THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Best sequel of all time? Maybe. Star Wars may hold the title of being the most successful of the trilogy, and it's certainly the most famous one, but both serious fans of the trilogy and serious fans of cinema in general alike view The Empire Strikes Back as the best. It's the darkest of the three films, though that's not why it's the best (though that's always the first thing you hear, isn't it? "It's the best, 'cuz it's the darkest!" As if anything was ever the best because it was the darkest.). No, this one is the best because it's the most brimming with imagination, offers the most interesting angles on the characters, the best action, the coolest sets, the smartest dialogue, the best effects, and the most engrossing story. And if you hated C-3P0 before (I didn't, I always thought he was hilarious), well, he spends most of his screen time here dismembered. Star Wars is cool; The Empire Strikes Back is WAY cool. The Rebel Alliance has set up base on the unforgiving ice world of Hoth. I love Star Wars planets, everything's so ecologically high-concept: you've got an ice planet, a desert planet, a swamp planet, a jungle planet, a gas planet, a forest planet, and later on in the prequels, an all-city planet...Naboo is the first planet in this series with a complex ecosystem that doesn't get blown up! They may have gotten in a great victory against the Empire, but they can't afford to relax, and life is hard for them from minute to minute. The cold outside is enough to kill you, things keep breaking down and needing repair inside, and they have to ride Tauntauns, which mysteriously run like they have no center of gravity. One example of how things aren't easy for them comes early, when Luke Skywalker is struck down by a huge, hairy creature out in the snow and dragged back to its lair to be eaten. Back at the base, the first real sparks between Han and Leia are given off, as Han resigns his commission to pay off Jabba the Hutt. (presumably, the Alliance cannot afford to give/lend Han the money directly and he needs time to raise it himself) Leia is not happy to see him go, but Han is happy that she's not happy, because it means she probably likes him as much as he likes her. The romance between them throughout the film works fairly well, more in the Julia Roberts-ish comic moments than in the more, uh, "romantic" ones. But Han gets word that Luke has gone missing, and risks his life by riding out into the blizzard on a Tauntaun to find and rescue him. Faith in your friends is a central theme of this and Return Of The Jedi (less so in the first film, when everybody was still meeting each other), and Luke obviously has good reason to have faith in Han. By the end of the film, the favor will have been returned, if a little too late. The scene in the creature's cave serves a few functions, not the least of which is (rumor has it) to explain away some facial scarring that Mark Hamill endured in the years between the two films. But mostly, it wastes little time in demonstrating what Luke has been learning on his own about the Force when he uses it to retrieve his lightsaber, half-buried in the snow several feet out of reach. It's religious rush, the kind that should've been present in Excalibur a year later when Arthur drew the sword out of the stone (great scene anyway, but it just didn't have that magic for that moment). Luke dashes out into the snow to try to get back to the base through the blizzard, though ironically, he would have been safer to kill the creature (instead of just cutting off its arm, the second of FOUR times this happens in this series) and stay in the cave until the storm passes. Just in time for that - whether it's because of Luke's semi-conscious state making him more receptive to messages from the dead, or because this is the first time he really uses the Force on his own without guidance – the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi returns and tells him a few things he's lucky to remember later. Obi-Wan tells Luke that he must go to the Dagobah system and learn the ways of the Jedi from Yoda. (his "Talking to himself" in the scene where Han stuffs him inside a dead Tauntaun [yuck!] is usually seen as delirium, but could also be seen as him using his last gasps of strength to tell Han things which he may need to be reminded of later due to blacking out and memory loss) Han gets Luke back to the base, but not without the cost of another dead Tauntaun and a night camping out in the unlivable cold. Luke is fixed up nicely, and a funny scene follows which sort of places Luke as the third wheel in a love triangle. Considering the revelation of Luke and Leia's relationship in the third film, their kiss here feels kind of, uh, icky, but the "triangle" angle is dropped quickly, and it seemed at the time, a little unjustly. Anyone who thought that Luke and Leia might have made a good couple won't have their hopes fulfilled here; later in the film while Han's out there romancing the girl, Luke spends most of that time up to his neck in mud. But the relief is short-lived; the Empire has dispatched thousands of probe droids to find the location of the Rebel base and thus Skywalker, and one of them has landed on Hoth, which snaps some pics of their shield generator, beams it back to the fleet, and looks around for further evidence. The droid is destroyed, but too late; the Empire has found them. It is only at this point in the film when the script lets us know just what state the Empire is in after the destruction of the Death Star; as it turns out, it's in perfectly good shape. If anything, it's doing better than ever. We see several Star Destroyers in the Imperial fleet milling about in space, accompanied by John Williams' wonderfully evil "Imperial March", and we even get one brief lesson about how big these ships are, as one slowly passes over the camera and we realize the huge thing we're seeing isn't the whole of the ship, but just its relatively small command turret. Then a huge shadow slowly passes over the other ships, and from a much longer angle, we see what's causing it; an even more fearsome Super Star Destroyer, much larger than the other ships. Quite a clever method of showing us just how big the SSD is, without merely repeating the technique used in the first film. Darth Vader is in command of that ship, and according to the opening "crawl", he is "obsessed" with finding Luke Skywalker. At this point, we can only assume it's for revenge; Skywalker must surely have achieved some degree of fame for having blown up the Death Star, and the Alliance spin doctors must have made something of an underground celebrity out of him. Vader may be additionally curious due to the strength of the Force that he felt in Skywalker in that battle, but at this point, it still looks like revenge. Of course, by the end of the trilogy it's clear that that wasn't his motivation at all. In fact, throughout this entire film, it's clear that Vader absolutely won't kill Luke, or even RISK killing Luke. He might tell the Emperor "He will join us or die", but it seems like he's just telling his boss what he wants to hear. Despite the protestations of an uppity Admiral Ozzel (Michael Sheard), Vader sees the transmission from the probe droid and instantly concludes that he has found the Rebels, with complete certainty. Whether this is because of some sort of Force insight, or because he had previous evidence suggesting Hoth or a planet like it, is unclear, but helps forge some of Vader's evil mystique. Ozzel, however, brings the fleet out of lightspeed too close to the Hoth system, alerting the Rebels to the coming attack and allowing them time to prepare; Vader demonstrates both his skills in the Force and his lack of patience by choking Ozzel to death. This is significant in that it's not only a Dark Side use of the Force, but we actually see the Force used as a murder weapon. This is an ability hinted at before, but but we hadn't seen it used like this, as Vader chokes Ozzel to death while Ozzel is not in the same room, and maybe not even on the same ship. Standing at Ozzel's side, Captain Piett (Kenneth Colley) is promoted to Admiral and reminded of the consequences of failure. The resulting attack on the base is exciting and even a little frightening at times; there are moments when we think that the Rebels might easily get away, or pull some sort of last-minute trick to secure another victory, but this script knows how to tell us that the fight's over before the killing blow lands. Here, it would be a moment when a snowspeeder, flying very quickly in front of a huge, lumbering Imperial Walker, is picked off handily by General Veers (Julian Glover); only moments later, Veers destroys the shield generator, allowing the stormtroopers to take the base. Leia, Han, Chewbacca and C-3P0 escape the planet in the Millennium Falcon (whose hyperdrive doesn't work), while Luke, out piloting one of the snowspeeders, makes his way back and takes off with R2-D2 in his X-Wing to exactly where Kenobi told him to go. There is talk of an Alliance "rendezvous" which we don't see until the end of the movie, but for most of this film, we don't know how much of a Rebel Alliance there is left. The Millennium Falcon spends the middle act of the film dodging the Imperials in an asteroid field ("I know" is used to funnier effect here than it would be later in the film). Having Han Solo spend so much of the film with C-3P0 is an inspired twist, with their clashing personalities providing much of this movie's humor. The special effects are superb, and Vader's continued efforts to capture the ship are frightening in their singular determination. "Asteroids do not concern me, Admiral...that ship does," he