Movie Notes: Star Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

September 2nd, 2009

= 5 stars

Starring Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill
Directed by Irvin Kershner

Synopsis

After the destruction of the Death Star, Luke (Mark Hamill) journeys to Dagobah to receive training from Jedi master Yoda, while his friends Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) flee through asteroids and to a Cloud City, one step ahead of the evil Galactic Empire.

The Good

• After some hints at romance between Luke and Leia in Star Wars (that swing across the broken bridge), the relationship between the three primaries morphs into a love triangle, with Princess Leia declaring her love for Han Solo, and despite his obvious feelings toward her, he responds with the classic “I know.”
• Luke’s story progresses as he begins the path to becoming a Jedi Knight, under the tutelage of Jedi master Yoda. Luke sees some hints of the dark side and even discovers a horrible secret about his parenthood. It’s a deeply disturbing primal myth, that your greatest enemy turns out to be your father.
• A surprisingly large variety of environments: the frozen planet Hoth, swamp world Dagobah, the floating Cloud City of Bespin, asteroids, the interior of star destroyers, and even the belly of an alien “whale.”
• The creators seem hell-bent on out-doing Star Wars with sheer special effects spectacle, and largely succeed. The Imperial Walkers provide that same intense fear of confronting a much larger enemy as the small rebel fighters going up against the massive death star, and the intense but physically weak lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader is outdone with the dark, scarily lit lightsaber confrontation between Luke and Darth Vader.
• Some great running jokes: the lightspeed continually fails on the Millennium Falcon, C3P0 is constantly oblivious to human emotion, and Princess Leia repeats “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” when walking around the interior of an asteroid.
• Pretty much all the special effects were done “old school” style without CGI –stop motion animation, and good old puppets. Yoda, acted out by Frank Oz, creates a very real character despite saying corny Zen-master lines. You believe he lifts the X-Wing out of the swamp. Needless to say I prefer the puppet to the CGI overload and leaping Yoda of the prequels. There’s a real gravity to all the effects here that for some reason is still out of reach with the too perfect CGI.
• George Lucas’ messing with the original via updated effects is thankfully kept to a minimum. There’s some expansion of Cloud City to make it look more populous, and the Emperor is now Ian McDiarmid of the prequels. Besides that, the remastered color and clarity of the picture is beautiful.

The Bad

• Two huge surprises in this film involving Yoda and Darth Vader’s relationship to Luke, which are now completely spoiled by the prequels and the movies’ permeation of pop culture. Future generations won’t know the feeling we had as kids after seeing this movie and having our souls crushed.

Conclusion

At the time, this was a very dark, difficult movie, as it ends with the main characters separated, the rebel fleet on the run, the Empire with barely a scratch on them, and deeper, darker, unanswerable questions. Its inconclusive nature made Return Of The Jedi an inevitable must-see, a sequel which hinged completely on the success of this movie, which in retrospect was a seriously gutsy move by George Lucas. The success of this film turned the surprise hit Star Wars into an entire franchise.

IMDB: The Empire Strikes Back
Wikipedia: The Empire Strikes Back
Rotten Tomatoes: The Empire Strikes Back