Day 30: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Movie #11 – Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - 124 min, cert U.

I was quite surprised to see this rank the highest of the original trilogy, although having watched it again, I can begin to see the reasons.

Plotwise (for the handful of people out there who don’t already know), the film continues takes up an unspecified time (probably a couple of years or so) after the Death Star was destroyed at the end of the previous one. The Rebel Alliance has a new secret base on the ice planet Hoth. The Empire, being run by Darth Vader, apparently from a fleet of vast battle cruisers, is searching for this base by sending out hundreds of deep space probes. When the base is discovered, there is a battle and the main characters split up to pursue separate storylines for the bulk of the remaining running time. Han & Leia, with Chewie and C3PO in tow escape from Vader’s clutches and make for a nearby mining colony where Han has a friend. Luke, with R2D2, goes to a remote planet comprising entirely of swamp where he is trained as a Jedi knight by Yoda, a little green alien.

The mood is by far the darkest of the three films. The other two see good triumph decisively over evil, but in this one, evil holds its own. There are no cuddly little teddy-bear aliens here. After the huge success of the first film, this one was clearly approached with a far bigger budget and a much more confident attitude. The battles are bigger, the sets are more believable, and the storyline is more grown-up. I think it’s this more mature approach that stops me from liking it too much. I would have seen this when it first came out, so I must have been 11 or 12 years old. As such, I wouldn’t have appreciated many of its subtleties. Even though I can see its merits more clearly now, those first impressions linger on, and this will always be my least favourite of the three.

One thing this film does have, though, over the other two is Yoda. He isn’t introduced in the previous film, and his appearances in the subsequent one are few and brief. The extraordinary skills of Frank Oz are really put to the test here and he rises to the challenge brilliantly. I can’t think of another screen puppet that even approaches Yoda for depth of performance and emotion. He makes ET look like a glove puppet by comparison. These days it would all be done with CGI, as indeed it was in Episodes I, II & III, and it’s a shame to think that puppetry like this is a lost art.

Overall, it is a good film, and indeed a better one than I remembered it to be, but I still can’t give it more than 7/10 which is probably very unfair of me.

1.       The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

2.       Pulp Fiction (1994)

3.       The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

4.       Schindler’s List (1993)

5.       Inception (2010)

6.       12 Angry Men (1957)

7.       The Godfather (1972)

8.      The Dark Knight (2008)

9.       Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

10.   The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Next up is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Again, I’ve seen this one many times. My kids love it so I’ve sat through it numerous times with them. It is very long though, the longest so far.