says, and he means it, sending in even the largest of the Navy's ships to be pulverized in the asteroid field in their search. This is a chilling scene for more reasons than that, since we get a glimpse of Vader from behind without his helmet on, showing his head to be bald, pale, and badly scarred. This is something seen by Admiral Piett, who, prudent as ever, admirably swallows whatever emotion he must've been feeling at having seen that and delivers his unpleasant news to Vader. Later, when Vader gets a transmission from the Emperor, he orders his own ship to move away from the asteroid field to send a clear transmission, while the rest of the fleet gets the crap pounded out of it. In the asteroid field, our heroes find some shelter and some time to hide from the Imperials while further pursuing the romantic sparks between Han and Leia. Again, it's a mostly comic romance, with their first kiss led up to by a pretty funny exchange about whether or not Leia likes scoundrels or "nice men". Vader's holographic communication with the Emperor is fascinating to behold. It seemed odd that in his holographic communication with Veers earlier, the hologram of himself was tiny next to the real body of Veers, but here, it makes sense that his real body is dwarfed by the giant hologram of the Emperor. The Emperor (Clive Revill) is cowled in a black robe, and speaks with a calm measuredness that the next actor to play him would not repeat. The relationship of Vader to the Emperor is unclear until this scene, where Vader gets on one knee and says "What is thy bidding, my Master?" "My Master"? DARTH VADER is calling somebody "My Master"? That alone brings a whole new dimension to the character. The Emperor warns Vader of a "grave disturbance in the Force", which is, of course, Luke, who the Emperor refers to as "the son of Skywalker". I like how the script manages to keep Vader's climactic revelation to Luke as being fairly unguessable; we'd already been told the fate of Luke's father by Obi-Wan and are assuming it to be true, and certainly, the way the Emperor talks about Skywalker in the third person hints away from it even further. For that matter, Luke's parentage isn't much brought up in this movie until then; Yoda makes a couple of comments, but it's all still well within the scope of what Obi-Wan had said. This scene unfolds further in more interesting ways. When the Emperor names their new enemy, Vader's first reaction is "He's just a boy." Vader's been sending half the Imperial Navy into an asteroid field in an attempt to capture bait for Skywalker, and suddenly he's "just a boy"? Vader has his own plans for Luke; Vader may be the Emperor's slave, but he's not incapable of planning for an attempt to break free of that bondage. He then tells the Emperor that "he will join us or die", but later events strongly suggest that Vader would not kill Luke under any circumstances. He's lying to the Emperor, telling him what he wants to hear. It sounds like he's obeying his command, but in fact, he's defying the Emperor for the first time, even though the Emperor doesn't know it yet, and neither, really, do we. Until now, Vader did what the Emperor told him to do, but was otherwise more or less given free reign. Meanwhile, Luke flies to - and crashes on - the swamp planet of Dagobah to learn from the Jedi Master Yoda. The scenes on Dagobah are the only times that the movie stops to take a breath, and as such, I don't think they're quite up to the standard held up by the rest of the film. Yoda is an interesting and likeable character once we get to know him, but at first, he presents himself as some sort of obnoxious gremlin; whether it's because he's just overwhelmed at seeing a sentient being for the first time in a generation, or because he was testing Luke's patience, is hard to say, though the Dagobah scenes get a lot more interesting once his identity is made clear. Yoda hid on the swamp planet to avoid detection by the Empire in their efforts to exterminate the Jedi, and it's such a dismal environment (and he's there completely without any apparent sort of technology at all, for communication, transport, or anything) I can't imagine having to live there, alone, for 20 or 30 years. Surely, it's all but a blink of the eye to Yoda, who's some 900 years old, but it seems that to him, this is a homey and pleasant (if lonely) environment. The Force is created by life, so what better place for Yoda to live than on a planet so crawling with it? Luke mentions at one point that the planet seems familiar; might he have spent some time on Dagobah as a young child, before being placed into the custody of Owen and Beru? Possibly. Or, another possibility: Yoda at one point says that he has watched Luke for all of his life. To watch Luke all the way from another planet, that's quite some feat of the Force; perhaps, accidentally or otherwise, there