EWOKS VERSUS DEAD HEROES: CREATIVE CONFLICT IN WRITING RETURN OF THE JEDI

The original Star Wars trilogy established a storytelling model that still influences Hollywood filmmaking today. However, the third episode in the saga, Return of the Jedi (1983), was received less favorably than its predecessors by critics. This article will examine historical record and analyze aspects of syuzhet (‘plot’) and fabula (‘story’) (BORDWELL, 1985, pp. 49-50) in the screenplay in order to establish why Return of the Jedi works less successfully as a narrative than the first two films. The results of the investigation suggest that this was due to a fundamental philosophical conflict between screenwriters George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan.