Star Wars Gets Dark

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2013)

I'll admit to not being one of the "cool" people (as in cool nerds) who like this installment of Star Wars better than the first because it's darker and takes itself more seriously. Escapist movies such as Star Wars and Raiders shouldn't take themselves too seriously, and it hurts Empire a bit..but just a bit. This is still a fun ride.
That said, it does take Empire a lot longer to get out of the gate than the the first one did. After a long slow buildup, there's that great battle scene on the ice planet Hoth (where we first see the Imperial walkers). After getting driven from Hoth, two stories emerge: While Han Solo, Princess Leia, C3PO and Chewbacca are hiding from Darth Vader in an asteroid field, Luke Skywalker(with R2D2) is off on this rat hole of a planet in the Degaba system to learn about the Force (he gets a vision from Obi Wan early in the movie telling him to go there). This brings us to a character beloved by a majority of Star Wars fans yet reviled by me. I'm of course talking about the sanctimonious muppet (later CGI image) Yoda. Despite the fact that I found his character so annoying, the detail with regard to Yoda's facial expressions (his eyes in particular) was amazing back in a time long before CGI. Luke starts to learn about the Force (in what must be a crash course when you compare it to the "prequels"), but leaves when he sees visions of his friends in trouble, and despite Yoda's admonishments, goes to help them. This is where Luke starts getting irritating. He knows Vader is setting a trap for him, yet lets his emotions totally get the best of him and goes anyway. Makes you wonder if you want to leave the future of the galaxy in the hands of someone this flaky.
Luke isn't quite as much fun as he was in the first one, but the other characters make up for it. The back and forth between Han and Leia is even funnier than in the previous movie. In fact, this movie is Solo's finest hour (good thing, because the subsequent carbon freeze he went through apparently softened his brain). If you wanted to take the essence of everything I love about Solo and bottle it, it would come down to two words: I know. Speaking of which, the love story between Han and Leia (which culminated in those two words) was handled just right..the movie didn't dwell on it, though the sexual tension was evident in the way the two of them sniped at each other early on.
Darth Vader was his bad self..even more in this movie than the first one (and even less patient with fools, as a couple of imperial officers found out the hard way). The fight between Luke and Vader in the 2nd half was where the movie started to degenerate into taking itself too seriously. Star Wars doesn't do as well when it gets too dramatic. The visuals are great though.
Rounding out rest of the characters, Billy Dee Williams is fine as Han's old pirate buddy Lando, though his character and Solo's were pretty similar. Then there was the single most over-hyped character in Star Wars, Boba Fett (I think he had all of two lines). C3PO and R2D2 were great, but they were separated for much of this movie..they work better together. Chewbacca's best moment was early in the movie when he was laughing at Solo after Leia insulted him..
It bugged me for a long time that this movie didn't really end..that it left you hanging for three years until the next one came out (as in leaving Han Solo in carbon freeze). I finally got past that, realizing that in a sense it does "end"..our heroes live to fight another day, but only after taking a serious beating for most of the movie. Though I didn't like it as much as the first, Empire was still a worthy effort. 8.5