was some unconscious two-way communication there? Just a thought. Yoda teaches Luke of the ways of the Force; how to lift objects with his mind such as how to perform astounding gymnastic feats. It feels significant (though it isn't, really) that Yoda's training does not seem to include any work with the lightsaber. Yoda in fact does not appear to have one of his own, and neither does the Emperor (as revealed in the next film), suggesting that once you get powerful enough in the Force, a lightsaber is not particularly useful. Yoda also talks about the nature of the Force; it seems odd that the Force would have a political slant to it (the Light Side, vs. the Dark Side) but some words from Yoda suggest that the Dark Side has less to do with out-and-out evil than it does with power without enough discipline acquired while attaining it to use that power wisely. The Dagobah scenes are heavy on the mystical vibe, and movies have historically done a pretty poor job of really bringing that across. The Empire Strikes Back does a better job than most, but still, it's kind of hard to swallow all this even if you are heavily into the movie. It's hard enough doing this with religions and spiritual beliefs that actually exist; the Force is an idea largely derived from existing beliefs but not really reflecting them, and I guess I couldn't blame anybody who rolls their eyes throughout these scenes. There's also the additional problem that a sort of depressive pall hangs over these scenes; not just because of the surroundings, but because Luke is essentially stranded on a remote planet while nobody else knows he's there (except possibly Han, as I'd previously suggested). Luke is given two tests on Dagobah, and he fails them both. First he goes into a tree described as a place of great evil, which contains only what he takes with him. He will not need his weapons, he's told, but he takes them anyway, which is why what unfolds in there unfolds as it does. He meets an imaginary, hallucinogenic Darth Vader, does battle with him, and decapitates him - only to find his own face under the mask. Dimestore symbolic imagery, to be sure, but it could mean any number of things; for example, Yoda mentions once how much anger is in Luke, and since he'd failed his first test, maybe the test is reminding him of where he's going if he stays on this path. The second test involves raising his sunken X-Wing from the depths of the swamp; he fails, but Yoda succeeds, as a demonstration. Meanwhile, outside of that asteroid field, Vader has hired a selection of bounty hunters to capture the Millennium Falcon and its crew. After all, they're already looking for Han due to the price on his head from Jabba the Hutt. This introduces Boba Fett, unless you watched the oft-lamented Star Wars Holiday Special which introduced him earlier. (I still haven't seen it.) The Navy seems to have locked on to the Falcon again, but then they lose them again, for which another officer pays the ultimate price thanks to Vader (who isn't above throwing around the occasional one-liner). In actuality, the Falcon is stuck to the back of one of the Star Destroyers in a spot where it can't be detected, and it releases when the fleet dumps their garbage to go to warp. They look at the star charts and find that the closest safe place they can go is the Bespin system, where Lando Calrissian, an old friend of Han's, is the head honcho. Following them, however, is Fett in his own ship (which presumably has a working hyperdrive and can get there a lot faster), and sets in motion a series of irreversible events. It is only at this point where Luke gets a vision of his friends being tortured at Vader's hands. The capture of the Falcon and its crew is inevitable now, and Luke is able to see as far in the future as is inevitable. The idea of "destiny" is one that's thrown around a lot in these movies, but it's meant less as a long-term guiding hand of fate, and more of a description of inevitabilities. Their ultimate fates are still clouded even to Yoda, who says that the future is always in motion. Indeed, after a point, it is; Luke can go to rescue them, or stay and complete his training, and by the time he makes his choice and the film's over, it's hard to say whether he did them any good or not. The fate of his friends is important to him, but Yoda (and the ghost of Obi-Wan) remind him that luring him is exactly the point of why they are suffering, and that Luke's capture is precisely the Emperor's plan. They strongly discourage him from going; his debt to Han and his strongly-held principles would be little comfort if he was truly not strong enough to face and defeat Vader. But Luke makes the very decision Obi-Wan has now twice feared he would, running headlong into insane danger to save his friends. It is only when it is obvious that there is no dissuading him from this course of action