From a paper I wrote on the film...

Rating: Null/10 (22 April 1999)

In opposition to Return of the Jedi, The Empire Strikes Back usually gets the nod as being the favorite installment. This becomes increasingly interesting as one looks more closely at the film. Starting and ending seemingly in mid-sentence, with the characters separated and following different plot lines, Empire has more in common with Ulysses than the standard Hollywood blockbuster. Rather than following in the footsteps of the first film and depicting a sunny, neatly sewn up story with the requisite happy ending, this film descends into darkness and despair. Throughout the film the protagonists are chased across the galaxy, they generally lose every conflict they enter into, are variously dismembered, double-crossed, shot at, swallowed whole, traumatized, dropped from great heights and frozen in carbonite. The Romantic tradition would demand that the bad guys pay dearly for these various insults, but astoundingly the bad guys actually seem to win. In light of the success of this film, it seems that no one minded.