The dark heart of Star Wars

Rating: 10/10 (5 August 2007)

Star wars is a Saturday morning breakfast serial, with the upbeat 'let's have an Olympic medal ceremony' ending...Empire discards the fluffiness and moves away from its simplistic predecessor's obvious appeal to the child fanbase, without scaring everybody away in the process. The 2nd Star Wars film takes the original cast and subjects them to 2 hours of major discomfort...A forbidding icy planet replete with nasty creatures. There are ugly bounty hunters, monsters hiding out in the depths of asteroid fields, and Luke's foray into the black swamp of the Degobah system. It's a more taut, curiously downbeat film that slows almost to a halt in places, as Luke meets the Jedi Master who will teach him the ways of the force. The set pieces more than make up for the lack of pace...The opening battle on the Ice planet is a visually effective affair, and the stormtroopers have never looked as cool when they don their winter outfits. The asteroid chase and cloud city sequence are visual treats, that take you into the mysterious heart of the Star Wars Universe. The character development glues everything together. Luke's maturing process in the darkness of Degobah..Han and Leia's romantic chemistry, the droids comic relief and interplay with Chewbacca solidifies the group together and establishes a team spirit that was coming together at the end of Episode IV. The centrepiece of the film is the epic showdown between Luke and Vader,with that massive revelation, which inevitably ranks as one of Cinema's all time memorable moments. And it's a great sequence, from Vader's sobering welcome 'The force is with you young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet' to the almost surreal climax. The forces of darkness loom large at every turn of the film...you get the feeling that the rebels are just slightly out of their depth. There is an underlying menace at work that heightens the dramatic tension..Vader is never as beautifully evil as he is in Empire. We finally see just why he is (Emperor aside) the top dog in the galaxy, as he lays waste to his own generals in ruthless fashion. We get some great new characters...Han's old buddy Lando Calrissien (sp?) is the slimy administrator of cloud city, who finds himself in a no-win situation, and there's the legendary Boba Fett..bounty hunter with balls of steel, and an outfit so cool it instantly establishes him as a Star Wars icon. And of course, the emperor rears his ugly head, and we get a taster of his malevolance. Any faults? It's hard to find much complaint. Some of the dialogue strays into cheeseland, the pace is interrupted with the curious but necessary Degobah scenes, but all in all, the sum of the parts adds up to a supremely effective, tightly woven sci-fi drama, the most deliciously dark of all Star Wars movies, and the most mature. Classic entertainment, stuck in a time capsule of its own, with enough memorable moments to ensure its place in the higher echelons of cinema history.