Vebber and Gould's "Fifty Reasons Why Jedi Sucks"---A Rebuttal (Pt. 4)

In Ted Edwards' "The Unauthorized Star Wars Compendium" (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1999), Dan Vebber and Dana Gould present a nearly-blasphemous, irreverent, irrelevant list of fifty "reasons" why George Lucas' cinematic masterpiece Return of the Jedi, as they say, "sucked." They begin with a brief essay filled with angst and bitterness against ROTJ and conclude with the following: "There are plenty of fans who argue that by the mere fact of its being part of the trilogy, Jedi should be above criticism. We'd ask those people whose initial response to this list is one of anger to apply the fifty points below to their next Jedi viewing." I have done so, and, as a true SW fanatic, I am prepared to answer their every point and remind them that ROTJ is not above criticism because it is part of the original trilogy, or indeed because it is part of the saga -- it is above criticism because it is one of the best damn films ever made! It is also the reason SW woke up that little part of my imagination that it now indwells permanently.

(This essay covers pages 207-222 of the Compendium's index; quotation marks and boldface type are used intelligently to indicate quotations from Vebber & Gould.)

31. Use of Earth Slang and Pop Culture. "We were almost willing to forgive the fact that an Ewok exclaims 'Yahoo,' or that Threepio uses the supposedly Ewokese word boom, until we saw the abominable scene where an Ewok swings from a vine and lets out a note-for-note copy of Tarzan's famous yell. Have we mentioned that we hate the Ewoks?"

This is less an objection of Earth slang and pop culture than more whining about "mommy, there are Ewoks in the movie!" Their bizarre hatred of Ewoks notwithstanding-—have I mentioned this list would have been much shorter if these guys had actually consolidated their complaints instead of trying to milk as many as possible out of them? "Boom" is an onomatopoeia, which is rendered bom in Arabic, bum in Bulgarian, boem in Dutch, boum in French, bam in Greek, bumm in Hungarian, bum in Lithuanian, Macedonian, Russian, and Romanian, and the despised boom in Portuguese. I'm pretty sure it's okay if the Ewoks have it, too. And don't tell me any given audience member wouldn't have supplied that Tarzaan yell on their own; you have to learn to tolerate winks and nods to the camera, son.

32. Jedi Afterlife. "You can screw up your entire life, strangle scores of people, and oversee the construction of a planet-destroying battle station, but as long as you repent with your last breath, you get to party with Yoda and Ben in the netherworld. . . . Why does Anakin's ghost get to regrow his hair and get all spiffed up and nice looking, while Yoda, who managed to resist the dark side all his nine-hundred-plus years, still looks like a crumpled old salamander?"

To take this in two parts: one, you are going to have to get over the fact that the Star Wars saga is, in a nutshell, about the redemption of Anakin Skywalker. This is what redemption means: you repent and it is all washed away. So, yeah, it's a Christian concept. It's also one near and dear to most human hearts, that there's always, somehow, 'another chance.' If you want to resent it, for heaven's sake, why watch this movie?

Secondly, hoo! boy, wait until the DVD special edition comes out and Anakin is really his younger, better-looking self. And I am inclined to agree there--why couldn't Obi-Wan turn into his much better, much hotter, much younger self upon death? Of course, practically speaking, because Alec Guinness was kind of a big deal. But in-universe, to break it down like a fraction for you, the answer is that Luke sees them how he knew them. Since he didn't know Anakin Skywalker, he sees him how he would have seen him for the first time. (This is also why he does not see Qui-Gon at the end of ROTJ; since he never knew Qui-Gon, he has no reason to see him.)

33. Unrealistic, Boring Fight Sequences. "Why stage an elaborate hand-to-hand fight with a scout trooper when you can just have Solo use the old ‘shoulder tap’ trick? Or when you can throw a duffel bag at an Imperial guard and he’ll backflip over a railing?"

Well, I would think that the lightsaber duel and the best space battle ever (boththeir descriptions) would make this a moot point again; if you were Han Solo, and you were running out of time, why would you stop for an elaborate fight when you could just tap his shoulder? And is anyone denying that throwing a bag at someone precariously balanced by a railing would make him tip over it? How are they unrealistic? Boring, maybe, but completely plausible! And exactly what is the value of picking on two eight-second scenes that might be "boring"?

34. Stormtroopers Have Become Pussies. "'Look out—teddy bear creatures! And they've got primitive handmade weapons! Let's forget our years of intense military training, put down our high-tech weaponry, and run away!'"

None of the troopers run away. And besides that, this is the exact same complaint as the previous and also #9 if you were paying attention! And I'll answer it now as I answered it then: The Ewoks don't win anything until Chewie captures an AT-ST. The troopers do scatter, but remember what I said about numbers? Look, just because they're repeating their objections-—I'm too tired to repeat my unnecessary defenses.

35. Vader's Real Face. "It should have been David Prowse under that helmet. . . . He deserved that much, and probably would have been willing to shave his head. . . . That pudgy head just doesn't match up with the body we see on Vader throughout the rest of the trilogy."

