Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The Empire Strikes Back: The Galaxy's Best Star Wars Movie (by Jedi Teen)



(Note: Please read my previous review of Star Wars: A New Hope)

            Three years after the release of Star Wars: Episode 4, A New Hope, the second movie in the trilogy, Episode 5, The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980. It is easily the best movie in the trilogy (although my favorite is episode 4, but Empire runs a close second) with the same awesomely retro but really sort of cool special effects as the first movie, only just a bit better. This was the same year that the popular video game, Pac-man was released, which made for an awesome year, because I love Pac-man. If you liked episode 4 at all, this is definitely worth seeing.
           
The movie was directed by Irvin Kershner, with George Lucas as the executive producer. After the scroll, you see one of the Empire’s remote probes land on the ice planet of Hoth where the rebels have set up a new secret base. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) are all at the rebel base. A snow monster attacks Luke and hangs him by his feet. After he escapes, he sees the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi who tells him that he must go to the Dagobah system and learn from Yoda. At the moment, Luke can barely move, let alone go to some strange place and learn from a Jedi master, but Han once again rescues him in time for Luke to fight in a stunning battle with the Empire’s gigantic four-legged metal walkers. Because of their size, they are very slow and clunky. The rebels can use harpoons to wrap around their legs and bring them down. Just like in the run on the Death Star in the previous movie, we once again see that the small can defeat the large.
           
When the battle is over, Luke goes off to Dagobah to learn from Yoda with R2-D2, while Han, Leia, Chewbacca and C-3P0 get onto the Millennium Falcon and discover that the hyperdrive is broken, and they can no longer go into light speed. They have to fly into an asteroid field and back out, and they decide that they need to find a safe place to land and fix the hyperdrive.
           
Meanwhile, Luke is learning from Yoda, a 900 year old small and strange looking creature with large ears who has been training the Jedi for centuries. Now Yoda is the only Jedi left, except for Luke who is not a fully trained Jedi.
           
Han and Leia go to Cloud City, a mining colony in the clouds where they meet Han’s old friend Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) who has betrayed them to the Empire. In the end, however, Lando ends up helping Leia and Chewbacca when Han is frozen in carbonate and captured by bounty hunter, Boba Fett.
           
When Luke is in training, he sees a vision of Han and Leia in Cloud City and decides to go rescue them even though Yoda tells him to stay and complete the training. After promising Yoda that he will come back, Luke sets out for Cloud City, and gets trapped by Darth Vader, who wants to turn him to the Dark Side of the Force. In a lightsaber duel, Luke loses his hand, and almost falls off Cloud City. Leia and Lando rescue him, and the movie ends with a cliffhanger, because Han is still frozen.
           
Once again, I should mention the “shiny version”. Aside from the digital remasterization, (my own word) there are very few changes made to The Empire Strikes Back. In the snow monster scene, you see the monster eat Luke’s Ton-ton, and at the end, you see Darth Vader’s shuttle to show how he gets from Cloud City to his spaceship.
           
In the John Williams soundtrack, there are several new themes, the Imperial March, Yoda’s theme, and a new love theme for Han and Leia. It is a brilliant soundtrack and a brilliant movie. You must see it. It is your destiny.

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