Release Year: 1983

Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Director: Richard Marquand

Writer: George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan

Stars: Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill

Real talk, Shmoopers: what scares the snot out of you? Spiders? Korean water ghosts? Getting trapped in an elevator? The very thought of losing your phone?

In Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker has to face his fears and confront his father, Darth Vader, one last time. If it goes well, he'll save his deadbeat dad's soul and help the Rebel Alliance defeat the evil Empire once and for all. If it goes poorly, he and his pals will be space dust. 

And you thought calculus exams were terrifying.

By the time Return of the Jedi, the final last installment in the original Star Wars movie trilogy, hit theaters on May 25, 1983, Star Wars fever was at its peak:

Up to that point in time, Return of the Jedi was arguably the biggest motion picture event ever, with fans in some cities lining up days in advance to be among the first to see the movie. It may be difficult to comprehend or recall in the Internet/Social Media age, but never before had the industry witnessed this level of frenzy during the launch of a new movie. (Source)

Made on a $32.5 million dollar budget, the Lucasfilm production would go on to gross $252.6 million dollars domestically in its initial run, and net another $57 million on its subsequent rereleases (source). Fans of the fantasy adventure flick didn't just see it once; they saw it two, three, even dozens of times.

Critics were conflicted about the Jedi's return. Some found the film too whimsical after the dark, brooding attitude of its predecessor, The Empire Strikes Back. Others dug the movie's relaxed humor and the horde of new characters and creatures Jedi introduced to the Star Wars universe. "The film has a tone of its own," Roger Ebert wrote in his review. "If Star Wars was a brash space opera and The Empire Strikes Back was a visual feast, Return of the Jedi is a riot of character invention" (source).

Audiences weren't just reunited with their old pals Luke (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher); they were introduced to fantastic new beasts like the sarlacc… and they finally got a good—albeit nasty—look at Jabba the Hutt and Emperor Palpatine.

Ultimately, Return of the Jedi would go on to be nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Art Direction, Best Original Score, Best Sound, and Best Sound editing. While the movie didn't snag any of those statuettes, it did take home a special award for its dazzling visual effects, created by Industrial Light and Magic.

Return of the Jedi delivers an epic conclusion to the original Star Wars trilogy. Flitting between rousing space adventure and intense character study, Return of the Jedi was also a watershed moment in pop culture. "It's just amazing," said Jedi's director Richard Marquand, "a huge, huge, huge movie. I can't think of anything quite like it" (source).

Honestly, we can't either. 

When one movie gives us a rancor monster, Ewoks, some seriously Freudian daddy issues, more explosions than we can count, a big ol' sibling identity reveal, a super-intelligent space squid named Admiral Akbar, and a hall pass to an entire galaxy far, far away… well, how much bigger can it get?

Fasten your Millennium Falcon-issued safety belts: we're going to take you to an era a that existed a long, long time ago in a galaxy that at least seems far, far away.

That's right: America in 1983.

Here's what your life may very well have looked like on May 24th, 1983. You would've borrowed a lawn chair from your parents, loaded your backpack full of Pac-Man Cereal, slipped into your comfiest pair of parachute pants, coated your hair with a few layers of Aqua Net, hopped into your friend's rad Mazda RX-7, and grabbed some sidewalk in front of your local movie theater.

Then you would have camped out overnight, in order to have gotten in to one of the first showings of Return of the Jedi, which hit the theaters (and the cinematic landscape) with the force of a Death Star beam on May 25th.

Basically, Return of the Jedi permeated pop culture in a way that no movie had ever done before. It wasn't the first summer blockbuster, but it was the first mega blockbuster: "Jedi's release is noteworthy as it was the first Star Wars movie to get a wide release, at least by 1980s standards […]" explains journalist Michael Coate. "Jedi launched on just over 1,000 screens in about 800 theaters. In comparison, the opening weekend of the original Star Wars was in a mere 43 theaters" (source).

In other words, the previous two installments in the Star Wars saga—each a blockbuster in its own right—started small and took their time to spread across the country. If you lived in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, for example, you had to wait for Star Wars to reach you, while silently cursing your cousins in Chicago.

Return of the Jedi, on the other hand, swooped into theaters nationwide like an X-wing fighter, allowing the entire country to share the adventures of Luke Skywalker en masse. Return of the Jedi didn't just change the way film studios distribute their flicks. It redefined the way we experience movies, and united pop culture like never before.

Community: it's the Jedi way.