CT The Empire Strikes Back: Forever the best and worst of Star Wars movies?

I think "The Empire Strikes Back" is one of the best, despite its flaws.

 

This was a brilliant analysis! Well done

The actor who plays C3PO, Anthony Daniels, claimed that The Force Awakens would be even better than ESTB. If it has even half the items on your list, it might be something great indeed!

 

When I was younger ROTJ was always my favorite Star Wars film, and though I loved the whole OT something about ESB and ANH just didn't click with me as much as ROTJ. As I got older ESB became my favorite Star Wars film and ROTJ and ANH are tied for second. The beauty of ESB is the subtlety from the actors that Irvin Kershner was able to induce. While ANH may have introduced us to the universe, it's a standalone adventure story, but ESB expanded on it in every way. The characters are deeper, the romance between Han and Leia is great and pretty believable and Luke's training with Yoda is superb. Mark Hamill is truely a fantastic actor in the film, for months he had nothing to act with but a puppet and a droid and he makes us believe every interaction between them. The battle of Hoth is super intense and the stakes are high and the final duel between Darth Vader and Luke is great and the revelation is jaw dropping and probably the most memorable plot twist ever. I can watch ESB time and time again, and I have no criticisms of the film. ANH and ROTJ are in my top three favorite Star Wars films , but they are definitely a little rougher around the edges than ESB.

 

The Vader reveal in Empire, would be equivocal to a cinema goer in 1979 watching Alien for the first time being completely unaware about the chest bursting scene. Try to imagine the collective emotion and genuine surprise of everyone seeing the gory 'birth' for the first time.
Sure you can watch it again but the magic of that 'first time' will never be repeated. And seeing as though the Empire reveal of Vader being Lukes father (and the connection with Leia) cleverly expanded upon the narrative set by ANH and created a franchise. Which then allowed GL to tell the backstory.
If ESB had flopped badly there would be no prequel trilogy for you to gush over. Just remember that

 

For me this movie is boring as hell the only good part of this movie are the Yoda and Luke scenes

 

The Empire Strikes Back is second only to the original film.

 

TESB the worst? This is blasphemy

 

I will admit that The Empire Strikes Back is not one of the better Star Wars films in the sense of being a standalone movie, but I see Return of the Jedi as having some unanswered questions between ESB and ROTJ.
-How did Luke build his lightsaber? How is he much more skilled despite not returning to Dagobah?
-How long has the Death Star II been in construction?
-Is the Rebel Fleet in ROTJ new ships added to the fleet we saw at the end of ESB, or were the new ships just hidden somewhere else?

I never looked too much into The Empire Strikes Back as suffering from unanswered questions, because the drama is so engaging.

 

I like Empire the best and have since I saw it in the theater as a kid. It's just so emotional and rich and flows so effortlessly. And that music....

 

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/godfather-tops-empire-100-greatest-movies-poll/

Empire was voted second in Empire magazines top 100 films, (it was number 1 last time). Star Wars is also in the top ten too. The full 100 will be revealed online on Monday.

 

The Best and.... Worst, um huh? Seems like an obvious bait thread by OP created in response to that other thread about reasons why ESB is considered the best SW of all time and one of the best films in cinema history. The film will be forever studied in film school. It is that timeless.

 

Come on, just because Qui-Riv-Brid offers a new perspective to a widely loved Star Wars film doesn't mean they're baiting. They're just explaining the film from a different viewpoint, one that others may not agree with. Even if they outright criticized the film, what's wrong with that?

My response to the OP. Empire strikes back doesn't work well as a standalone film, though it is one of the best sequels of all time in my opinion. Yes, it leaves more questions than perhaps any other Episode, and it does have a downer ending (though so does ROTS) and because of that I can understand what you mean. You make a fine argument Qui-Riv-Brid

 

Best movie ever cough cough.

 

It was the best of films, it was the worst of films, it was a film of epic battles, it was a film of tedious middle, it was a film of heroes and villains, it was a film of severed limbs.

A Tale of Two Skywalkers.

 

LOL. Without reading the whole thread, I knew this day would come. I am 52 and saw every movie in the theater as they were released. The "I am your father" shock will forever be the single greatest audience-gasping theatrical twist of all time. This is utterly and completely lost on the new generation that knew Vader was Luke's dad before even watching the movie. This generation will never, ever experience that level of shock in the Star Wars universe. And that's okay. But the precedence has been set.

