The sequel that strikes back and was pretty good.

Rating: 9/10 (4 April 2014)

Directed by Irvin Kershner, The Empire Strikes Back, like the original movie came out with mixed reviews with a difficult production, it's since then became considered one of the greatest film ever made. The film is set three years after the events of Star Wars IV: A New Hope where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has studying the Force under exile Jedi Master Yoda (Frank Oz). Mid while, Darth Vader (voice by James Earl Jones), is in pursuit of him and the rest of the Rebel Alliance. When his friends are capture, Luke Skywalker must confront the man that kill his mentor, and save his comrades. This gritty movie was once criticize for its darker tone, and cliffhanger ending, but I love it, it really put all the characters to their limits both physically and emotionally, dealing with deceptive allies and make you want to watch the next movie. That's great filmmaking. Like its predecessor, The Empire Strikes Back draw from mythologist Joseph Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, directly in it's tales that is taken right off from several mythological like Arthurian, classical Greco-Roman and others. There are similar motifs taken from other films and television shows like 1936's Flash Gordon, 1975's Dersu Uzala, and others worth noticing in the film. The movie even took influence from historic events like Nazism, the Wild West, and Samurai culture. It even dig into world religions. Some people might seeing the teaching of Yoda as boring scenes, but I love them. The movie really makes good on explaining more about what the Force is. The Force remind me of a new age amalgam of various eastern religious and western philosophical sources. A sense of Manichaeism, mixed with elements of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Romantic nature worship, Pantheism and Western-influenced Buddhism. Luke is not as annoying as the previous movie, as the film is mostly about his growth to maturation and self-discovery, but he does have some awful whining in this movie that makes you want to slap his face. Yoda in this movie works with the puppetry. The way Frank Oz performed and voiced him, made this character stand out. Not once, did I think it was a puppet. I would say, this was way better than the CGI Yoda or the puppet from Episode 1, big time! Industrial Light and Magic really pull it off, the action scenes in this film. This movie really make the Hoth Battle look real and intense. Another big prop to them is how great, Cloud City looks. As the technology has improved, Lucas has continued to tinker with the films, adding more creatures and more detail to the backgrounds and even reshooting certain scenes to get them closer to his ideal vision. In my opinion, this is one of the film that didn't get ruin by the 1997's Special Edition with pointless added scenes or badly done 1990's CGI. Glad, they didn't add the bad delete Wampa scenes. The Special Edition in my opinion, honestly, made it better. A good example of this is Cloud City. You really see more of the city than the original. It's beautiful. The 2004 version hurt the film a bit, changing Boba Fett's voice, but at less they add the real Emperor. The music by John Williams is great. I love the Imperial march introduced in The Empire Strikes Back as the theme music for Vader's pursuit of Han and Leia. The march's rhythm is driving and relentless, capturing Vader's own relentless progress through the story. For action, it's not as epic as 1977's Star Wars, but the story is way better than that movie. The love story in this film seem more realistic than the fairy tale love affair in Episode 2. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fischer) are just amazing in their roles, and give the movie, it's really needed humor. You know that they kinda dislike each other, but slowly they found caring for each other. That's realistic. The love affair had a shade of grey to it. One memorable exchange of dialogue was partially ad-libbed in which the character professed their love with Han Solo given a badass reply. That was amazing! Without spoiling it, the whole cliffhanger about Han Solo was at least in part due to the fact that they were not sure that Harrison Ford would return for a third film. I glad he did. Another thing, good about the writing is that there isn't a lot of dumb things that question logic in this film, like the other films. I did find a few. I don't like the whole Leia kissing Luke thing. It makes no sense even if Episode VI wasn't made at the time. It's still gross. Another one is how Ben Obi Won Kenobi (Alec Guinness) hide the truth from Luke, throughout the film for no good reason. Why!? You would have thought that information would help Luke deeply before heading to Cloud City! It doesn't make any sense. Once again, without spoiling it. During production, there was great secrecy surrounded the truth about Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker's relationship, to the point that most of the crew didn't know about it. I like how George Lucas fought for this movie. To preserve the dramatic opening sequences of his films, Lucas put the screen credits in the end. Even though this is more common now, this was a highly unusual choice at the time as the Writers and Directors Guilds felt that the credits should be shown first. They fined him and attempted to pull the movie out of theaters. Due to the controversy, he left the Guilds, and the Motion Picture Association. He also left 20th Century Fox over controversy when the President Alan Ladd Jr. got fired for helping fund the sequel, which cause Fox to lose Raiders of the Lost Ark's film rights. Overall: George Lucas change movie history with this film and the world is better because of it.