Okay, first of all, I don't know where anyone would get the idea David Prowse would've been willing to shave his head when he was completely hostile to the idea of Vader being redeemed at the end that they had to replace him. Secondly, I also fail to see how you think there would've been any real discernable difference between one bald white guy wearing makeup and another bald white guy wearing makeup, especially considering you only see his face from the nose up. And second of all, I never found this so-called disconnect between what he looks like and what he sounds like: the armor was supposed to be the shell, the monster, if you will, with a fragile being inside.

Finally, a word to Mr. Prowse: I'd be a lot more sympathetic toward him if he didn't have a chip the size of Australia on his shoulder. I mean really. We all know you were Darth Vader. The bitterness is really out of place.

36. Bad Editing. "That Jedi has problems with its editing is largely a subjective opinion and hard to quantify, but we base our believe on the fact that certain scenes just plain lack the punch and pacing we know they could and should have had."

Oh, largely subjective and hard to quantify, right--totally unlike anything else they've stipulated so far. But they did make this one easy to defend: I have never found that it has editing problems, and since most of these problems are in Vebber & Gould's heads anyway, I leave it at that. No examples? No comment.

37. The Alien Languages are Poorly Presented. "Bib Fortuna repeatedly lapses from Huttese into English for no apparent reason, and we learn from Leia's bounty hunter alter ego that at least one translation of 'Thirty thousand, no less' is 'Yoto. Yoto.' Huh? . . . If Threepio is Jabba's translator, why does he translate what other are saying into English rather than Huttese?"

Point number one, if somebody speaks one or two languages fluently, and decides to speak one while talking to a droid who clearly understands several million forms of communication, but then lapses into the more widely understood language when talking to some random human who may or may not know Huttese off the top of his head, well, let him. I would expect a crime lord's majordomo to be fluent in a couple popular languages and use them appropriately. Plus, Huttese is the second language on Ryloth and Tatooine. That's like criticizing a cop in LA for lapsing between Spanish and English with a Hispanic witness.

Secondly, if you doubt that "Yoto. Yoto" could mean "fifty thousand, no less," (yeah, they got the number wrong, too) then clearly you have never watched a Japanese film in subtitles, where "Yoichi ya" means "Yoichi, are you coming home soon for dinner or eating at school?" Also, Threepio's translation, necessarily, doesn't have to be word-for-word. The literal translation could be more like, "Unacceptable. Fifty thousand." Cf. Mandarin Chinese, where the word "ma" simultaneously means "mother," "a question," and three other words!

Third, Threepio is translating out of Huttese for the benefit of anyone there who doesn't speak it. Jabba, on the other hand, understands Basic (not English, you pseudo-Warriors), but, and I quote Ben Burtt on this, "as a matter of pride, refuses to speak anything but Huttese."

38. Inconsistency Within the Established Universe. "It strikes us as sloppy that codes on Jedi's computer screens are in alien gobbledygook language, while the tractor beam controls in Wars were in English. And speaking of English, almost all the Imperials in Wars and Empire have an English accent. Jedi doesn't continue this trend-—unfortunately, because as everyone knows, the British are inherently terrifying."

How the country that gave us Monty Python is terrifying, I don't know. More like frustrating, really, but anyway . . . First of all, all three movies are pretty much standard in their accent ratios. General Motti, for example, in ANH--American accent. ROTJ continues the trend as much as the first two do. As for the "gobbledygook," that is Aurebesh--and boy, don't they look silly now that everything in the entire saga has been standardized to read in it! It's just an alphabet. Get over it. This is ridiculous! And I don't think it deserves the grand "inconsistency within the established universe"--which they can't really establish anyway.

39. Yoda’s Death Sequence. "What does Luke do while his beloved master lies choking and gasping for his final breaths? Well, he just sort of sits there like a doofus and watches him writhe in pain. Not that dialing 911 is an option on Dagobah, but a simple, ‘Hey, Master—you okay?’ would have been a nice gesture."

Yes, and then you all would have complained about how stupid Luke was to ask a dying 900 year old man if he was okay. When Yoda already said he was dying—and one would expect a Jedi master to know, not just be saying it—and pointed out that he’s 900 years old, I think Luke has the only reaction one could have. He is stunned, tries to be respectful, but is having a hard time dealing with it, so he lets Yoda go on and just tries to cope with his feelings at the same time. Have you ever watched someone die of old age? What else can you do?

40. The Alliance Briefing. "In Wars, the briefing before the attack on the Death Star had the feel of a serious military operation. In Jedi, the briefing is a forum for witty repartee . . . Eventually, Luke barges in unannounced and the ‘meeting’ breaks up with all the parliamentary procedure of porno night at the Elks Club."

Having never been to porno night at the Elks Club, I can’t comment. But did you notice there was an obvious dismissal before Luke showed up? And that the banter you complain of took place before the briefing started? So actually, you’re just complaining about people being in the briefing room before and after the actual talk starts. Just because ANH didn’t show you what those guys were talking about before it started Dodonna mid-sentence doesn’t mean the same thing wasn’t going on there.