Lost an ending Return of the Jedi did: send in the dancing Ewoks | Stuart Heritage | Film | guardian.co.uk

Quote:

The final scenes of Return Of The Jedi are imprinted on the consciousness of millions of Star Wars fans. After bidding farewell to his dead father in an emotional cremation sequence, Luke Skywalker rushes off to an Ewok party, where everybody hugs and dances and some Ewoks play the bongos. The end. But it could have all been so different. Speaking before this weekend's Star Wars Celebration V conference in Florida, producer Gary Kurtz has revealed that if it wasn't for the wild popularity of Star Wars merchandise, Return Of The Jedi would have had a much bleaker ending. "The original idea was that they would recover Han Solo in the early part of the story and that he would then die in the middle part of the film in a raid on an Imperial base," Kurtz told the LA Times. "George then decided he didn't want any of the principals killed. By that time there were really big toy sales and that was a reason." What's more, the film would have shown Princess Leia struggling to cope with her new-found responsibilities, and would have ended with Luke Skywalker walking off into the distance as an embittered, Clint Eastwood-style loner. In the end, though, George Lucas opted for the happy Ewok bongo version. Maybe he was right to avoid such a depressing conclusion – for all anyone knows, Star Wars might not have become the fiercely beloved series that it is today by ending on such an outright bummer. Then again, maybe he was wrong. After all, The Empire Strikes Back is widely regarded as the best Star Wars film, and the fact that it ended in the most downbeat fashion imaginable can't be a coincidence. Maybe wrapping up the whole trilogy in a blanket of death and misery would have further enhanced the franchise. It's certainly braver to risk alienating your audience with a bleak ending, but it's a risk that pays off time and time again. Hilary Swank probably wouldn't have won that Oscar if her character in Million Dollar Baby fully recovered in the final scene. David Fincher would currently be out of work if, during the final scene of Seven, Brad Pitt opened the box to discover a fresh batch of delicious fairy cakes that Kevin Spacey had baked for him by way of an apology. Don't Look Now would have been a gigantic flop if Donald Sutherland, having run himself ragged across Venice looking for his daughter, had caught up with the stabby dwarf, shouted "Kiss me, you fool", and taken her on a lovely all-expenses trip around the Mediterranean. Then again, not every film should have a sad ending. Imagine if Field Of Dreams ended with Kevin Costner sitting in an empty baseball field for a week, realising that nobody was actually going to turn up, and killing himself. Or if Tim Robbins got stuck in the sewage pipe during his escape from Shawshank and ended up suffocating in human effluent. Or if Sleepless in Seattle ended with Meg Ryan being graphically mauled to death by an escaped tiger.

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For all that SW is arguably one of the most important cultural products of the C20th, Lucas is a lowlife mercenary hack, as he has demonstrated time and time again. SW always had elements of darkness, and in this it stood in marked contrast to most preceding SF (or "SF" really), which was one of it's selling points. When you consider the likes of Trek and Flash Gordon, SW is pretty grim indeed: in the first movie, Luke's foster parents are murdered, Han shot first, their spaceship is a broken down deathtrap, the Empire does indeed get to use it's terror weapon, and Luke's kindly father figure is defeated and dies.

I find it quite plausible that ROTJ was originally designed as described, and that Lucas canned it for reasons unrelated to dramatic logic. Probably it would have been better for it; ROTJ is probably the weakest of the first trilogy.

Lucas seems to have spent the rest oif his career trying to undo the things he did right, all on the basis of a spurious popularity, which reached its nadir in the prequel trilogy. I've mentioned this before but Plinkett's review of Phantom menace is thoroughly cutting: Red Letter Media

I think all that bitterness and struggle can be saved for The New Republic and Heir To the Empire - which does it perfectly. I wish they'd make movies off that!

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