It's All Alright In The End
So, once Luke escapes from the Rancor (which again was a lucky escape), he's captured, just like the rest of his friends. Here, after their series of balls ups and the reveal that they have all been working together to save Han Solo they are sentenced to death in the Sarlac Pit. Being pushed towards the giant mouth in the sand, Luke signals R2-D2 to prepare his lightsaber and now the whole plan goes from vaguely working to making almost no sense at all. Despite the knowing nods between allies, nothing about how these events have played out could have been planned to fall into place like this. There's no way Luke always thought the plan was doomed and they'd end up here? Had he had a force vision or something and if so, why did he not change the terrible plan? Lando's undercover work in all this proves to be pointless. The droids are literally there to give Luke his lightsaber ,the same lightsaber Luke could have carried himself anyway. Leia gets to kill Jabba but really she got hereself into this situation anyway and even though the endgame of saving Han Solo is achieved, it's just the messiest way ever of getting there. For pure entertainment the opening action packed scenes of Return of the Jedi are just classic moments in the Star Wars Saga. They are full of super cool moments with Luke, Leia, tortured droids, Han coming out of carbonite, swooshing lightsabers and 'point it at the deck' explosions. However, trying to see logic in this plan is fruitless. If Luke planned the whole thing, there were too many moves and variables for it to be a plan that would ever work and for the sake of saving Han Solo put too many others at risk. If Lando was working alone initially, he seemed to have had long enough and as much opportunity to get Han out of Carbonite as Leia managed to do in one night. If Leia worked alone with Chewie, her plan was doomed from the start because even if she'd saved Han, they still would have had to have got Chewie out of Jabba's palace too. Countering all of this is the deleted scenes from this opening act of Return of the Jedi which seems to imply all involved (other than maybe Lando) had the opportunity to talk things through before they went in, given that all their starships were parked up together on Tatooine. This makes it seem like all of the events listed above were planned, making it even more ridiculous. So the Han Solo rescue proves to be pure enjoyable entertainment but with a whole lot of bad planning and contradictions in terms of decisions made by its players. You could (at a stretch) write it all off as a Jedi Knight trying to peacefully fix a situation but in hindsight, a gamorrean guard died needlessly in a rancor pit, pretty much everyone to do with Jabba the Hutt got blown up by the same Jedi who initially took a peaceful approach and Boba Fett got taken out in possibly the lamest way that any great villain could, and with a girly scream to boot. Return of the Jedi is no less great because of all this and it goes to show that it isn't always logic that makes for a great movie, but really this rescue is a botched job at best. So is this the worst rescue attempt of all time? Over to you guys.