(1980)
Meanwhile, in the depths of space, Darth Vader plays a hunch and decides to go to Hoth. The Admiral of one of the Imperial Star Destroyers comes out of Hyperspace too close to Hoth, and the Rebels are alerted. As punishment Vader asphyxiates the Admiral, using the Force, from his own ship. This is really Darth Vader's movie. He's a superb villain. Whereas in the last movie he was really more of a henchman, his promotion has led to him fulfilling his true potential. He even gets his own theme music this time, which is every bit as great as the main Star Wars theme. Every time one of his officers makes a cock up, he kills him and promotes the guy next to him. With the Star Wars Trilogy being filmed in Great Britain, most of the Empire's officers are British. I have a theory that the glut of movies over the past few years with Brits as the villains is at least partially due to today's filmmakers being so influenced by Star Wars, to the extent that they believe Evil has an English Accent.
The Empire make a ground assault on the Rebel base, sporting some really cool vehicles called Walkers: huge tanks that walk on four legs. With the base evacuated, Princess Leia gets a ride in the Millenium Falcon with Han and Chewbacca. They narrowly escape capture when their hyperdrive packs in, fleeing to Cloud City, but followed by inept bounty hunter Boba Fett. Fett's too much of a big girl's blouse to do anything, though, and calls Vader. Vader's had a chat with the Emporer, who tells him that Luke is their new enemy, and should be turned to the Dark Side of the Force, or be destroyed. So, he decides to capture Luke's mates, and torture them to lure Luke to him. He cuts a deal with Cloud City's owner, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams, not Apollo Creed. Apparently).
Meanwhile, Luke has gone to Dagobah to find Yoda. He does manage to find the Jedi Master, landing his X-Wing in the swamp next to Yoda's hovel. He's clearly come down a bit from when he served on the Jedi Council. He's also lost a bit of dignity; when Luke first encounters him he appears to be senile, acting much more manically than usual. He later claims that this was a test to gauge Luke's patience. He comes up with loads of excuses not to train the Boy, but Obi-Wan Kenobi's disembodied voice chips in with his twopenneth and talks him round. But he's the last person to be dishing out advice about training people.
Yoda makes Luke run around a bit and levitate stuff, but then he gets images of Han and Leia being tortured, and decides to jet off in his X-Wing. Yoda and Kenobi advise against it, as they know that Vader will try to indoctrinate him. He goes anyway.
When he gets there Darth Vader has frozen Han Solo in carbonite to test the process before doing the same to Luke. They have a really cool duel, but the kid's no match for the Sith Lord, and gets his arse kicked. Before long he's been backed out onto a really narrow ledge over a massive chasmous drop that has for some reason been built in the middle of Cloud City. Once there he disarms Luke by cutting his hand off (maybe they should have thought to put guards on their lightsabres). Then he tells Luke... well, I won't tell you, in case you haven't seen it.
Anyway, Luke's so distraught he falls off the little ledge and into a tunnel. A trapdoor leaves him dangling off an ariel. Despite Obi-Wan Kenobi categorically telling that he could not help Luke if he chose to go and face Vader, the Boy's still bleating his name while he hangs there. He manages to summon Leia instead, who is escaping in the Millenium Falcon with Lando (who turned out to be a good guy), Chewbacca and the droids.
C-3PO is particularly annoying in this movie, almost spoiling several action sequences with his camp whining. Lucky he wasn't there during Luke and Vader's duel really. Of course then Vader might have recognised him as the droid he built when he was a kid. What are the odds of that Golden Rod?