Rating: 5/5
Classification: PG
Year of release: 1980
Run-time: (Theatrical Version) 2 hours 4 minutes
(Special Edition) 2 hours 7 minutes
Director: Irvin Kershner
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams
Genre: Sci-Fi
This review contains spoilers
The Empire Strikes Back is the second film in the original Star Wars trilogy and is about the Rebels find themselves being hunted down ruthlessly by the Empire after the destruction of the Death Star, Darth Vader (David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones) has sent imperial probe droids to the far reaches of the galaxy to find the Rebels. Widely considered one of the best sequels ever made and the best Star Wars film thus far, The Empire Strikes Back not only lives up to its reputation but also improves with age. Not only are the special effects better than its predecessor but also have perfect character development, set pieces and action scenes, making The Empire Strikes Back a perfect template of how sequels should be made. Like its predecessor this film allows audiences to revisit the returning characters and you get to know them better but we also see these characters whether they’re good or evil go to emotional places they had never gone to before.
Many of the returning characters such as Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Darth Vader are expertly further developed, Luke progresses his training to becoming a Jedi more on that later, Darth Vader is much more evil than he was in A New Hope. He is so determined to find Luke and hunting down the Rebels that he force chokes the Imperial officers if they fail, the days of Darth Vader being Grand Moff Tarkin’s bitch are well and truly over and I love how sometimes you can see the Imperial Officers give a dreaded look if they have failed to do something, because they know Darth Vader will kill them. Darth Vader will also fly the massive Star Destroyers into asteroid fields and hire many bounty hunters to find the Millennium Falcon and will test Han Solo in a carbonite freezing chamber at the risk of killing him, even though Boba Fett (Jeremy Bulloch) and Jabba the Hutt want Han Solo alive. Darth Vader’s only motive is to find a way to capture Luke, to turn him over to The Emperor and turn Luke to the dark side.
Han Solo and Princess Leia start a romance in this film which is so much better written and acted than Anakin and Padme’s romance in Attack of the Clones, as I said before Luke goes to the planet Dagobah to train with Obi-Wan’s (Alec Guinness) master Yoda (Frank Oz) one of the best movie characters of all time, and an incredibly detailed and well performed puppet in the original trilogy. Yoda’s teachings are so quotable among fans, “Do or do not, there is no try” “Size matters not”, the scene that is one of my favourite movie moments of all time, this one blows my mind and I get chills every time I watch it because there is so much truth to it, is when Yoda lifts Luke’s X-Wing out of the water after it appears to have sunk, after the X-Wing is back on dry land Luke says to Yoda “I don’t believe it” then Yoda says “That is why you fail.” A wise decision that was made in this film is making it so much darker than the previous movie, George Lucas once said in the second chapter you make your heroes go through their lowest point and place them hypothetically in a black hole never able to get out, he never wanted a happy and cheerful second act, this also makes for some much better character development. Throughout this entire movie, the heroes lose; they lose at the battle of Hoth at the start and have to evacuate, Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite and is turned over to Jabba the Hutt, Luke goes against Yoda and Obi-Wan’s advice and decides to face Darth Vader to save his friends at Cloud City when his training isn’t complete, and Luke loses the lightsaber fight to Darth Vader and then of course we get the Earth shattering plot twist.
Darth Vader reveals himself to be Luke’s father, if you have seen this movie it’s probably very difficult to remember a time when you didn’t know this connection between Darth Vader and Luke but back when audiences first saw this movie particularly back in 1980, there was absolutely no one who would’ve seen it coming. The film then leads to one of the best movie cliff hangers off all time, Han Solo is frozen and could possibly be dead, some people would think that Darth Vader was bluffing and told Luke that he was his father just to lure him to the dark side so this definitely wasn’t confirmed in this film, and if you saw this movie when it first came out that meant you had to wait three years for Return of the Jedi to get the answers you’re looking for.
The Empire Strikes Back is one of the best sequels ever made, thanks to taking many elements that made the previous film so beloved and raising the stakes in every way possible, the film always has brilliant action scenes, special effects and musical score, perfect character development, further developing the returning characters as well as successfully introducing us to new and equally iconic characters and has definitely set the benchmark very high for both upcoming Star Wars movies and even non Star Wars sequels to come.