when Obi-Wan and Yoda give him their best advice on how to best get through this course of action. When Luke leaves, Obi-Wan laments, "That boy was our last hope", but Yoda tells him "No. There is another." Just what this means is of course a mystery at this point, and the ultimate answer in Return Of The Jedi was pretty underwhelming. The crew of the Falcon arrives at Cloud City, a great floating city above the clouds of the gas giant Bespin. Their first meeting with Lando (Billy Dee Williams) is adversarial but only comically so; it seems like Lando is just messing around with them and is genuinely glad to see his old friends again. Additionally, he keeps hitting on Leia, who distrusts him from minute one. It seems odd that after all this time in a lily-white galaxy, suddenly we have a black person. Even George Lucas is not immune to the pulls of earthly politics; he's been accused of racism both for the seemingly all-white Star Wars and, in recent (and more hypersensitive) times, even trying to project some sort of black stereotype on an animated, non-human character. I wouldn't quite say that suddenly having a black character is a BAD idea, but it does seem pretty transparent. At any rate, soon enough we find that Lando has betrayed his friends to Boba Fett and the Empire (not before 3P0 is shot to pieces), who arrived in Cloud City just before they did. Man, I'd love to be at THAT dinner! He's not without his good reasons for it; Cloud City is a massive enterprise that's worth protecting, even at great cost, and he obviously didn't LIKE betraying his friends, but people with lots to lose have to make some hard decisions. Vader's plan is to test the city's carbon-freezing system on Han Solo (after a little torture, to make sure Luke gets the "message" from the future), to ensure that it'll work on Luke without harming him. 3P0 gets semi-repaired by a distressed Chewbacca (Chewie doesn't seem like somebody who would actually like 3P0's company, but never mind) after retrieving his parts from the scrap-heap working Ughnauts (again, played by midgets). The droid spends most of the rest of the movie in pieces, strapped to Chewbacca's back. It's at this point in the movie where the blend of high fantasy and science fiction takes on a third genre-specific element: a sort of futuro-gothic horror. Han is lowered into the carbon-freeze chamber and is encased in a big brown block of stone, and once it's confirmed that the process works all right, he's given over to Boba Fett to give to Jabba the Hutt. (pretty sweet deal, collecting two bounties on one guy!) The carbon-freeze chamber is an awesome sight; lit mostly by red lights in the floor and stairways, constantly hissing vented gas, equipped with gigantic pincers. I liked how we're shown everything about the room and what should be watched out for (getting frozen, bad falls) in the scene with Han, setting up the later scene with Luke. Luke arrives at the city at about this time and Fett is instructed to lure Luke into the chamber. (Fett seems to have quite the worth ethic, continuing to take orders from Vader after their business is concluded, much like he would with Jabba the Hutt in the next film) Vader then changes his deal with Lando for the second time, with a frightening line instructing Leia and Chewbacca to be taken to his ship. Lando reconsiders his own side of the deal, having little left to lose (with Vader continually changing the deal, he no longer has any way to guarantee protection for Cloud City), manages to get the city guards to capture the troopers that are later taking him, Leia, Chewbacca and the droids to Vader's ship. At first Leia and Chewie don't trust him, but they also have little to lose, and they try rescuing Han from Fett. For the second time, the script lets us know unequivocally that the fight's over, as Fett's ship rises into the sky, leaving our heroes no chance of pursuit - and, indeed, more problems, as stormtroopers start pouring in from all over. But meanwhile, Luke's been lured to the carbon freezing chamber to do battle with Vader. Things bode ill from early on; despite Yoda's warning that the Force is never, ever to be used for attack, Luke strikes the first blow, leaving Vader on the defensive. He puts up a good fight, even amply demonstrating his impressively growing skills in the Force (great leaps, retrieving his lightsaber from a distance), enough to impress Vader, who continually goads Luke to give in to his darker feelings. Such utterances sound kind of cheesy until one remembers that they make perfect sense in a situation where Luke is fighting for his life; how easy can it be to not give in to hate and fear and anger in such a situation? When it becomes clear that Luke will not be simply lured into the freezing pit, Vader leads the battle into another chamber. This is actually a pretty intense scene; Luke thinks he's ready to