I was watching Return of the Jedi this morning. I never realized this before, but the entire first act is wholly unbelieveable. Luke’s brilliant plan to rescue Han Solo is to have every single one of his friends, with the exception of Lando, in the custody of Jabba the Hutt. The truly tasteless part of his plan is that he knows that Leia is his sister, and armed with that knowledge he has no problem maneuvering her into position as Jabba’s designated slave girl.
At the start of Jedi only Han Solo is in Jabba’s custody. Now that all of his friends are locked up, Luke can finally make his grand entrance. The plan, if you can call it that, calls for Luke to walk right up into the Hutt’s palace unarmed. Then, he stands on the trap door which will plunge him into the pit with the rancor. This is still part of the plan, because killing the rancor is what is going to inspire Jabba to take Luke and all his friends to the Sarlacc pit where R2 is going to toss Luke a lightsaber and he’s finally going to get to work.
As viewers, we’re supposed to just accept all this on it’s face. Nevermind the fact that Luke could have probably pulled off a nearly identical feat by sending R2 to Jabba alone. Then, he could show up, kill the rancor, have R2 toss him a lightsaber, and the two of them escape with Han after killing Jabba and his whole gang. Of course, the beauty of my plan is that Luke isn’t whoring out his sister to a giant slug or putting any more of his friends in harms way than are absolutely necessary.
There is only one acceptable reason for George Lucas and company to develop this unforgiveably complicated series of events into the first act. It’s probably the reason that I haven’t questioned the whole sequence until this morning. That reason can be summed up in four words. “Carrie Fisher gold bikini.”
Update: Luke didn’t actually know that Leia was his sister until after he returned to Dagobah.
