You Can't Beat Empire

Rating: 10/10 (3 November 2001)

Declaring The Empire Strikes Back to be the best of the Star Wars Trilogy is not a unique opinion. But then it clearly is the best, even allowing for the fact that without episodes 4 and 6 the whole thing would make little sense.
Ultimately it is the deepest and darkest of the three films, with impressive Character development, especially Luke on his Jedi training and the gradual blossoming of the relationship between Leia and Han. Comic relief comes in the golden form of C3P0 always ready to regale his human superiors with some paranoid babbling about the perils of evading the Empire.
Some may think that there is more talking than the other films but then that's the price you pay for plot development, more of this would have been nice in Phantom Menace. The big revelation that Vader is Luke's father turns the triology on it's head. Yet with the Snow Battle, the asteroid chase, the manic storming of the bridge of a Star Destroyer and the Light Sabre conflict between Luke and Vader in the dark recesses of Cloud City we are hardly being short changed of high budget Hollywood action.
The inconclusive finale may have been somewhat may have caused a little frustration back in 1980 but that is part of the films strength, meaning it can play out it's plot and character development without having to hurry the story to fit in with the confines of one movie.
The Empire Strikes Back is by no means brain surgery, though for elegant science fiction thrills and visionary fantasy with just enough humour you can't go wrong.