Reasons To Love ESB
Yes, I'm part of the slavering horde of Empire fanboys fangirls fans. Yes, there are many, many, many other people who have waxed eloquent about it (most notably, Roger Ebert). But I haven't, much, and in the wake of the quasi-backlash following Irvin Kershner's death, I felt the urge to stop ranting for a day and instead talk about why The Empire Strikes Back turns my pupils into little pink hearts.
(TV Tropes warning blah blah blah)
20 Reasons To Love The Empire Strikes Back
(1) The reveal.
Darth Vader, our badass cyborg villain, is/was Anakin Skywalker, the shining Jedi hero he supposedly killed. But the emphasis isn't on that. We all know the line, and it's not I am Anakin Skywalker. It's I am your father, the entire scene leading up not to Vader's victory in the duel nor even to 'surprise! Vader is Anakin!' but to Vader identifying himself with his role as Luke's father.
It's not about flashing lightsabers, but about Luke and Vader and their relationship to each other as not just villain and hero but father and son. It's shocking, it's horrifying, it's probably the most emotionally loaded moment in the series, and it's one of the most powerful reveals ever.
(2) The pacing.
It doesn’t take half an hour to set up a less than compelling premise, nor does it try to smash the plots of three movies into one. ESB begins when the plot picks up, unwinds the threads of that plot smoothly, and stops at the perfect cliffhanger.
(3) The lines.
It's Star Wars, so plenty of them are cheesy or campy or just wooden. But the good ones are awesome. I'm pretty sure ESB has the most kickass lines per quota of just about anything except Firefly.
(4) More complex themes.
Star Wars is a fairy tale. The opening line of the opening crawl of the first movie should make this blatantly obvious to anyone: a long time ago in a land galaxy far, far away... It's crammed with archetypes: the wide-eyed hero, the cunning old master, the cynical scoundrel with a heart of gold, the feisty princess, the ruthless, awe-inspiring villain and so on. The plot is essentially 'rescue the princess, beat the bad guys, get rewarded' -- the nice, happy kind of fairy-tale. That's the kind of story this is.
ESB somehow manages to make the story darker, richer, more complex without losing that quality -- if anything, it's even more blatantly fairy-tale-ish than before. But it's not a nice fairy-tale. This is the kind where your friends betray you, your mentors are prepping you for patricide, the villain is the only person telling you the truth, and the heroes lose.
(5) Splitting the party.
Obviously this isn't good for the heroes. However, splitting them up forces them to stand on their own, and forces the narrative to present them in new ways. For instance, in Star Wars, Han and Luke were largely defined in opposition to each other. Their characterisation in Empire has to go beyond that because they're separated almost right away. Even C-3PO and R2-D2 are independent characters.
(6) Awesome new characters.
There are Piett and Needa on the Imperial side, Lobot the cyborg in Cloud City, fan favourite Boba Fett, and, of course, Yoda, adorable, hilarious, thoughtful, and wise.
(7) Best cliffhanger ever.
... I don't think I really need to say anything else.
(8) Special effects of awesome.
They don't overwhelm the movie. They don't make you think, 'wow, great special effects!' They're just there: AT-ATs lumbering across the snow, Luke's ship rising out of the swamp, Cloud City, all of it. And thirty years later, they still hold up.
Personally, I think that's what makes great special effects: they're still great when they're not original. I know that those rocks are bits of papier-mâché dangling on strings. But every time I see it, I still think Luke is levitating rocks.
(9) Ghosts!
The possibility was hinted at in Star Wars, but it's in Empire that we get a full-fledged ghost. Ghost!Obi-Wan is awesome, and the concept of ghostly Jedi is pretty awesome too. Yay!
(10) Lando Calrissian.
Lando is a great character, and as the focus of the middle redemption plot (Han and Vader, of course, are the first and last), introduces a more complicated morality to the universe. He's a basically decent guy who can sell out his friend to the Empire -- he'll go a lot further than Han, but not nearly as far as Vader. The universe allows for something between Lovable Rogue and Fallen Hero. And it shows us what the Empire does to people. It's not always blowing up planets. Sometimes it's driving normal people to such desperation that they'll do horrible things.