fight Vader, but then Vader starts demonstrating these scary new powers. He's able to use the Force to rip pieces of equipment right off of the walls and hurl them at Luke; if he wanted to kill him he'd just choke him to death, but for right now, Vader just wants to beat the crap out of him. He comes awfully close though, flinging him out the window that looks out above a great chasm, while elsewhere in the city, Leia, Lando, Chewie and the droids (R2-D2 caught up with them) eventually make their way to the Falcon and take off in one piece, even though their hyperdrive still isn't working. But Luke hangs on to continue to fight, and fight they do, battling it out on a catwalk high above the abyss. (These Star Wars movies sure like to place their swordfights high above an abyss, don't they?) Vader is definitely on the offensive here, and one is given the impression that he's tired of beating around the bush and wants to bring this fight to its conclusion. The movie's third "the fight's over" moment comes when Vader corners Luke on a mechanism high above the chasm and manages to cut off his hand, sending hand and lightsaber alike hurtling down the pit. Vader has chosen this site for a reason; remember, Vader will not kill Luke under any circumstances, and even if he gives Luke the choice between joining him and death, there's still a way out even if he picks death. It is here where Vader's relationship with Luke is made explicit, and further suggestions are made toward Vader's relationship with the Emperor and the Force. I'm tellin' you, the line "I am your father!" is probably the most devastating thing I ever heard as a kid...y'know, until I remembered that it really was just a movie. THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME at the time (I was six, and wouldn't yet see Alien for another seven or eight years), sure, but I wasn't THAT far gone into Star Wars land. Now we know why Vader is so intent on not only capturing Luke but capturing Luke aside from the Emperor's interest in him. The Emperor wants Luke to be in his thrall as Vader is, but Vader wants to join forces with Luke to overthrow the Emperor. To what purpose? It's hard to say. Vader says "Together, we can end this destructive conflict", suggesting not sympathy for the Rebellion, but maybe sympathy for what it's fighting for. Or, maybe he's just trying with Luke what he did with the Emperor earlier, telling him what he wants to hear. Rule under Vader probably wouldn't be much prettier than rule under the Emperor, but anything's gotta be a step up from that. Vader's line "Come with me...it is the only way" not only refers to the only way off the platform, but his belief in the true nature of the Force. His plight becomes increasingly sympathetic throughout the trilogy, and this makes plain his own experience with the Force; it's all fun and games for Luke right now, but conversion to the Dark Side is the fate of anyone with any real interest in tapping the power of the Force. Luke, of course, chooses death, and falls down the shaft (much to Vader's disappointment, whose simple line "Bring my shuttle." is delivered with admirable frustration-filled restraint), but not to his death; he's sucked down a side passage and eventually dropped out the bottom of Cloud City where he hangs on for dear life to what appears to be an antenna or a weather vane, while his hand and lightsaber falls to oblivion into the gas giant below. Luke pleads for help from Ben, who keeps his previously-delivered word that he cannot interfere. So, he pleads for help from Leia who, far away in the Millennium Falcon, hears him, and convinces Lando and Chewie to fly back and retrieve him. They do so, but cannot escape because Vader's men have disabled the hyperdrive after Lando's had repaired it. During the ensuing chase, Vader even manages to work his way into Luke's head from afar, which is a further disturbing blow after the revelations in these scenes, that Luke cannot keep Vader out. This is the only time until it's confirmed by Yoda in the next film that Luke seems to accept that Vader is his father. Audiences at the time really didn't have known whether Vader was lying about this or not, and even Lucas himself had second thoughts about confirming it in the next film three years later. The moment when R2-D2 finally fixes the Falcon's hyperdrive is priceless, in that the first shot we see after it happens is not of Vader, who has lost his son for now, but of the man who has the most to lose, Admiral Piett, who's restraining his absolute, total terror of the moment with the same superhuman restraint he showed in Vader's personal chamber. Vader himself seems more sad than anything else; his son has demonstrated that he'd rather die than join the family business. He might be angry at having lost Luke, but he knows that at this point, Luke won't join him willingly, and for