet (The Imperial City) as far back as Return of the Jedi. The concept simply never made it into the original film, but originally it was going to be where Luke had his final show shown with The Emperor, instead of on the 2nd Death Star. It would later officially show up in Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire (1991) novel as Coruscant. ------------------------------------------- Anakin Skywalker Force Ghost Scene: Another big, and confusing change worth mentioning. At the very end, when you see the Force ghost of Anakin Skywalker. Originally, it was Sebastian Shaw, the same actor who played the unmasked Darth Vader, which makes sense. But when the original trilogy got released on DVD in 2004, Lucas swapped him out for Hayden Christensen, who (without giving anything away) you'll meet properly in the prequel trilogy. For a first-time viewer, seeing Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi is like, 'Wait... who is that?" but everything will make sense moving forward. All these tweaks were made to help tie the prequels and the original trilogy together a little more smoothly. It's part of why some fans came up with what's called the "Machete Order" where you watch A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back first, then watch the prequels, and then come back to Return of the Jedi. It’s kind of a fun way to experience the story while keeping the big reveals intact, while also being able to understand these new additional scenes and changes. ---------------------------------------------- 16 year time gap between movie releases. looking back it's insane that there was a 16-year gap between the release of Return of the Jedi (1983) and The Phantom Menace (1999), during which Star Wars was actually kept alive through the Expanded Universe, made up of Star Wars novels, games, comics, and more. Stories like Tales of the Jedi and The Old Republic explored events set tens to thousands of years before the films, while Heir to the Empire acted as a sequel to the original trilogy, picking up after Return of the Jedi and exploring what happen after the "defeat" of the Empire. The only area off limits to writers was The Clone Wars, along with events surrounding the few decades before the movies, since Lucas planned on making the Prequels. Then came the prequel movies, introducing an entirely new era of Star Wars. This era expanded not only through the films themselves, but also through video games, novels, comics, and an Animated show overseen by Lucas himself called Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Even today, we’re still getting new Star Wars games and shows, many of them set during the prequel era or in the time between the prequels and the original trilogy. So Star Wars is very much a massive universe that's telling stories across all media, all having nods and references to each other like the MCU only on a much bigger scale.

LittleGalaxyBoy