I finally relented this weekend and watched 2 of my favorites, not only in the Star Wars saga but in all film: The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I've already documented the reasons for my hiatus from watching the films. Blueray and HD aside, suffice it to say I have them committed to the highest-rez format in my laser sharp melon, equipped with the finest in mental holography. But still...I had to go back and have a go.

When I watched ESB for the first time in months, lo and behold I did catch a detail that somehow my mental player missed earmarking. See, going back to A New Hope, you can see something that it shares with ESB, that being stark death imagery. No, strike that, it's not that subtle. It's just moments of cinematic death.

In the unfolding early moments of ANH, we see Artoo and Threepio wading through the sand dunes after having crash-landed in one of Tantine IV's escape pods. The ever intrepid Threep is in a typical lament about their current state of Doom. Once they split up, the situation becomes even more dire. And then in one of the most memorable, bizarre and wonderfully sci-fi-strange moments, we see a downtrodden protocol droid literally at death's door, walking next to the bleached skeletal remains of a Krayt Dragon as the sun beats down on their shared galactic graveyard.

It doesn't get any clearer than that. The George is not employing some clever metaphor here, he's just stating it matter of factly - It's a Hard Universe. Some beings, even the ones that belong, just don't make it.

Making the jump to the next film, we find another great moment of sci-fantasy: Luke strung up in the Wampa's cave while his host munches noisily on his former mount. In what I have always felt was a visual mnemonic cue, the shot opens and pans along the walls of the cave, and then finds there encrusted in ice, in a completely opposite environment, a skeletal spine half buried in a frozen drift, and an apparent miniature of the great Krayt Dragon of Tatooine. Certainly that's not what it actually is - it's the backbone of some hapless indigenous creature, most likely another wayward Taun-Taun.

Still, the image is no analogy. It is a clear statement reminding us again that Luke and his friends reside in an unforgiving realm in which death claims the careless and the careful. Sun-baked desert or ice-packed plain, the Reaper Awaits..

So I started thinking to myself - "This must be part of the OT formula. There must be further Death imagery in the opening moments of Return of the Jedi."

Why? Because the George is nothing if not consistent. Yellow lettering inexplicably floating through space. A camera pan in each opening shot of the three movies. A Star Destroyer at the end of every pan. Each movie holds multiple repeated images in cyclical stanzas, all part of the larger visual poem.

So I poured over the opening scenes in ROTJ and I found....nothing. No skeletal remains. No ex-Krayt Dragons, no demised Taun-Tauns...nothing.

A bad theory? Probably. But then again, like all journeys there are myriad forks in the road, and this presented no less than 3 paths:

1) I was wayyy off, and reaching. Ok, believable, I'll give you that.

2) There is an actual absence of Death imagery, and that's on purpose. This is, after all, the film in which Good triumphs and Evil is defeated.

3) Or, it's there, it's just not as obvious.

Now, we all know about number 1. But let's face it - it's me. I'm just incapable of error. I'm the HAL 9000 of meese.

So that leaves 2 and 3. I like the second idea - that the absence of Death imagery is a foreshadowing of the coming victory and the redemption of Anakin. But it's somehow flat. It's unlikely something so esoteric is is going to be used to establish the foundation of the opening shot. The George might be clever, but you can't accuse him of being too clever, meaning this is still essentially an homage to the afternoon cliff-hanger matinee of his youth. He's not using Death imagery to make some existential point. He's using it to scare you, to heighten the drama, and to make you think maybe, just maybe, someone's about to Eat the Proverbial It.

Ipso Facto Ergo Magna Carta e Pluribus Unum, It's 3. There is Death imagery in ROTJ in the opening moments. Where you ask?

In 1983, when we had no clue what was coming next in the Saga, the opening shot of Return of the Jedi offered yet another tantalizing bit of sci-fi weirdness. As it pans down to the destination of the Star Destroyer sliding by overhead, we saw something we couldn't quite understand.

A Death Star? But it was destroyed! And then our eyes deceived us further, because this was not a complete Death Star. It looked as if, believe it or not, it had been blown to pieces.

Yes, it's the truth. When I and my friends all went to go see Return of the Jedi for the first time, for the briefest moment we all shared the same misconception - this was the blown out hulk of the first Death Star. Because in that moment, there was no other apparent explanation. There was no other Death Star, not that we knew of.

But as the shot continued to resolve, it reluctantly gave up it's mind-blowing conclusion - this was no shattered heap. This was a second Death Star under construction! But after the movie, in those heated downloads of impressions and overuse of 80's terminology like "awesome" and "radical", we all confessed the same confusion. And in the days that followed, I learned that many others shared the exact same mistake - they all thought that opening shot was of the ..

what?..

Skeletal remains of the First Death Star. Yep. Maybe the George was too clever for us after all. In that briefest moment of confusion a sort of visual joke was embedded. He got us, and got us good. But it also served a secondary but important reminder: It's a Hard Universe, and sometimes not even the mighty Empire escapes unscathed.

So there was my elusive 3rd use of Death Imagery - what appeared to be a the shattered wreck of the Death Star, but was in fact something new, a new Death Star lying in wait to dole out it's namesake. It was a station built for a single purpose: to deliver Fear, and Death. Again, no subtle imagery here. Death awaits....

And then, in classic George fashion, things were not as they seemed.

DM out