A unique point of view.

Rating: 8/10 (10 April 2020)

I know I'm going to get a lot of hate for this, but, to me, I found Empire to be the, shall we say, weakest of the entire series. I know that this sounds bad, but hear me out before you judge me; I have an explanation. I know that most people consider Empire to be the best in the series, but I always found it to be the, for lack of a better phrasing, least appealing. Better than the spinoffs (Solo and Rogue One), which I mostly found to be unnecessary cash-grabs, but still last place in the nine movie lineup. I still love this movie, but there were some key factors that kept it in the lowest position.
The biggest issue I had with it is that it had a massive amount of exposition. Don't get me wrong, the battle on Hoth was awesome, so was the fight between Luke and Vader, but everything else in the middle was pretty much a bunch of data dumping, where Luke is learning about the Force, and Han and Leia's relationship is developing while they hide and try to repair the Millennium Falcon. And while I do think that things like world building, character growth, and relationship development are important, when your story is primarily that, it's going to suffer in my opinion.
Now, as a kid, I had severe ADHD and a very short attention span, so all the stuff in between the exciting action sequences made it very hard for the movie to hold my interest. For me it was like: What's happening with Luke? Oh, he's still learning about the Force. Ok, what's happening with Han and Leia? Oh, they're still hiding and fixing the Falcon while getting closer. What's happening with Vader? Oh, he's still looking for the Falcon. Ok, lets get back to Luke. Oh, he's still learning about the Force. Rinse and repeat for again and again for over an hour. For a kid like me with a very sort attention span, it was very hard for all this to hold my interest. And sure, they had little tidbits like the giant asteroid worm, but it wasn't enough to hold my attention for long. There was also the cliffhanger ending regarding Han's fate, which my childhood self did not appreciate and was very upset about. Even what was arguably the greatest movie twist in history left no impact on me thanks to my own father, who told me that Darth Vader was Luke's father back when I watched A New Hope for the first time; something I will never forgive him for.
Now that I'm older, I definitely have a deeper appreciation and understanding for this movie than I did as a kid, and scenes that I once considered to be boring I now find much more appealing, but the damage was done from numerous re-watches over the years from when I was a kid. So yeah, this is a ranking based a bit on circumstances, but unfortunately that's where it stands. Still a great movie that everyone should see.