RETURN OF THE JEDI

Here is the decision, plainly. This is, by our lights, the best-constructed chapter of the STAR WARS trilogy — brilliant writing, breathtaking vistas, awesome sound, and alien characters so vivid they feel real. The re-release only sharpened it. Four stars, and worth every one.

What carries it is more than spectacle. At its center is a son willing to lay down his life to save a sinner — his own father — and the willingness of every hero to die for one another. There is no sex here, no foul language. That's a film pulling at the right heartstrings.

One caution keeps it from being a clean family pick. The Force is, ultimately, a malevolent New Age concept, and children need to be told so. With a little discernment, older children can be taught to beware of the Force while enjoying the yarn.

So: gather the family, watch it together, and talk about the Force afterward.

Luke Skywalker returns to his home planet with a plan. His friends — Han Solo, Leia, Lando, Chewbacca, and the droids — are being held in the court of the monstrous Jabba the Hut, and Luke, now nearly a Jedi knight, thinks before he acts. One by one he sets his rescuers in place, ready to strike.

But freeing his friends is only the beginning. Ahead lies a harder confrontation — with his own father, and with the belief that only love can turn a man back from the dark side. That's as far as we'll take you.

Four stars, and here is what they mean. This is a masterpiece of filmmaking, made even better in re-release. The writing is brilliant — the best-constructed of the three episodes. The technical craft has been enhanced across the board: the sound is awesome, the vistas and panoramas are breathtaking, and the alien characters are more than real.

More than that, the film knows how to move you. By focusing on Luke's desire to find the good left in his father, and on friends willing to lay down their lives for each other, it pulls at all the right heartstrings. The scary characters are clearly finite in their abilities, so they can be defeated. When love triumphs at the end, the emotional undertone is potent and earned. Little wonder this trilogy's reissue drew enormous audiences.

This is a pagan world shot through with New Age teaching — the same ideas about the Force that disturbed viewers in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. But here those elements serve the story rather than swallow it, and the story turns out to carry real moral weight. Children should be told plainly: the Force is, ultimately, a malevolent concept, and in its own way the movie even shows that.

For all that, this film reaches for something Scripture recognizes. Its central act is redemptive — a son willing to lay down his life to save a sinner, in this case his own father. The heroes are ready to die for one another. Love triumphs. These are biblical shapes, even inside a pagan frame.

The film's one great substitution is worth naming. Here it is love, not Jesus Christ, that determines whether a person is saved from the forces of darkness. Luke's self-sacrifice moves us because it echoes a truer one — but it is only an echo. The good news the movie can't quite say is that Jesus Christ delivers us from any force, no matter how malevolent. "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13) — and He did.

This is grand, heartfelt filmmaking with a genuinely redemptive core — a son laying down his life for a sinner, love winning the day. Just come ready to talk with your younger ones about the Force, which the film treats as spiritually real when it isn't. With that little bit of discernment, this mythic yarn is worth the trip — ages 10 and up.