The Empire Strikes Back: A Razor-Sharp Sequel

A New Hope may have been where it all began back in 1977, but it wasn't until the dawn of The Empire Strikes Back that Star Wars first showed signs of growing up. This movie takes every accepted trope about its predecessor, flips it upside down, and shakes it like a rag doll. It takes all the inspiringly escapist characters we'd come to love and puts them through a brutal gauntlet of Imperial victories as if only to prove that this fantasy can be a dark one, too. It's likewise a very well-balanced movie, chugging along smoothly toward what we can only hope is salvation for our heroes, but what we're taught to fear may be their doom, instead. Speaking of which, the characterization of this movie goes to places the original had only either dreamed of or had nightmares about. Initial reviews of this movie that were published soon after its 1980 release date were mixed, a nearly unthinkable response today. Its darker tone and uncertain conclusion rubbed many the wrong way, and it took risks that left some critics unsatisfied. But hindsight is 20/20, and maybe it's unfair of me to critique the critics. Nevertheless, The Empire Strikes Back earns its glowing reputation in every conceivable way, even if it may be a pitch-black movie compared to its predecessor.

Like A New Hope before it, Empire had an insatiable imagination. But this time, it had the money to push that vision as far as Lucas wanted it to go. This sequel looks leagues better than the movie before it. Their visions are similar, but this time, the sheer amount of high-quality and expensive production design makes it a real treat for the eyes. The location scouts also did their homework. Many of the scenes shot on the ice planet of Hoth were filmed in Norway, and my favorite moment spent on this particular world features a battered and bruised Luke Skywalker wandering through a snowstorm after a close encounter with one of the planet's carnivorous creatures. The storm is an absolutely suffocating thing to see, a bitingly cold blanket of blue and white. George Lucas and Irvin Kirshner's filming schedule for the country of Norway just so happened to line up with the region's worst snowstorm in fifty years. It looks real because it is real, so the danger feels real, too. But despite its imagination and luck, Empire had another tool on its belt more valuable than either of these things: patience. The pacing and plotting of this movie are superior to the original. This is a more patient and contemplative film than the one before it, and the story is less far-flung - a good thing for a production given the money to have way too many moving parts if it wanted to.

Empire expands on the technological and natural scenery of the first movie, so I think it's impressive that it upholds the aesthetic of A New Hope. The Rebel Snowspeeders and Imperial Walkers that duel in a fight to the death on Hoth are original vehicles, different from what we saw in the first movie. Likewise, the space worms of the Hoth asteroid belt and the ecosystem of the mysterious Dagobah are unfamiliar. Still, their designs borrow much from the original movie and are unmistakably a part of Star Wars mythology because they adhere to the original's utilitarian and organic tone. Most of the cast of the original film returns, as well, and Empire wisely expands on the characters we've grown to love, challenging many of the assumptions we'd made about them over the course of a three-year gap in between. If A New Hope cast our heroes and even our villains as occasionally vague and intergalactic parallels to classic fairy tale characters, then Empire turned them into real people with dreams, hopes, fears, and even loves.

I could probably spoil this whole movie, and it likely wouldn't matter because its major twists and turns are legendary by now, for a good reason. Seeing Darth Vader kneel before the hologram of a mysterious, robed figure when he had been the head honcho in the minds of most for three years was shocking in 1980, I've no doubt. Meeting this eccentric, annoying little green man on the swampy Dagobah and discovering that he's really a wise Jedi Master still throws me some days, and I've known his secret since forever. And don't even get me started on the bombshell revelations dropped in the closing moments of the fateful lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader. Empire is rarely the movie it presents itself to be at first, and it remains cloaked in a complicated sense of deceit and pessimism not present in the first film. You see, A New Hope was ultimately a movie founded on optimism, yet I prefer the darker and more challenging tone of this sequel. This movie is designed to make us worry about what will happen to our heroes, and it's not afraid to foreshadow awful things about them and even follow through at times. Its situations are incredibly delicate, and much goes wrong. Who's to say that more can't go wrong? Star Wars started out as escapism, but there are two sides to this coin, now. It just happened to land on tails the second time around.

The Empire Strikes Back is the best that Star Wars has ever been, at least when it comes to movies. It takes everything great about the first film and twists it, challenges it, pushing every hero we'd grown to love to their very limit. Its pacing and plotting are both impeccable, and its intertwining of two separate story arcs into one cohesive narrative is an impressive feat of control over its many moving parts. Its characters remain as colorful and lovable as ever, only this time, they're not as campy as they were before; you'll discover secrets about them you may not want to know. Empire is a darker, deeper movie than its predecessor, and it takes its story to places that I'm sure made some fans of the original movie extremely uncomfortable. It takes the imagination that defined the first movie and injects it with a healthy dose of pessimism that redefines the saga without killing it outright. If A New Hope was the birth of something entirely new, then Empire is where it first showed signs of maturity. Of course, it contains some of the signature camp we've come to expect from Star Wars, but the unspoken threat of change hangs over this entire movie like a dark cloud, nonetheless. Vader and the Empire he both subjugates and inspires say let it pour.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - 10/10

Isaiah 10:1-4