uniforms

There are a number of things I don’t like about Return of the Jedi. Here is one of them.

In Star Wars – that is, A New Hope – all the Rebel pilots wore the same orange flight suits, no matter whether they flew X-Wings or Y-Wings. The same orange flight suits returned in The Empires Strikes Back, albeit in winterized form. This makes sense for three reasons.

First, orange is the most visible color to the human eye. That’s why workmen wear orange vests, and why traffic cones are orange. Think of your own examples; it’ll be fun. If a pilot were floating in space, or lost in the snowfields of Hoth, orange would be the color of choice for making them stand out.

Second, the Rebels are strapped for cash. Although this is mainly discussed in the Expanded Universe materials, the sense of it comes across in the first two movies. The Rebels simply can’t afford too many different uniforms, and would make as much use as possible out of whatever they could scrounge up.

Third, it’s a uniform. As in, military uniform. They’re all supposed to look the same.

In Return of the Jedi, X-Wing pilots still wear the orange flight suits, but now Y-Wing pilots wear a light blue, A-Wing pilots wear a dark greenish gray, and B-Wing pilots wear a different shade of gray. There are also a few pilots in red flight suits, though I can’t remember what ships they flew (Lando’s co-pilot aboard the Millennium Falcon wears one, for example).

Somehow, the Rebels came into some money, and decided that, instead of spending it on something useful like weapons, fuel, or more starships, they’d coordinate.

What bugs me most about this is that the decision to include different uniforms was based solely on marketing considerations. ANH and TESB made an enormous amount of movie at the box office, but they made even more from the merchandising. Just the toy lines brought in more than the ticket sales. This did not go unnoticed by George Lucas, who apparently wrote ROTJ with merchandising in mind from the start (*cough*Ewoks*cough*).

So if all the Rebel pilots wore one logically orange flight suit, that’s one action figure sale. But if they wear five different flight suits, that five action figure sales. You do the math. Go on; I’ll wait.

The irony is that the merchandising-first mentality that went into putting ROTJ together may have been its undoing. The toy lines for ANH and TESB went through multiple release phases – I know; I bought them all – whereas the one for ROTJ barely lasted one. I don’t think I even bought all the action figures for that movie, and I was an action figure junkie.

So why did Lucas get it right the first two times, and get it so wrong the third. It is almost like there were two Lucases. The first one had an eye for background detail, understanding that it was the little things that made the movie come alive; he was then replaced by an evil clone, who directed the final film in the trilogy (and later made the prequels, which were all about evil clones – coincidence?).

A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back had a vitality that ensured they would live in the mind even after the credits rolled. Return of the Jedi died on the screen. Too many uniforms weren’t the cause, but they were one of the symptoms.

TAGS: Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Geek stuff