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Feeling the weight of victory
Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi
Writers: Lawrence Kasdan & George Lucas
Director: Richard Marquand
In Star Wars, it’s always been clear that the Rebels were certainly “rag tag.” The heroes usually are the underdogs in high space fantasy. However, go with me here, for several decades of Star Wars viewing you got a sense that it was easy for the Rebels. Not, you know, the actually defeating the Empire part, but easy in the sense of a group of like-minded souls got together to fight the villains. The heroes were just always the heroes. Ready to take on the Empire. But, as we saw with Cassian Andor and his past, in the modern era of Star Wars, the leaders of the Rebellion had been building their “team” for years. Pulling together support and supplies from all parts of the galaxy. Cobbling together separate and often decidedly independent cells of resistors and creating the Rebel Alliance. It was tough work. Tiring work. In-fighting and debates about how to go about rebelling were just as tasking as the actual rebelling.
The victory over Yavin 4 and the miraculous destruction of the first Death Star was certainly a watershed moment for the Rebellion. It struck a blow to the Empire for sure, but everything the Rebels had been preparing for, fighting for, and, above all, dying for was building toward the Battle of Endor. The Alliance had the Emperor and his regime on the chopping block, and this was the last chance to topple an Empire.
It wasn’t looking good, though. Attacking on two fronts, the Rebels were scattered amongst the trees on the floor of the forest moon and they were caught in a trap in the stars above. The Emperor, it would seem, had been expecting this. It was looking bleak. Then a Rebel hero emerged. A-wing pilot Arvel Crynyd was shot down by the enemy but used his last moments alive to crash into the bridge of the Super Star Destroyer Executor. The mighty ship, the centerpiece of the Imperial Navy, crashed into the surface of the Second Death Star and the tide of the battle was turned. At that moment, Admiral Gial Ackbar sighed in his seat aboard the bridge of his ship Home One. It was the sigh heard around the Rebel Alliance.
Admiral Ackbar is a beloved character in Star Wars for many reasons. First appearing in 1983’s Return of the Jedi as one of the new leaders of the aforementioned rag tag Alliance, he immediately had your attention because he was a walking, talking calamari. No longer just an appetizer at a fancy Earthly dinner, Ackbar was barking orders and leading the space battle from a command chair that seemed to float through the ship’s bridge. It was both wonderfully bizarre and perfectly normal for Star Wars. After all, we’d been rooting for a “walking carpet” named Chewbacca for years.
Then Ackbar’s famous words became legendary. Early on in the battle he blurted out, “It’s a trap.” As pop culture went from a quaint part of your childhood to a big business, Ackbar yelling “It’s a trap” became a shared inside joke, a reference that transcended the IP it originated from, and a calling card for the character. Odd because as someone who first heard that phrase in the theater during the film’s original run, it never stood out as anything special. It just seemed like an astute observation that the situation just got worst for our heroes. Which, well, it did.
This was a trap. The Emperor had been pulling the Rebel Alliance into this end game move and he had his figurative foot on our heroes’ throats. The panic in Ackbar’s “It’s a trap” moment, and the frustration Lando Calrissian exhibits at the idea of retreating seconds later, weren’t about this battle. It was about all the previous battles. All the lives lost to this point. It was about the weight of all the lives taken to that point. It was panic, frustration, and fear that a movement that had really begun over twenty years earlier when the Supreme Chancellor proclaimed himself Emperor was about to come to a destructive end.
But the heroes kept fighting and the tide started to turn. The Ewoks went from cuddly friends to invaluable allies. Luke Skywalker threw down his lightsaber and this began the sequence of events that would lead to his father’s redemption and the Emperor’s demise. The shield generator around the Death Star was finally down. Lando, Nien Nunb, Wedge Antilles and the remaining Rebel fighter ships went into the second Death Star in an effort to make the fatal blow. But none of that meant victory was assured. The ships needed more time and realized they needed to take down the Executor. As mentioned previously, taken down it was. And that was when Ackbar sighed.
Watching this now, you realize that much like the first time you heard Ackbar bark about the Emperor’s trap, this sigh now carries more significance and takes on additional meaning. While his command crew cheers and the Super Star Destroyer falls toward the surface of the Death Star to meet its fiery end, Ackbar sighs and slumps back in his chair. He is not just relieved. He is tired, having been fighting for years. He realizes how close they came to losing and what that would have meant. And he wonders what the cost of it all will be. This sigh is THE emotional core of the Rebellion’s last stand against the Empire. In the movies, the actual battle still needs to be won (moments later it is), but, as you see this now, you connect to Ackbar in this moment on a different level. We all want that moment when you lose the figurative weight you have been carrying and, despite all the trials, doubt, and pain, it was worth it. You want to experience that sigh of victory.