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The Empire Strikes Back
High point
1980
Review: September 25, 2009
Director: Irvin Kershner
Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse
Why not?
THE SETUP:
Luke and pals get owned.
DISCUSSION:
I had mentioned in my review of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock that the movie came close to greatness but ultimately fell short, saying it “could have been the Empire Strikes Back of the series.” This got a friend of mine to enquire what, exactly, I thought made this movie so great, a topic we went back and forth on for a while, and during that time I became pretty keen to watch the movie again, which I hadn’t seen since the new “improved” versions of the original films came out in... well, whenever..
We’re going to skip the recitation of plot almost entirely, since you know it by heart, and just get right to the discussion. My point about The Search for Spock was that it was a movie about setbacks and sacrifices on the way to a larger goal. It failed largely because there was no real sense of sacrifice: you could make it to the end without having any idea that the crew of the Enterprise had given up their careers. Kirk’s son dies, boo hoo, but he had spent no time with the lad, or even indicated that he WANTED to spend time with him. They blew up the Enterprise, but it was a hulk by that time and not much emotion was expended on this moment. The result is a movie about sacrifice in which no one acts as though anything has been sacrificed, and their lack of conviction results in our lack of conviction.
Empire, by contrast, isn’t so much about sacrifice as setbacks and mistakes, but it makes a decent comparison because it is one of the few movies in which the heroes get their asses thoroughly kicked—and yet that is somehow made enthralling. Part of this could simply be that for many kids who were blown away by Star Wars—such as I—simply could not believe that we were watching, or that it was even POSSIBLE, to have a movie in which the heroes get shafted. I recall a friend in third grade telling me that Luke got his hand cut off, and I thought no, he must be lying. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY Luke is going to get his hand cut off.
The movie also succeeds by being so different from what one expects in a sequel, which is essentially more of the same, just bigger. This was not only a quite different story, but a real, compelling story that moved the characters significantly along, not just something invented because we have these established characters and have to give them something else to do. The movie also managed to introduce a number of new elements, and not just new, but fabulous. The AT-AT attack, the asteroid field, cloud city, all new environments and technologies new to the series that were completely amazing!
The movie succeeds in showing us something new by entirely subverting the heroism and triumph of the previous installment. In the first, Luke comes from nowhere, masters a bunch of new skills, and uses them to triumph! Here he is alone much of the time, is told that he’s pretty good at this force thing but not all that great, and finally makes an unwise, emotional decision that results in him getting his ass kicked and sent home whimpering. In this film the triumphs are not achievements, but escapes and retreats from greater damage. Luke is rescued from being frozen, the rebels retreat after being defeated at Hoth, Han and company escape from a giant worm, Leia escapes cloud city having lost Han, and Luke is rescued after to run whimpering from Vader, and the final achievement is to narrowly escape being caught by the empire. Everything in this movie is about failure—note that the hyperdrive, which saved the day in the first movie, fails three times throughout the course of the film.
This movie also benefits from having a director who is an actual director and knows what he’s doing. Lucas’ first was its own thing, with energy an excitement all its own, although his deficiencies as a director are widely discussed. Richard Marquand of the third film was plucked from nowhere to be Lucas’ directorial mouthpiece, and the grim, rote momentum of the film shows it. But Empire has, if not showy directorial panache, an extremely smooth, energetic movement from shot to shot and scene to scene. It just flows, and the sheer number of shots that remain burned into one’s mind [if you are among the millions who saw this thirty or more times as a teenager] is rather astonishing—and more so that each shot still zings with energy when watched years later.
The somber tone of the film is expressed in the environments it takes place in. In the first, we went from a desolate desert with low technology to space and a sleek, sophisticated environment of much higher technology. And the character movement of the film matched this, as our desert bumpkin hero grew up, learned his power, and was able to use it to triumph in the high-power, high-technology world. Here, all of the environments are cold, murky, and ephemeral. The first section is all frozen waste and ice caves, the second has Luke on the dirty, wet, swamp-like Dagobah, while Han and Leia spend time amongst floating rocks and in a humid, swampy cave. Cloud city is an airy environment where nothing can be held onto or counted on, and Luke fights Vader first in a dark, reddish hell-like environment, then in cold, airy interiors. The movie succeeds in not only showing is vastly different environments and spaces, but making them all extremely compelling in their own right.
Speaking of that, it seems that a feature of science-fiction films people end up seeing many multiple times is that they successfully create a world that one wishes one could live in. This is true for both Star Trek and Star Wars, and accounts for why one is able to watch these shows and movies so often without getting bored: after a while, the plot and action become just a background noise, and the real pleasure is just BEING in that world for a while. That said, the world of Star Wars has been particularly successful in fleshing out its “universe,” in part because there are now six movies, assorted TV shows and novels and such, but also because it is a very thoroughly thought-out vision. For the most part in Star Wars we don’t meet individual characters so much as entire societies with complete implied subcultures: Jawas, Wookies, the empire, the rebels, etc. And the design and vision of the ships, interiors and planets successfully carries through this vision very consistently. And one major feature of Empire specifically, especially if you saw it in the theater and it was the only other SW movie at the time, is that it gave one a feast of new world to live in, and not only that, but it was all extremely compelling.
Watching it now, one comes to the end of the movie and says “Oh, that really was just a comic book.” Adventure here, adventure there, advances the plot to the point of the next installment, but isn’t really an emotionally or intellectually moving experience. Which is fine. It is most successful in opening up a new world, and new chapter for our characters, that is at least as big and quite separate from the one we were introduced to in the first, and that turned out to be quite a compelling thing.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
You kind of have to. But of course, you already have.
