REVIEW
What many consider to be the best Star Wars movie ever made is actually a very good film, but probably the weakest in the original trilogy. You see, The Empire Strikes Back is well-liked because of how dark it is. it is well-liked because of it’s surprise twists and turns. But all of these come in the second half, and really even more than that, towards the end of the movie. In fact, a better case can be made for the fact that Empire has the best ending of any Star Wars movie, than that it is actually the best Star Wars movie of all.
The movie is certainly good, starting out in space with the a ship belonging to the Empire as they send out probing devices to search for life on different planets, looking for the secret rebel base. In the previous movie, the rebels blew up the Death Star (The Empire’s giant space station,) and now the Empire wants revenge. We follow the space probe down to planet Hoth, (a small take on the way we spent lots of time in the first movie following robots until they lead us to our main character, Luke.) Here, again, the probe bots lead us to Luke, as he is on Planet Hoth, riding around on a Tauntaun (two footed animal,) through the snow covered land. Luke finds himself mauled by a monster, hanging upside down in a cave, and then having to use the force to retrieve his light saber, slay the monster, and escape. It makes for a very exciting opening sequence.
Han comes to save Luke, (another call back to the first movie, which ended with Han showing up to save the day, blasting Darth Vader’s ship and clearing the path for Luke.) This time, when Han brings his friends back to the rebel base, he makes sure to reference the first movie, saying “now you owe me twice.” This will all be repaid by Luke in the third film, when he will go to save Han from Jaba’s palace. For now, the rebel base is the place where we see all of our primary characters reunite, (including Princess Leia, who has banter with Solo from the very beginning of this movie.)
It isn’t long before the Empire detects life on the planet and sends down enemy forces to attack. These come in the form of giant machines, such as walkers. The rebels fight back, manning their space crafts and flying at the walkers. It becomes a pretty cool, yet short battle, with Luke and team blowing up two of the Empire’s giant machines. One of these comes when Luke dispenses a rope around the feet of a walker, circling around the walker again and again, until the rope is tied round the feet. When the walker tries to move, it can’t, and so it falls over and blows up. The other move includes Luke being pulled up to the underbelly of a walker by a grappling rope, and then throwing a sort of pipe bomb inside of the machine.
Despite blowing up two of the Empire’s giant vehicles, the rebels still find themselves overmatched, and must retreat. This ends the first main act of the movie. We are about thirty minutes in, and it has been pretty exciting from the very start. Unfortunately things are about to slow down. Big time. The next hour or so has Luke go off to train with Yoda, while his friends fly around in space.
Han, Leia and their team (including Chewbacca and C3PO,) spend this time trying to avoid imperial ships (the Empire’s space ships.) They fly into an asteroid field at one point, and get trapped inside the belly of a creature during another. It all might sound exciting, but the truth is, this is the movies way of just killing time until our third act where the characters come back together and big reveals can happen.
Luke’s training with Yoda, on a planet called Degobah, is more interesting than what is happening with Han and Leia (the second act for them is basically an excuse to watch them flirt and banter, back and forth.) At first, Luke doesn’t who Yoda is, as he talks to the little green alien, letting him know that he is looking for a creature named Yoda, without Yoda revealing that he is the one Luke seeks. This is similar to the first movie, where Luke knew of Ben Kenobi, but not Obi Wan Kenobi, and did not realize that the man he was talking to was actually the one he was looking for.
There are lots of other connections and call backs to the first movie as well. Empire features the most famous hand / arm cutting off moment in Star Wars history, but let’s not forget that a creature got its arm cut off in the Cantina bar sequence, when the creature tried to attack Luke and Obi Wan. Not to mention the cave monster, here in Empire, getting his arm cut off at the start of the film. So in a sense, all of that was foreshadowing to what would later happen to Luke.
Another call back is an eel-like creature sliding under the water around the swamp here, when Luke reaches Degobah, and how this references another eel-like creature swimming around under water in the garbage shoot area, where our heroes were trapped in A New Hope. The reason for all of these call backs is to make the movies feel like they are part of the same universe, where similar things happen. They work.
Luke’s training is only somewhat interesting. At one point he practices doing hand stands, upside down, while trying to use the force to raise his ship out of the swamp. At other times he runs around the swamp, doing flips, with Yoda on his back. And in the best moment, of the sequence, Luke goes into a bush to face off against Darth Vader (not the real villain, but an illusion of him,) for a light saber duel. Luke wins by cutting off Vader’s head, only to see Luke’s own face inside the helmet. Of course, none of us know what this means at the time, but all will be revealed by the end of the film. And the cutting off of Vaders head is foreshadowing of a limb Vader will take of Luke’s later on.
And that brings us to Cloud City for the final act of the film. If the first act was Planet Hoth, and the second was Luke with Yoda while the others were flying around space (basically killing time,) then the final act here is all about this city run by Han’s old friend, Lando Calrissian. This is where Han is betrayed by Lando and frozen in carbonite. It’s also where Luke faces off against Vader in a light saber duel, and Vader reveals he is Luke’s father. Oh, and Luke gets his hand chopped off.
The cloud city stuff is fantastic. In fact, it is the reason why this movie is considered to be so great. The morbid ending (which is extremely surprising to audiences who haven’t seen much like it before… there was Nicholson’s end in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Marion Crane’s fate coming halfway through Psycho, but nobody expected this movie to end in such a dark note, not getting resolved.
And that’s part of the problem. It’s part of the solution reason why this movie is not as good as A New Hope, or even Return of the Jedi. There’s no ending. The movie ends with our heroes flying off to go rescue Han. With the first movie, they didn’t know there would be sequels, and so they told a complete story. Here, they do not. That being said, it’s still kind of cool to feature a dark ending. Avengers: Infinity War did it, and that was one of the better Marvel movies. The problem is that the second act of this movie isn’t all that great. Luke’s training with Yoda is fine. But it’s the Han and Leia content that often feels like just killing time. The movie is definitely entertaining and interesting the whole way through, but with it’s cliffhanger ending, and it’s Han-Leia-bantering second act, it’s not nearly as strong as the original Star Wars film, A New Hope.