Also, there are people in the universe who aren't either white, or green or blue or purple. One POC isn't a cure-all for fail, but it's a start, anyway.
(11) Yoda's lessons.
I don't mean the training montage. It's through Yoda that we really see what the Force is about, what it means to be a Jedi. Not slicing arms off in rowdy cantinas, but using your powers in the defence and service of others, even once you're dead. It's no surprise that while most of the kickass lines come from Han, the -- well, to be very schmaltzy, the inspirational ones come from Yoda. This, I suspect, is the point at which people really started wanting to be Jedi. It's no surprise that people actually adopted the religion in real life. (As religions go, Jediism is pretty innocuous.)
(12) The settings.
Nobody can say that there aren't a lot of cool settings in Star Wars, but ESB introduces some of the best and most memorable ones: Vader's new ship, Hoth, Dagobah, Cloud City in general and the carbon-freezing chamber in particular.
*loves*
(13) Chemistry!
I don't like Han's 'no means yes' attitude at all, I find the kiss kind of skeevy, but -- but damn is there chemistry. It's like -- I don't even think of them as Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in their scenes together. And I love how even as their relationship changes and it changes them, they remain themselves and the relationship seems to arise naturally out of their characters.
(14) Leia: beyond Action Girl
Leia was always impressive. In ESB, however, we see that Leia is more than just an archetype. As a political leader, she can't run out and fight just to prove how kickass she is -- and she doesn't. She is thoroughly competent when the fight comes to her, but she doesn't take unnecessary risks; she's too important to seek trouble. We see a more mature, diplomatic Leia, who smiles with apparent sincerity at a man she doesn't trust, who is fiery and abrasive without seeming self-conscious about it, who feels grief and despair as readily as fury and indignation.
(15) Luke
Luke grows up.
Despite his much more memorable defeat at the end, this is a thoroughly competent Luke -- who still has a lot more to learn. Competence isn't the end of the road, after all. He makes life-changing choices: fully committing to the Jedi when he does have other options (ie, he could remain a talented Alliance pilot, aided by his Force-sensitivity, rather than leaving the Rebellion to devote himself entirely to the Force), breaking away from the authority of his teachers to go after his friends, and of course rejecting the offer presented by his hated enemy/idolised father. And heroic as he is, there are plenty of signs that he's in moral danger: he's too fierce, too brash, too restless -- too much like Vader, before we even know of the blood relationship between them.
I always liked Luke. But it's the complexities introduced in Empire that made him my favourite character.
(16) Han
Han faces serious conflicts of loyalty. It's not a one-off thing, like the Death Star -- to stay with Leia, and therefore the Alliance, is a long-term commitment. It's putting him in on-going danger and, while he has no love for the Empire, he doesn't seem to have any particular loyalty to the Alliance either. It's all Leia and Luke. And then Luke disappears and it's just Leia, who may or may not ever acknowledge any feelings for him, and so he's going to leave but that doesn't work out either.
In ESB, Han's choices have real consequences: getting bounty-hunters after him, Imperials capturing him, Vader freezing him in carbonite and Boba Fett shipping him off to Jabba.
(17) Vader
Guuuuuh, Vader. Vader was awesome in Star Wars, no question about that, but I think it's the ESB Vader that most of us remember. This is a colder, yet more deranged Vader, who executes hapless officers for incompetence, longs for peace and order, and doesn't answer to anyone but the Emperor -- who he's plotting to overthrow. He's obsessively fixated on his son and lies through his teeth to get to him on his own terms. He constructs effective plots to capture him, tests him and finally lets him escape.
Moreover, this is also the film where we learn about Anakin Skywalker as more than the idealistic Gary Stu who got chopped up by Darth Vader. We don't just know him as Vader, but as the person he used to be (via Yoda and Obi-Wan), and we discover something of what happened to propel him on his present path.
He's not just the driving character of the story, to whom all the other characters react, he's become the richest and most compelling one as well.