Secondly, in spite of my OT OCD, I like the prequels a lot. Naturally, being my age, the prequels cannot light a candle to the OT, but I can guarantee you I might very well feel the opposite (like the OP posting that ROTS is the best) if I had been a teenager when the prequels came out. The formative teenage years put a sense of nostalgia that can have more power than the very thing itself over which you are feeling nostalgic.

With these points in mind (and at my age this is just a nuisance), there ARE no right or wrong answers to the question "Which Star Wars film is the best", and it is beyond annoying to see people vehemently arguing (as opposed to discussing) the strengths and weakness of each film. Of course Yoda looks like a puppet in ESB. Because he was! And to us old f@rts, Tarkin and Leia look like Polar Express CGI characters in Rogue One, because they are! (BTW I consider R1 to be the new "ESB", good enough to be possibly the best Star Wars film of all, were it not for the nostalgia factor that makes me keep ANH then ESB in the top spots).

This entire SW saga is a thing of beauty, and like humanity itself, is very flawed yet very beautiful.

To combine a quote from Jyn (and who knows what new character in the next generation of SW fans) and my old friend Ben Kenobi: May the Force be with us... always.

 

So true.

 

I was there also and TESB is great but then again all of Lucas' original 6 Star Wars movies are great as far as I am concerned.

Nostalgia is great but I have nostalgia for both trilogies so that balances out. The power of TESB's moment is made all the stronger because of the PT and ROTS in particular.

Agreed.

 

Even by your PT-centric-rose-tinted standards thats a belter. IMO the strength of Empire hasn't grown over time because they made prequels. Empire doesn't need and never has needed prequels to make it stronger. It was already a well established classic with emotional highs and low and great score, direction, story, cinematography, performances etc. The OT could well have existed on its own and still have the same high impact because in many ways the main impact the PT had was to water down the legend of Darth Vader especially.

 

Saga centric I would say.

We totally disagree on this point.

Need doesn't matter. That's what it gets which is what Lucas wanted to do and did.

Again totally different view. The PT enhanced the legend of Darth Vader far beyond anything that could have been imagined at the time and has made the OT better, stronger and deeper all the way around.

The impact of Vader's admission is even more powerful because now we know his story.

 

Before coming on this forum (and realising there were other fans who didn't consider ESB to be their no.1 too), I almost felt pressurised to say ESB was the best SW film. It seemed to me that if you didn't agree that ESB was the best film you either had no understanding of movie making or simply failed to appreciate what a masterpiece it is. Basically if ESB was not your favourite you must somehow be a bit stupid!

Whilst I love ESB it's certainly not my favourite. As a casual film observer I believe the middle section (asteroid stuff especially) is too slow, and for me there was not a proper ending, however I totally understand why others will disagree.

For me however it's really refreshing to see so much healthy debate on these forums without being made to feel dumb if you don't agree with the opinions of the majority!

 

Yet Empire is the movie that made us really want to see what had happened before Luke Skywalker.

 

The "worst" in Empire is still a thousand times better than the "best" in half of the SW films...

 

After being polled in second place in Empire magazines top 100 films, (the original was voted number 9 and Jedi came in at number 66) Heres what they had to say about Empire:

2. Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The original “this one’s darker” sequel, and by far the strongest of the saga. Not just because the baddies win (temporarily), or because it Force-slammed us with that twist (“No, I am your father”). Empire super-stardestroys thanks to the way it deepens the core relationships — none more effectively than Han and Leia’s. She loves him. He knows. And it still hurts.

Heres their full review too:

After receiving a vision from Obi-Wan Kenobi and fleeing the ice world of Hoth with his friends after an Imperial attack, Luke Skywalker travels to the marsh planet of Dagobah, where he is instructed in the ways of the Force by the legendary Jedi master Yoda. Meanwhile, Han Solo and Princess Leia make their way to planet Bespin, where they are greeted by Han's old friend, a shifty gambler named Lando Calrissian.

