Overrated, but still pretty good.

Rating: 7/10 (15 December 2017)

Despite having been a pretty big Star Wars fan as a kid and having had my love for the series rekindled to an extent by The Force Awakens, I have to say that this is an overrated movie. There was probably a lot of buzz surrounding it in the early eighties similar to the way The Dark Knight was treated upon its release. But I think that Empire is too flawed to deserve to be ranked as the thirteenth-best movie of all time. It ages okay, but some of the writing and acting are problematic, and it surprises me how forgiving viewers seem to be about these things.
The two most glaring problems that I found with it were that 1. Mark Hamill cannot really act and 2. The movie does a rather poor job in how it cuts between the two groups of characters. I suppose Lawrence Kasden and company did not have the advantage of building off of things like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, which both do an excellent job in deciding how long to stay with each set of characters. Still, it messes up the pacing in a few spots.
Even though this is hardly one of my favorite movies, I really wish I could have seen it without knowing anything about it. The first time I saw this at seven years old, I knew beforehand that Yoda was in it, that Han Solo got frozen in carbonite, and most importantly that Darth Vader was Luke's father. That didn't make it any less enjoyable to watch as a kid, but I would imagine that it would make me view the movie a lot differently if I hadn't grown up playing the Lego video games for it.
This last time that I saw it, I found that the most interesting scenes were those in which Yoda trains Luke on the ways of the Force. I watched it with my little seven-year-old sister, and tried to explain to her that the Force is more of a philosophical thing rather than just a means of telekinesis because it took me a long time to realize that as a kid. Looking at it now, I'm realizing that the Force doesn't really have that many rules that it consistently follows.
Normally I do recommendations at the end of this review, but that doesn't really seem necessary here so instead I'll use this space to share my feelings about the Last Jedi in the last few hours before it is released. Having just seen the Force Awakens, I'm actually rather excited. Kylo Ren seems like a really interesting villain that could see some good development in his second movie, especially in his dynamic with Rey. I'll be interested to see what old Luke Skywalker will be like. Most of all, I am excited to see what a Rian Johnson Star Wars movie will be like. Considering the way he handled time travel in Looper, I think his take on the Force and the sci-fi world of Star Wars could be really cool. Overall Rating: 7.2/10.