Also, this is the movie where he gets his theme music.
(18) Introducing the Emperor.
We've seen the horrible menace posed by Imperial higher-ups like Tarkin and, in ESB, Vader. But Empire is the first time we see the Emperor himself, and exactly what kind of man could be in charge of people like that. Perhaps we expected a cackling, maniacal Evil Overlord. (We do get that eventually, but not here.)
The Emperor introduces a quieter menace. He's not blowing up planets or choking people or doing anything at all with a lightsaber. Mostly he's just playing mind-games with Vader that only become comprehensible in retrospect. And he's all the more chilling for his subtler evil.
(19) The Battle of Hoth.
Another one that's basically self-explanatory. It's awesome, and every bit as much now as in 1980.
(20) It rewards rewatching.
Empire is basically one long mind-screw. Because of the pacing and the ostensibly straightforward, perfectly linear, plot, we think we know what's going on the whole time. We're going along, okay, okay, crap, hm, how are they going to get out of this one, huh, uh o--WTF?!
Wait, then doesn't that mean -- all that stuff about Anakin that Yoda was saying, and about Luke's exactly like him -- that's Vader? So that's why it's a problem that he's like his father! That's why Yoda didn't want to train him -- he's afraid of unleashing another Vader on the galaxy! And wait, that conversation between the Emperor and Vader -- so the Emperor talking about 'Anakin Skywalker' and 'the son of Skywalker' and so on was -- holy shit, that's so bizarre. And it's why Vader pretended he didn't already know about it -- he's plotting against him! And it's why he was holding back in the duel with Luke -- he's not playing with him, he's testing him! MY MIND IS BLOWN.
You're going to miss half of what's going on if you don't know the plot of Empire already. So when you go back, you find all sorts of things you missed, that only make sense now, or that have a completely different impact now, and half the characters' motivations are completely different than you thought they were. Probably the best example of this is Vader's response to the Emperor going on about how Anakin Skywalker's son (*cough*) must not become a Jedi: He's just a boy!
Interpretation on first watching: Meh, he's just a kid. I can deal with him, no problem.
Interpretation on re-watching: Ack, he's too little for this! (And when he grows up and finishes his training, we will DESTROY YOU.)
(TV Tropes warning blah blah blah)
20 Reasons To Love The Empire Strikes Back
(1) The reveal.
Darth Vader, our badass cyborg villain, is/was Anakin Skywalker, the shining Jedi hero he supposedly killed. But the emphasis isn't on that. We all know the line, and it's not I am Anakin Skywalker. It's I am your father, the entire scene leading up not to Vader's victory in the duel nor even to 'surprise! Vader is Anakin!' but to Vader identifying himself with his role as Luke's father.
It's not about flashing lightsabers, but about Luke and Vader and their relationship to each other as not just villain and hero but father and son. It's shocking, it's horrifying, it's probably the most emotionally loaded moment in the series, and it's one of the most powerful reveals ever.
(2) The pacing.
It doesn’t take half an hour to set up a less than compelling premise, nor does it try to smash the plots of three movies into one. ESB begins when the plot picks up, unwinds the threads of that plot smoothly, and stops at the perfect cliffhanger.
(3) The lines.
It's Star Wars, so plenty of them are cheesy or campy or just wooden. But the good ones are awesome. I'm pretty sure ESB has the most kickass lines per quota of just about anything except Firefly.
(4) More complex themes.
Star Wars is a fairy tale. The opening line of the opening crawl of the first movie should make this blatantly obvious to anyone: a long time ago in a land galaxy far, far away... It's crammed with archetypes: the wide-eyed hero, the cunning old master, the cynical scoundrel with a heart of gold, the feisty princess, the ruthless, awe-inspiring villain and so on. The plot is essentially 'rescue the princess, beat the bad guys, get rewarded' -- the nice, happy kind of fairy-tale. That's the kind of story this is.