★★★★★

It's generally agreed that The Empire Strikes Back is the best film of George Lucas' initial trilogy (despite a latter-day shift toward the original's storytelling purity). Not a sequel as such, but the next part of a continuing story, Empire marks enormous progression both in terms of the mythos of the series and in the filmmaking quality itself.

No longer tethered by the need to establish this fabulous universe wrapped in the arcane mysticism of the Force, this is a film far more sophisticated, awe-inspiring and daring (what do you mean Han Solo stays frozen in carbonite?). The actors too, reassured this was not some tinpot sci-fi quickie, have settled comfortably into their characters. Which is a good thing given the nightmare wrought for them by writers Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett. At once more graceful and melancholic than its predecessor, Kershner enhances the pensive mood of impending tragedy with an array of inhospitable worlds (we travel from the icescape of Hoth to the swamp of Dagobah to a sleek, sterile city in the clouds). Bespin, the Cloud City, the most awesome of any of the Star Wars arenas, is a beautiful exterior with a dark heart. The film culminates in a whirl of emotional intensity and the infernal machine of the carbon freezing chamber. With John Williams' breathtaking score and the dark red hellish lighting (the characters have arrived in Hell — this being the "second day" of the trilogy), the whole feel is of a Wagnerian opera: dark and epic.

Then there is the devastating confrontation between Luke and Vader. Masterfully choreographed, their duel culminates on a thin gantry
protruding out over the vast depths that are the hollow core of the Cloud City. Magnificently visualised, the dizzying vertiginous terror of the moment encapsulating Luke's disorientation and horror at Vader's revelation of paternalism. Significantly, Luke chooses death over the outstretched hand of the dark side and is eventully born again as a Jedi.

But Act 2 is never consumed by darkness. There is comedy: C-3PO is still fussily camp as the Shakespearean chorus; Solo cracks wiser than ever before and new entry Yoda's knack of getting straight-to-the-point via the syntactical equivalent of Spaghetti Junction ("No! Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try.") is pure delight. And effectswise it offers unforgettable, if sometimes impractical, marvels: the awesome AT-ATs marching on the rebel base on Hoth, whose lurching gait was modelled on elephants, or Solo piloting the Milennium Falcon straight into an asteroid field.

It is on a psychological level, though, where Empire really reaches beyond its brethren. On Dagobah, where Luke is tutored in Jedi philosophy by the rubbery icon-to-be Yoda, the notion of the Force turns from the simple good/bad divide of Star Wars into a sea of moral ambiguity. Luke must fight the urges of anger and emotion to find the true path (a factor which left much of The Phantom Menace so limp — the Jedi characters were by definition unexciting). In the film's (and probably the series') most complex sequence Luke descends into a metaphorical dream womb, a representation of his unacknowledged fears. Here, prophetically, he confronts Darth Vader and discovers his own face beneath the mask. This is dark stuff, way beyond funny robots and knights in space.

Empire slipped the insufficient Return Of The Jedi a hospital pass. There was too much to settle (the whole damn universe to be saved before tea), and we had been so exhilarated by Empire that teddy bears at war was inevitably trite.

Nothing in the Star Wars canon betters this.

 

The post may seem a bait to some but I've actually read that the director of the Avengers movie didn't like TESB making a "stop" for the same reason.

 

"Teddy bears at war" ?

What kind of nonsensical analysis is that? I find it bizarre this continual fixation on the Ewoks (and the forgotten Rebels) vs Stormtroopers when the actual core resolution to what is set-up in Empire is Luke vs Vader and Sidious. That is the main story. Luke as a Jedi vs the Sith.

Consider what Empire sets up and how marvelously Jedi resolves it all but the review of Jedi shows how surface they are:

In this post-Phantom Menace world, the Ewoks don’t seem quite so egregious, do they? Endor’s teddy-bear guerillas might have got sneered at, but they shouldn’t blind us to Jedi’s assets: the explosive team-re-gathering opening; the crazily high-speed forest chase; and that marvellously edited three-way climactic battle that dexterously flipped us between lightsabers, spaceships and a ferocious (albeit fuzzy) forest conflict.

If this is what they are really concerned about then I suggest they take another look at ROTJ, TPM, AOTC and ROTS because they are missing a ton since they are so concerned with the surface events of the other movies and only look deeper for Empire. Why not apply that to all the movies?