now, further pursuit (and punishment of his admirals) is pointless, and for the time being he gives up the chase. All of this is bleak and disturbing as hell, but this movie wouldn't feel right unless it had a glimmer of hope at the end. The crew of the Millennium Falcon meets up with the remains of the Rebel Alliance at the rendezvous point, apparently far outside of the galaxy itself, and it looks like the Alliance is doing just fine. They've got plenty of ships and they're pretty inventive about where they want to hide out, apparently. The heroes make their plans to rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt, and the film ends with them looking out hopefully at the fleet; they've lost the last few battles, but they're still in the fight. There is no FOURTH "the fight's over" moment. To this day, The Empire Strikes Back has had the smallest box-office take of the three films, probably because of its middle-act doesn't-start-it-doesn't-end-it nature in this series, and not because "it's the darkest". It couldn't pick up new fans who hadn't seen the first film (all nine of them), and by design, it was mostly here to make people hunger for the third movie anyway. Darth Vader continues to be the most interesting thing about the trilogy. After we meet the Emperor in the next film, and remember what Vader had said about Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first film, one realizes just what made Vader turn to the dark side: hatred. And once Kenobi was gone, so was the hate (perhaps even replaced by some respect, as suggested in the next film), leaving him free to consider other motivations in life, but still enslaved to the Dark Side. He must've been pissed when he found out his son had taken up with the Rebellion. Vader is still clearly the villain at the end of this movie, but he's a newly interesting and sympathetic one. His relationship with the Emperor is not one we would have imagined during Star Wars, and once we find out that he's Luke's father, our estimation of how evil he is has to drop a few notches when we realize that his motivation throughout the entire movie, freed from his hatred for Obi-Wan, is to protect his son. What Vader would have for Luke is perhaps little better than what the Emperor would, but Vader doesn't believe that. Of the new characters, Boba Fett seems to come across the best for most, which is no small feat for a guy whose entire role is basically to look cool in a costume and occasionally mutter something bad-assed. Fett is a not-uncommon favorite among Star Wars fans, for some reason. I mean, he looks bad-assed, and sounds bad-assed, but he hardly does anything bad-assed at all. A lot of people were crushed (yes, crushed) when they found out that Darth Maul had such a small role in The Phantom Menace, but his was a lot more bad-assed than Fett's could ever hope to be (and besides, as has been said before, it was their own damn fault for starting a cult around a character in a movie they hadn't even seen). Lando's presence feels a little forced just because of the racial angle. Personally, I like Admiral Piett the best; he seems like a good man risen to power in an evil empire, whose ideals he upholds (order above all) but whose methods he questions, but knows better than to do so vocally. He's not comfortable with the insane demands of his bosses, but carries them out because he knows the consequences of failing to do so. I can't help but think he'd actually be relieved to be captured and executed by the rebels, and it wouldn't bother him too much if nobody listened when he said he was only following orders. Yoda of course is the one we're meant to like the best, and he certainly comes in at least second on anybody's list. The cast aquits themselves nicely, Harrison Ford probably doing the best job here. Carrie Fisher also does well as Leia, though she was reportedly coked out of her gourd for most of the shoot, her frequent flubs being the cause of Han's second "I know" line. Mark Hamill starts out pretty wooden in the Hoth scenes, but does a good job on Dagobah and doesn't miss any marks until his outrageous reaction to Vader's revelation. Anthony Daniels is at his funniest as the droid, and Yoda, an extraordinarily lifelike puppet with the voice of Frank Oz, was probably the most real-seeming all-effects character the movies had ever seen up until that time, and he may well still hold that title. Actually, he looks a damn sight more lifelike here than he would in The Phantom Menace 19 years later. The Empire Strikes Back offers us a better look at the workings of the Imperial Navy. Once we find out that Vader now answers only to the Emperor himself who otherwise gives him free use of the Navy, the fleet will obey his commands unconditionally. The officers, which were largely played by American actors in the first film, are here played mostly by British