ESB somehow manages to make the story darker, richer, more complex without losing that quality -- if anything, it's even more blatantly fairy-tale-ish than before. But it's not a nice fairy-tale. This is the kind where your friends betray you, your mentors are prepping you for patricide, the villain is the only person telling you the truth, and the heroes lose.
(5) Splitting the party.
Obviously this isn't good for the heroes. However, splitting them up forces them to stand on their own, and forces the narrative to present them in new ways. For instance, in Star Wars, Han and Luke were largely defined in opposition to each other. Their characterisation in Empire has to go beyond that because they're separated almost right away. Even C-3PO and R2-D2 are independent characters.
(6) Awesome new characters.
There are Piett and Needa on the Imperial side, Lobot the cyborg in Cloud City, fan favourite Boba Fett, and, of course, Yoda, adorable, hilarious, thoughtful, and wise.
(7) Best cliffhanger ever.
... I don't think I really need to say anything else.
(8) Special effects of awesome.
They don't overwhelm the movie. They don't make you think, 'wow, great special effects!' They're just there: AT-ATs lumbering across the snow, Luke's ship rising out of the swamp, Cloud City, all of it. And thirty years later, they still hold up.
Personally, I think that's what makes great special effects: they're still great when they're not original. I know that those rocks are bits of papier-mâché dangling on strings. But every time I see it, I still think Luke is levitating rocks.
(9) Ghosts!
The possibility was hinted at in Star Wars, but it's in Empire that we get a full-fledged ghost. Ghost!Obi-Wan is awesome, and the concept of ghostly Jedi is pretty awesome too. Yay!
(10) Lando Calrissian.
Lando is a great character, and as the focus of the middle redemption plot (Han and Vader, of course, are the first and last), introduces a more complicated morality to the universe. He's a basically decent guy who can sell out his friend to the Empire -- he'll go a lot further than Han, but not nearly as far as Vader. The universe allows for something between Lovable Rogue and Fallen Hero. And it shows us what the Empire does to people. It's not always blowing up planets. Sometimes it's driving normal people to such desperation that they'll do horrible things.
Also, there are people in the universe who aren't either white, or green or blue or purple. One POC isn't a cure-all for fail, but it's a start, anyway.
(11) Yoda's lessons.
I don't mean the training montage. It's through Yoda that we really see what the Force is about, what it means to be a Jedi. Not slicing arms off in rowdy cantinas, but using your powers in the defence and service of others, even once you're dead. It's no surprise that while most of the kickass lines come from Han, the -- well, to be very schmaltzy, the inspirational ones come from Yoda. This, I suspect, is the point at which people really started wanting to be Jedi. It's no surprise that people actually adopted the religion in real life. (As religions go, Jediism is pretty innocuous.)
(12) The settings.
Nobody can say that there aren't a lot of cool settings in Star Wars, but ESB introduces some of the best and most memorable ones: Vader's new ship, Hoth, Dagobah, Cloud City in general and the carbon-freezing chamber in particular.
*loves*
(13) Chemistry!
I don't like Han's 'no means yes' attitude at all, I find the kiss kind of skeevy, but -- but damn is there chemistry. It's like -- I don't even think of them as Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in their scenes together. And I love how even as their relationship changes and it changes them, they remain themselves and the relationship seems to arise naturally out of their characters.
(14) Leia: beyond Action Girl
Leia was always impressive. In ESB, however, we see that Leia is more than just an archetype. As a political leader, she can't run out and fight just to prove how kickass she is -- and she doesn't. She is thoroughly competent when the fight comes to her, but she doesn't take unnecessary risks; she's too important to seek trouble. We see a more mature, diplomatic Leia, who smiles with apparent sincerity at a man she doesn't trust, who is fiery and abrasive without seeming self-conscious about it, who feels grief and despair as readily as fury and indignation.
(15) Luke
Luke grows up.
Despite his much more memorable defeat at the end, this is a thoroughly competent Luke -- who still has a lot more to learn. Competence isn't the end of the road, after all. He makes life-changing choices: fully committing to the Jedi when he does have other options (ie, he could remain a talented Alliance pilot, aided by his Force-sensitivity, rather than leaving the Rebellion to devote himself entirely to the Force), breaking away from the authority of his teachers to go after his friends, and of course rejecting the offer presented by his hated enemy/idolised father. And heroic as he is, there are plenty of signs that he's in moral danger: he's too fierce, too brash, too restless -- too much like Vader, before we even know of the blood relationship between them.
