Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

(1983)

This has definitely suffered the most of the original trilogy. The effects sequences are more extravagant but comparably less inventive and effective (the speeder bike chase aside, the cleaning up of which is an example of revisions I can get behind), but most damagingly the story just isn't there.

Its greatest asset is the one thing Lucas could carry through all his versions of the story on some level, the final confrontation between Luke and Vader. And it's a fine scene, ably constructed and supported by Williams haunting choral score and with Ian McDiarmid’s mocking Emperor showing commendable relish. Of course, a moment that was so impactful due to Vader silently observing his son being wracked with pain, then turning on the Emperor, now has "Nooooo! Nooooo!" splashed over it for what Lucas considers to be a fiddling symmetry.

This is where Lucas apparently took to micro-managing (Richard Marquand receiving the brunt of it) after letting Kershner have a fair bit of rope. So he didn't listen to the suggestions of Gary Kurtz (who left acrimoniously) and Lawrence Kasdan (who agreed with Ford that Han should die). He pressed on with repeating the climax he had brought forward into Star Wars (the Death Star) and instead of a rethink after deciding not to got to the Wookie world (as he decided to introduce Wookies with Chewie, who was technologically capable, it didn't fit his vision of a Vietnam-parallel undeveloped society versus advanced one) he reinvented it with the cutesy indulgence of the Ewoks.

Most of the choices he made here seem like a retreat rather than advancement from The Empire Strikes Back. Han is an almost incidental figure; you can understand the reasoning that he should be paired with Leia but dramatically he should really have been aboard the Falcon, even if he wasn't given a heroic death. His character is very nearly just comic relief; Ford wears the humour well, but his character is shorn of the "cool" he had previously (just look at his "for laughs" defeat of Boba Fett). We don't care about the attack on the Death Star because we don't care about Lando. And we don't really care about the battle on Endor because it's all so lightweight. Which means the drama of the climax all rests on Luke. Who finds his father was a fat bald bloke all along. It turns out little Annie really likes the pies.

The scene where everyone reunites with Luke before heading to Endor/the Death Star has to be the most cheese-laden and excruciating in the original trilogy. Unfortunately that wasn't edited down, but we get a horrific song to the accompaniment of rotten CGI at Jabba's palace. Lucas calls out the pro-rubber people on the commentary at this point, saying that it's as fake as CGI. But, as is clear from the prequels, he can't see which sticks out like a sore thumb and is more of a challenge to suspension of disbelief.

The Sarlacc now looks more like Little Shop of Horrors. And it's ironic that the one crowd-pleaser Lucas considered reinstating, Fett escaping its maw, he decided against on the grounds it didn't fit (like that music number did?) The replacing of the Ewok music at the end is also rubbish, and the speed of galaxy-wide celebrations of the Empire's defeat (within hours, everywhere?) is implausible for the sake of an attempt at "epic" wrap-up. Christensen looks like a smirking dick when he's joined the Force too (I don't see the logic, either; he turned to the good side of the Force as a corpulent cadaver).

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

If a rat were to walk in here right now as I'm talking, would you treat it to a saucer of your delicious milk?

Inglourious Basterds (2009)
(SPOILERS) His staunchest fans would doubtless claim Tarantino has never taken a wrong step, but for me, his post-Pulp Fiction output had been either not quite as satisfying (Jackie Brown), empty spectacle (the Kill Bills) or wretched (Death Proof). It wasn’t until Inglourious Basterds that he recovered his mojo, revelling in an alternate World War II where Adolf didn’t just lose but also got machine gunned to death in a movie theatre showing a warmly received Goebbels-produced propaganda film. It may not be his masterpiece – as Aldo Raines refers to the swastika engraved on “Jew hunter” Hans Landa’s forehead, and as Tarantino actually saw the potential of his script – but it’s brimming with ideas and energy.

Check it out. I wonder if BJ brought the Bear with him.

Death Proof (2007)
(SPOILERS) In a way, I’m slightly surprised Tarantino didn’t take the opportunity to disown Death Proof, to claim that, as part of Grindhouse, it was no more one of his ten-official-films-and-out than his Four Rooms segment. But that would be to spurn the exploitation genre affectation that has informed everything he’s put his name to since Kill Bill, to a greater or less extent, and also require him to admit that he was wrong, and you won’t find him doing that for anything bar My Best Friend’s Birthday.

Hey, everybody. The bellboy's here.

Four Rooms (1995)
(SPOILERS) I had an idea that I’d only seen part of Four Rooms previously, and having now definitively watched the entire thing, I can see where that notion sprang from. It’s a picture that actively encourages you to think it never existed. Much of it isn’t even actively terrible – although, at the same time, it couldn’t be labelled remotely good– but it’s so utterly lethargic, so lacking in the energy, enthusiasm and inventiveness that characterises these filmmakers at their best – and yes, I’m including Rodriguez, although it’s a very limited corner for him – that it’s very easy to banish the entire misbegotten enterprise from your mind.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

Pulp Fiction (1994)
(SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump. And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

That woman, deserves her revenge and… we deserve to die. But then again, so does she.

Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
(SPOILERS) I’m not sure I can really conclude whether one Kill Bill is better than the other, since I’m essentially with Quentin in his assertion that they’re one film, just cut into two for the purposes of a selling point. I do think Kill Bill: Vol. 2 has the movie’s one actually interesting character, though, and I’m not talking David Carradine’s title role.

The adversary oft comes in the shape of a he-goat.

The Witch (2015)
(SPOILERS) I’m not the biggest of horror buffs, so Stephen King commenting that The Witch “scared the hell out of me” might have given me pause for what was in store. Fortunately, he’s the same author extraordinaire who referred to Crimson Peak as “just fucking terrifying” (it isn’t). That, and that general reactions to Robert Eggers’ film have fluctuated across the scale, from the King-type response on one end of the spectrum to accounts of unrelieved boredom on the other. The latter response may also contextualise the former, depending on just what King is referring to, because what’s scary about The Witch isn’t, for the most part, scary in the classically understood horror sense. It’s scary in the way The Wicker Man is scary, existentially gnawing away at one through judicious martialling of atmosphere, setting and theme.

Indeed, this is far more impressive a work than Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, which had hitherto been compared to The Wicker Man, succeeding admirably …

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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