Why David Lynch Turned Down Return of the Jedi
Most Star Wars nerds know that David Lynch was asked by Lucas to direct Return of the Jedi and turned it down. Lynch recently did an interview with something called ForaTV in which he detailed his meeting with Lucas and his reasons for turning the movie (and millions of dollars) down.
Lucas should have picked a better restaraunt.
December 10th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Honestly what could Lynch have done to make it better? The closest film Lynch has ever made to Star Wars style Sci-Fi is Dune which is one of his worst films in my opinion. With the exception of including the Ewoks, Return of the Jedi was pretty spot on in my opinion and i truly think regardless of ho the director would have been Lucas would have insisted that the Ewoks would have been there to appeal to kids.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Agreed with Crook.
I read the book before seeing the movie, which obviously influenced my take, but Dune sucked.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Dune is weak. Lynch never even read the book.
December 10th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I disagree that Dune is weak. Sure, it’s not the book, but it couldn’t be. It couldn’t ever be.
Dune is one of my favorite Scifi sagas (no surprise there) and the level to which Herbert internalizes his character conflicts makes it an almost impossible translation to the screen. If you pull that factor out of your audit of the film, you’re left with transcendent casting, cutting-edge special-effects, Giger’s sadistic production design, and a serviceable retelling of the overarching plot.
Really, the biggest blunder of the Dune movie was the atrocious mishandling of the Duncan character, which arguably is the one person who gets the most screen-time throughout all of the books, but, well. Go fig. Either way, it was a great adaptation of a total classic.
I agree with Crook that Lucas is his own worst enemy when it comes to dumbing down his movies…Empire and Jedi could have been so much more hardcore if Yoda was just a bit less cute and the Ewoks were just a bit less lame.
December 10th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I’ve always wanted to hear this story. Thank you for presenting it here.
December 10th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Yeah… I can’t even imagine what Return of the Jedi with David Lynch behind it would have even looked like. Except… probably still like Return of the Jedi, because like everybody’s said, Lucas was going to have his way. Great story though.