Originally written December 11, 2015

The Empire Strikes Back typically isn’t only considered the best Star Wars movie ever, it’s also considered one of the greatest films ever made, period. I actually find movies like this the hardest to review because sometimes it’s hard to truly pin down what makes a movie so good. For some reason it’s easier to see the things that make a movie bad, which is probably why the prequels (aside from Revenge of the Sith) are easier movies to review. I felt it was easier to find their flaws and analyze them. Even with the original Star Wars, I felt it was easier to see why it was such an achievement through its cultural impact, but part of that was because there were certain things that worked and certain things that didn’t. The Empire Strikes Back is a bit different though, because in a way it’s actually kind of a perfect movie. Why does it work? Sometimes it seems like the stars just align in the right way, but I do think there’s a little bit more to it than that.

Interestingly enough, after the huge victory achieved by the Rebels at the end of the first movie, The Empire Strikes Back pretty much starts right away with our heroes in despair. The Empire has brutally started to seek out the Rebels and destroy them, and it’s forced the Rebels to set up a new secret base on the ice planet of Hoth. We start with the Empire having the upper hand, and it actually only gets worse from there throughout the movie. It doesn’t take long for Hoth to be discovered, and it’s destroyed by the Empire, causing the Rebels to have to flee. This winds up causing Luke to have to go his own way to the planet of Dagobah, where he has been told by the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi to seek out the Jedi Master Yoda to continue his Jedi training. Meanwhile, we have Han Solo and Leia together, on the run from Darth Vader, who is pursuing them in his plot to find Luke Skywalker.

I think if I had to pick one thing that sets The Empire Strikes Back apart from its counterparts is the genius of its simplicity, and this is literally seen from start to finish (more on the finish part in a little bit). The original Star Wars seemed to concern itself a lot more with introducing us to this whole grand universe and all of the different things in it, but now that we have that universe established, The Empire Strikes Back decides to actually take a step back and get more personal with its main players. After the initial start of the movie with everyone together on Hoth, we spend the rest of the movie with the characters separated from each other. If you take a step back, you actually see the only big events that happen until the end of the movie involve Luke training to become a Jedi and Han and Leia simply running and hiding (with a handful of scenes of them simply being on the Millennium Falcon in a cave on an asteroid). This isn’t meant as an insult, but there’s actually not a whole lot to the movie in terms of big events going on. However, it’s within this tight structure that the movie allows itself to explore so many interesting things.

Watching A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back back to back, it’s interesting to notice that A New Hope really only scratched the surface. It introduced A LOT of great things that have become interesting parts of the Star Wars franchise as a whole, but what The Empire Strikes Back does is elevate the aspects of the first movie that made it so great, while also introducing other cool things that have also become commonplace for Star Wars. For example, let’s take the characters of Darth Vader and Leia. These are extremely memorable characters, but if you watch A New Hope you’ll realize that they actually aren’t in THAT MUCH of the movie. Like many other things, that movie simply introduced those characters, but we didn’t get to spend much time with them and get to know them…until The Empire Strikes Back. With Darth Vader, we finally get to see him do some pretty evil things in this movie that winded up elevating him to being considered one of the greatest movie villains of all time. He even gets his own theme music in this movie, which joins the ranks of some of the best music ever put to film. And with Leia, since we get to spend time with her in this movie, we actually get to know her better…what she’s like, what makes her tick. We get the added bonus of having her spend the entire movie with Han Solo, and the romance between these two is so much fun.

However, like I said, aside from simply elevating things that made the first Star Wars great, The Empire Strikes Back does the added bonus of adding even more new things that also made the series memorable as a whole. The most noteworthy things here are locations such as Hoth and Dagobah, and characters such as Yoda and Lando Calrissian. While Lando is definitely a special character in his own right, Yoda is probably one of the most recognized characters in the entire Star Wars franchise next to Darth Vader, and it’s easy to forget that he wasn’t introduced until the sequel. It’s through characters like Yoda that we get to explore more sides of the universe that have already been established too, with Yoda teaching Luke the ways of the Force and the Jedi. Again, these concepts had been introduced in A New Hope, but it’s through the introduction of a new character that we get to explore these concepts more deeply.

Before I get off the topic of simplicity, I need to talk about the ending. The Empire Strikes Back is proof that not only does a smaller scale final battle work, sometimes it’s actually the right call. The climax of the first Star Wars was a giant space battle that took place on a grand scale with tons of people involved. The Empire Strikes Back takes us on a much smaller scale, with its final battle simply being a one on one lightsaber fight between Luke and Darth Vader. Its genius is purely in its simplicity. The conflict between these two characters has been firmly established for the whole movie before the final battle begins, so there’s already many stakes and tension going into it. Since the fight itself is a lot more grounded, it comes off as more realistic, which has the effect of keeping you on the edge of your seat and making it feel intense. Added to that, we also have brief breaks in the fight, where either Luke is wondering where Darth Vader is at (which creates suspense) or where Luke is having a conversation with Darth Vader. These moments elevate the conflict between the two characters, and furthermore it leads to what is possibly one of the greatest plot twists in movie history. Just like the movie as a whole, it’s the simplicity and personal nature of this fight that makes it so amazing.

One other thing that needs to be mentioned about the final fight as well as the movie as a whole that makes it so great is that it’s such a downer. There’s something great about seeing heroes in movies achieve an amazing victory, but what can be even more compelling is seeing them suffer defeat. As I mentioned in the plot earlier, this is seen in The Empire Strikes Back from the very beginning, with the Rebels trying to hide from the Empire. Even when they’re hidden on Hoth, we see the characters going through struggles, such as Luke being captured and Han fearing for his life due to his debt to Jabba the Hut. Then after the Rebels are forced to flee Hoth, the struggles just get worse, involving betrayal, torture, and even one character losing a hand. Not only do the characters go through absolute hell throughout the movie, but they don’t even achieve victory by the end of it. The Empire Strikes Back ends with our characters still being in peril. It’s seeing these characters go through absolute hell that makes us more invested in their journey and wanting them to get out of it.

Aside from all of this major stuff, I do feel I need to briefly mention the action scenes as well. I do this only because one of the things that I feel brings A New Hope down is that certain parts sadly just don’t hold up anymore, such as the fight between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. I’m not sure why since it came out only three years later, but this doesn’t happen with The Empire Strikes Back. There really isn’t all that many action scenes in The Empire Strikes Back, but the ones they do have are fantastic, with the battle on Hoth and the fight between Luke and Darth Vader being the most notable. I can see why the fight between Luke and Darth Vader being more grounded makes it hold up well, but I’m not sure why a large scale battle like the one on Hoth still works well in this movie too. Regardless, the point is that The Empire Strikes Back still holds up really well.

If you really want to get down to the small details, there is actually quite a few things you can nitpick The Empire Strikes Back for. But honestly, a movie isn’t considered perfect because it has no flaws, because no movie is without some sins. What makes a movie perfect (or considered perfect) is if you’re able to overlook its flaws because of the larger reasons that it’s so good. Minor flaws are elevated in bad movies because they just accentuate what’s wrong with them at their core. But when you have a movie like The Empire Strikes Back, you don’t even notice any of its imperfections unless you really look for them because the things that work about it work so well that you can’t help but become enthralled by the beauty of it. The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie for good reason, and it’s also one of the best movies ever.

5/5