Until Infinity War, I don't think I'd ever had so much anticipation for any movie more than Return of the Jedi. Star Wars came at the perfect time in my life, age 10, and those first two were the greatest things I had ever laid eyes upon.
I had seen Empire on one of the two screens that it started on in Houston, the Westchase 5 theater, but by the time of Jedi, I was 16 and living in Lake Jackson. I remember being worried that Jedi would not open at the Lake Theater on 25 May 1983 that I was trying to devise a plan to somehow be in Houston on a school night for opening night. Thankfully, it didn't come to that; I talked to the manager at the Lake Theater, who confirmed that Jedi would indeed open in Lake Jackson on opening day.
Then came the parents. I was a sophomore in high school with solid grades and a biology final the day after Jedi's opening. The parents told me they would allow me to go to the movie only on the condition that I could guarantee an A on that final. I was able to make my case, and on that glorious Wednesday night, I sat down in that theater as excited as I've ever been to see a movie. Oh, and I aced the biology final the next day.
Regarding the movie ... I recall walking out after it was over and thinking I didn't really like it. The thought lasted for all of 10 seconds. When I started thinking about it, the movie was fantastic at its bookends of Jabba's palace and the big Rebel attack / Luke - Vader - Palpatine confrontation. The attack on the second Death Star was far more exciting than the first film's attack, was visually spectacular, and gave us new fighters in the A-Wing, B-Wing (which ultimately is seen in only a couple of shots), and the TIE Interceptor.
The confrontation between Luke and Vader, with Palpatine overseeing the duel before eventually joining it, was sheer awesomeness. Luke attempting to turn Vader back from the Dark Side, Vader hunting Luke in the dark, and then drawing Luke out with that one word - sister, hissed out as only James Earl Jones could do, brought out one of the most emotionally charged sequences in the entire saga. Luke driving Vader back with a furious charge, to the first use of a male choir in any Star Wars score. Then, enter Emperor Palpatine. "Now young Skywalker ... you will die." Ian McDiarmid could display seething hatred on his face like no one I've ever seen. The Force lightning sequence was damn right frightening in that we had not seen this ability out of a Force user previously. And to have Vader turn on the Emperor to save his son was timed perfectly, and was conveyed better than 14 years later when Lucas added Vader saying "No" in the SE.
Then we come to the film's middle act. In 1983, I felt like it dragged more than it should have. In the years since 1983, I would come to loathe George Lucas' reinvention of the teddy bear in the same way that many on here cannot stand Jar Jar Binks. I did not like the deification of C-3P0, but I did like the droid's recounting of the Rebels' story in his recruiting pitch to the teddy bears. I liked the speeder bike chase, but I initially did not like Luke's revelation to Leia that they are siblings. Her reaction didn't meet my expectations for how I thought she would react to learning this. In retrospect, her reaction is more aligned with what we know about the Jedi and those who are Force sensitive, in being able to just know things on some level. The attack on the reactor base was good, with the chicken walkers taking a more central role in this movie, and Harrison Ford copping a feel of Carrie Fisher's boob came to stand out to me in later viewings.
Jedi is the weakest of the OT. Presently, I rank it slightly behind the best of the PT, Revenge of the Sith.. The movies play off each other pretty well; I recall watching Jedi soon after I first saw Sith, and seeing the parallels between these movies, and determining that Jedi was still as good as I'd always thought it to be.
I love the score, but the initial LP release was almost insulting. The original two movies featured 2-LP albums, but Jedi gave us only one LP. So much of the score was just not available. It was not until the early 1990s that John Williams released a more complete version of the score, including the Emperor's theme for the first time, as well as more of the music in the first and third acts of the movie.
One kinda funny Jedi-related story to tell. In the spring of 1986 (I think it was), I had just changed my major at A&M to business, and was enrolled in a management class called the legal environment of business, or something similar. They had decided to hold class via videotape or on some TV channel. One day I was watching class at my apartment when my roommates came in making all kinds of noise, and wouldn't shut the F up. I told them to pound sand, and it was to Sterling C Evans for me. The library had some video stations where you could check out three quarter inch videotape of classes or regular movies. The players were in these little cubicle station things, with a small privacy wall between each station. The prof for this class had a receding hairline, and the studio lights shined off that bald dome of his, making it misery to watch and difficult to focus on what he was saying. Then I started to see some flashing lights coming from the station next to me. I leaned back in my chair a bit and took a peak; the dude next to me was watching Jedi, and it was at the point where Luke and Vader had just begun their duel. So I just sat there and watched the end of Jedi rather than my class.