ones. "British", for this kind of movie, has long been cinema shorthand for "pompous, super-evil villains", and they mostly fit the bill here. They're a nice mix of the arrogant (Ozzel), stock-evil (Veers, whose Walkers didn't have to shoot at foot soldiers which were running away), and again, some which just seem like they're scared to quit (Piett). It's still interesting to see what kind of light or shadow that the events of other movies in the series shed on this film. For example, when Chewbacca is struggling in the carbon freeze chamber, Boba Fett raises his blaster to shoot him. Now, Fett's a smart guy; he may have had to have been told "No disintegrations!", but it's a good bet that he only needs to be told once, and his blaster wasn't set that high. But still, Vader knocks down his weapon. Why? For one thing, the (still functioning) pieces of C-3P0 are strapped to his back. And we all know who built C-3P0, don't we? (don't really know WHY, but this is a nice little crossover moment) The Empire Strikes Back is not exactly a perfect movie, and for that matter, actually has a few more plot holes than the original. For one thing, how is it that the Millennium Falcon, without a working hyperdrive, manages to get from the Hoth system, to the Anoat system, to the Bespin system all in hours (Days? Weeks?)? I considered that maybe they're all planets in one system, but Han would've noticed Bespin before. The Imperial Walkers are fearsome to behold but, obviously, fatally flawed, and how exactly is it that Imperial troopers manage to enter the base before the shield is brought down? And since Vader won't even risk killing Luke, didn't it occur to him that Luke would probably have been piloting one of the snowspeeders in defense of the Rebel base? Speeders are shot down and stepped on routinely by the Walkers; I'd hate to be in Veers' shoes if he'd shot down and killed Luke. How did Han get his hands free when he was being frozen in carbonite? Why did Vader just have the Falcon's hyperdrive disabled; why didn't he just destroy the ship while it was on the landing platform? Just like with Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back was re-released in 1997 with some cleaned-up effects and some new ones too. Unfortunately, this film probably suffers the most from these changes. The scene in the cave with the ice creature is slightly expanded by inserting further footage of the creature into some shots, but the intensity of the scene is diminished by the fact that Luke and the creature are never onscreen at the same time. They never were onscreen together before either (except for an arm), but before, it was the suggestion of the creature's presence (far-off roars and wails) that made for tension in the scene. The Bespin scenes are fleshed out with effects to give a better appearance of a bustling metropolis, but other than that, most of the most obvious "improvements" were mistakes. Luke even screams on his way down the shaft; it's not like he tripped and fell, he jumped. What's he screaming about? Much of the dialogue in the film has been replaced with other takes, too, and usually less likeable ones. For example, "Bring my shuttle" has become some lengthier line (don't remember the exact words) that James Earl Jones sounds like he's trying to deliver "sexily", followed by a time-eating, pace-killing (and unnecessarily ceremonial) boarding of Vader's shuttle. These stormtroopers have time for this? "You're lucky you don't taste good" has become "You're lucky you got out of there". In any case, I hope you have your copy of the original cut of this film, because it's my understanding that they won't be available anymore (George, that sucks). I'm glad I've got mine. At least John Williams' awesome score (easily the best of the trilogy, if still very much a pastiche) doesn't appear to have been touched. Whether Star Wars is a great movie, may well be subject to debate. I've heard no such debates about The Empire Strikes Back - it out-Star Wars'ed Star Wars and still managed to better it on every front (if there are more holes in the plot, then the plot's more interesting overall anyway). Even the people who hated Star Wars liked this one. Lucas found his hands quite full in making this one, so he hired a director (Irvin Kershner, who hadn't really directed anything that hot at that point, and for that matter had most recently directed the horrible "psychic link" movie The Eyes Of Laura Mars), and managed to get Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan to write the script on spec. Lucas stayed on as an "Omnipotent Master" kind of producer, and the result was the best film in the series. Sure took a hell of a risk with Kershner, though. A man's got to know his limitations, and it's nice to see some people willing to acknowledge them...for a while. BACK TO THE E's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE