Boldfaced lies in faulty classroom textbooks insist that historical milestones occurred prior to 1983. But for me, however, that year not only spawned an artistic tsunami in the motion picture industry, but also marks the dawn of human consciousness.

1983: The year George Lucas presented humanity with its most enduring treasure: Return of the Jedi.

While films prior to that legendary date had achieved certain insignificant milestones like sound, color, and, best of all, musicals, the art form had yet to realize its true potential. So Lucas, sensing that the world was ready to receive his vision, crafted a screenplay of undeniable power and placed it in the sure hands of the greatest director a successful trilogy could ever possibly want – Richard Marquand.

With these two pieces put brilliantly in place, Lucas and his eager team of yes-men embarked on an emotional and spiritual journey to not only conclude the story started by the two lesser films in the trilogy; they attempted to heal the world through film. Let’s look at some of the wondrous moments in Return of the Jedi that so profoundly altered the course of film and life itself: 

- Lucas was not content to merely include a creature here or there to flesh out his universe. Employing the largest vat of foam rubber in existence, Lucas and his toy makers fashioned a million different aliens. Their believability was enhanced greatly with their expressively black, non-blinking eyeballs and visible zippers. To add even more realism, some of the aliens were played by puppeteers, and in no way, shape, or form looked like a hand puppet. In fact, the ingeniously-named character of Salacious Crumb (pictured) was actually believed to be an alien by NASA due to the intense realism of his performance.

- Lucas predicted the rise of artificial intelligence with the stirring and dramatic torturing of a robot, complete with heart-rending shrieks as the robot is burned on the soles of its tender metal feet.

- Acting was basically reinvented with the performances of the three human leads. Mark Hamill’s turn as Luke Skywalker deliberate line readings only emphasize the power of Lucas’ dialogue; sentence fragments like “Then my father is truly dead” sound like Shakespeare recited by angels when coming from Hamill’s golden throat.  Harrison Ford’s long, long stares into space during key dramatic moments only add to the depth of his portrayal of Han Solo. And Carrie Fisher never did drugs during the shooting of any of her scenes as Princess Leia.

- The invention of the Ewoks was a key moment in Hollywood history – the Big Bang of Creativity, if you will. Not only do their zippers and non-blinking eyes bring them physically to life, but their playful stupidity also gave birth to an entire generation of similarly-memorable characters, like farting Eopies, wacky Gungans, and Norbit. Every time I see them, I want to live forever instead of shooting myself in the face with a shotgun.

- In this film, Lucas revealed the flaws of humankind in order to make it stronger. He showed how a simple race of teddy bears, armed with logs and catapults fashioned within one hour, can defeat the mightiest human armies in the universe, despite the fact that they were heavily armored and capable of destroying entire planets in three seconds. It served as a grim warning of our own self-delusions, and it served that lesson powerfully.

- In Jedi, Lucas predicted the future of film, in which characters would no longer be played by human actors – thank goodness! – but instead would be fashioned out of non-living material and brought to life via skilled craftsmen. By necessity, Lucas retained the human actors from the previous films. But, by populating the rest of the film with puppets and other special effects, Lucas showed that such contraptions could tell a story much better than any living person. 

- Lucas attained the ultimate moment of creative energy with his rousing conclusion to this film. While many people scornfully mock Lucas because he copied and pasted the entire ending from Star Wars onto this film, they miss the point - Lucas was merely using the repeated conclusion as a metaphor for the frivolity of our lives and goals.

- Finally, Return of the Jedi contains both the greatest song and most inspired scene in the history of all human endeavors:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuDK8IgByTg[/youtube]

Since 1983, every filmmaker stepping behind a camera struggles to reach the lofty heights of the creative Everest scaled effortlessly by Lucas and his hired crew with Return of the Jedi. It not only perfectly capped what had been up to that point a rather uninspired story. It began a new era in storytelling, artistic expression, and human consciousness.

Thank You George Lucas. And Thank You, Jett Lucas. And Thank You God for giving us their love, humor, and vision.

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