The Best Star Wars Film

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2010)

Empire opens with Luke Skywalker pushing back his return to base camp to investigate what he assumes is a meteor that has crashed nearby. We know that it's one of the probe droids Vader has sent to track him down. What happens on his journey to investigate? Is he confronted by Imperial Forces? Does he realize just in time? Actually he's knocked unconscious and taken captive by a horrifying Yeti-like predator to be savagely devoured. Immediately, the tone is set in stark opposition to the movie's predecessor. We're on Hoth, a planet blanketed entirely by snow and ice, routinely pummeled by countless meteorites from a neighboring asteroid belt, but the craters are fleeting as the planet is in a perpetual snow drift. The only native creatures to our knowledge are the tauntaun, camel-like creatures, and the Yeti-like ones. The latter eat the former. This is a clear indication of a film series that's going somewhere, not just playing variations on the same notes.
And with confidence I say in my humble non-fanatic opinion that Empire is the best of the original trilogy. After the Buck Rodgers/Flash Gordon merriment of the original film, this one marches into mortality and sorrow, and rightly acquiesces to the latent conundrums of the story. It's because of the real drama propelled in Empire that the whole saga takes on a legendary value that hearkens back to the first and urges a continuation to the third. This is the core, not the Continuing Adventures Of. But that doesn't mean it's the most thought-provoking; it just means I buy it the most. It isn't introspectively involved or even very concerned with personalities apart from barefaced character attributes.
As a result, we have the trite push-pull flirtations between Han and Leia, who begin to discover their fondness for each other during, among other things, while zooming through an asteroid field to evade Vader's goons. There is still forced, stilted dialogue aplenty, and there is also no development provided for Chewbacca, who was thrown into the first film as ornament, was never fully contemplated, and consequently was burdened with one facial expression and one bereft gargle/bark/roar. Much more could have been done. How can you be a space pilot and not be able to interact in any productive way? Does Han actually comprehend Chewy's uniform babble? Otherwise, how have they bonded? Yoda, however, is introduced with real flavor and feeling, as well as an Eastern-infused philosophical affectation. The seemingly unintentional hilarity of his voice and physicality don't seem like datedness but rather something audiences since 1980 have been too reverent or awe-struck to deride the way they do other '80s fantasy films. Who are funny are C-3P0 and R2-D2, mostly because they are essentially Woody Allen and Lassie as a comedy duo, in robotic form.
But the heart of Empire is the extent of Darth Vader's ruthlessness, and his legendary obsessive struggle with Luke. Indeed, he's such a powerful and controlling presence in this film, using the Force to make lethal examples out of his own underlings as well as experimenting with putting people in chemical suspended animation freezing, that things do not go the way we'd like them to. The very bad news Luke hears, the way Han ends up paying back Jabba the Hut, the nature of Han's friendship with Lando Calrissian. There are real scenes of tension and suspense that arise out of the soap opera and mawkish comic relief. Nevertheless, the script is not only rooted in Lucas' story basis and the penning of future director Lawrence Kasdan but also one Leigh Brackett, who'd previously written some of the best Chandler adaptations as well as Rio Bravo. One can imagine the snarkiness of Han and Leia's dialogue and 3PO's hi-jinks delivering more becomingly in a film of the 1940s or '50s.
Maybe since so much more deliberation and capital was concentrated on this fifth episode, the tipping point before the climax of a six-film saga, in the first place, not much was tampered with in the restored and sleek re-release. I never did recall the first film in precise detail, even when I saw this Special Edition in theaters in 1997, but now that my eye is more seasoned and conditioned, I can tell that the Cloud City was adorned with some supplementary enrichment, and there is more of that terrifying ice creature than before. I have no distrust that there are many enhancements in sound design, but I'm not a dolphin so I can't be sure.