I always liked Luke. But it's the complexities introduced in Empire that made him my favourite character.
(16) Han
Han faces serious conflicts of loyalty. It's not a one-off thing, like the Death Star -- to stay with Leia, and therefore the Alliance, is a long-term commitment. It's putting him in on-going danger and, while he has no love for the Empire, he doesn't seem to have any particular loyalty to the Alliance either. It's all Leia and Luke. And then Luke disappears and it's just Leia, who may or may not ever acknowledge any feelings for him, and so he's going to leave but that doesn't work out either.
In ESB, Han's choices have real consequences: getting bounty-hunters after him, Imperials capturing him, Vader freezing him in carbonite and Boba Fett shipping him off to Jabba.
(17) Vader
Guuuuuh, Vader. Vader was awesome in Star Wars, no question about that, but I think it's the ESB Vader that most of us remember. This is a colder, yet more deranged Vader, who executes hapless officers for incompetence, longs for peace and order, and doesn't answer to anyone but the Emperor -- who he's plotting to overthrow. He's obsessively fixated on his son and lies through his teeth to get to him on his own terms. He constructs effective plots to capture him, tests him and finally lets him escape.
Moreover, this is also the film where we learn about Anakin Skywalker as more than the idealistic Gary Stu who got chopped up by Darth Vader. We don't just know him as Vader, but as the person he used to be (via Yoda and Obi-Wan), and we discover something of what happened to propel him on his present path.
He's not just the driving character of the story, to whom all the other characters react, he's become the richest and most compelling one as well.
Also, this is the movie where he gets his theme music.
(18) Introducing the Emperor.
We've seen the horrible menace posed by Imperial higher-ups like Tarkin and, in ESB, Vader. But Empire is the first time we see the Emperor himself, and exactly what kind of man could be in charge of people like that. Perhaps we expected a cackling, maniacal Evil Overlord. (We do get that eventually, but not here.)
The Emperor introduces a quieter menace. He's not blowing up planets or choking people or doing anything at all with a lightsaber. Mostly he's just playing mind-games with Vader that only become comprehensible in retrospect. And he's all the more chilling for his subtler evil.
(19) The Battle of Hoth.
Another one that's basically self-explanatory. It's awesome, and every bit as much now as in 1980.
(20) It rewards rewatching.
Empire is basically one long mind-screw. Because of the pacing and the ostensibly straightforward, perfectly linear, plot, we think we know what's going on the whole time. We're going along, okay, okay, crap, hm, how are they going to get out of this one, huh, uh o--WTF?!
Wait, then doesn't that mean -- all that stuff about Anakin that Yoda was saying, and about Luke's exactly like him -- that's Vader? So that's why it's a problem that he's like his father! That's why Yoda didn't want to train him -- he's afraid of unleashing another Vader on the galaxy! And wait, that conversation between the Emperor and Vader -- so the Emperor talking about 'Anakin Skywalker' and 'the son of Skywalker' and so on was -- holy shit, that's so bizarre. And it's why Vader pretended he didn't already know about it -- he's plotting against him! And it's why he was holding back in the duel with Luke -- he's not playing with him, he's testing him! MY MIND IS BLOWN.
You're going to miss half of what's going on if you don't know the plot of Empire already. So when you go back, you find all sorts of things you missed, that only make sense now, or that have a completely different impact now, and half the characters' motivations are completely different than you thought they were. Probably the best example of this is Vader's response to the Emperor going on about how Anakin Skywalker's son (*cough*) must not become a Jedi: He's just a boy!
Interpretation on first watching: Meh, he's just a kid. I can deal with him, no problem.
Interpretation on re-watching: Ack, he's too little for this! (And when he grows up and finishes his training, we will DESTROY YOU.)