The Empire Strikes Back

Our Review

The middle chapter of the original trilogy is the one where Star Wars grew up. Irvin Kershner directed, Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett wrote, and together they did something sequels almost never do: they made the heroes lose. The Rebels scatter, Han Solo ends up frozen in carbonite, and Luke learns the truth about his father in the single most famous plot twist in movie history. Vader’s line hit audiences in 1980 like a trapdoor opening.

What makes it endure is the patience. Half the film is Luke on Dagobah with a puppet, learning philosophy from a green muppet who talks like a fortune cookie, and those scenes are the best material in the trilogy. The Falcon threads through an asteroid field while the editing and the score turn a chase into a waltz. Hoth opens the film with a battle that still sets the standard for snow, walkers, and dread. The climactic duel in Cloud City is staged in blue and orange silence, all sabers and breathing, and no fight in the series has matched it since.

Ford, Fisher, and Hamill are all visibly more comfortable, and Billy Dee Williams saunters in with the exact charm a traitor needs. The film ends with the bad guys ahead and the good ones maimed, hopeful only because the music insists on it. Hollywood learned the wrong lesson from its success and spent forty years copying its darkness without earning it. The original remains the best sequel ever made. Ten out of ten, no asterisk.