The Way Star Wars Was Meant To Be

Rating: 9/10 (7 April 2010)

Any comments here refer to the theatrical release, not the pile of rubbish known as the special edition. Rick McCollum should be tracked down and given a good kick in the pants.
In your epic battles of good and evil, "Empire Strikes Back" pretty much takes the cake. We have everything here -- characters with depth, tragedy, romance, adventure... aliens that are believable. It has become cliché to compare "Star Wars" to "Lord of the Rings", and that's not entirely unfair... but, really, "Star Wars" is better and "Empire Strikes Back" is the best.
As Dante Hicks says in "Clerks", this film is the best because it imitates life, "a series of down endings". Sometimes life is better than that, but it's often not. And whereas most movies want happiness, this one put Luke and Han in a bunch of bad situations with no hope of escaping unscathed. That's what makes this fantasy very much reality.