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

A new prespective? Oh, c'mon the film is over 30 years old and universally esteemed as a cinematic work of art. Why on earth would that make it a category for "Worst" Star wars film? Let me go to film forum and talk about how The Godfather is the worst gangster movie of all time. I'm sure I would be laughed off the board.

 

What difference does the movie's age make? A new perspective on an old film can come anytime after the fact, regardless of prior common opinions. Both Qui-Riv-Brid and I have explained why we think it could be considered the worst from a certain viewpoint, while not taking away from its triumphs. If you explained why you thought the Godfather was a bad film, reasonable users wouldn't laugh at you.

 

The Empire Strikes Back is overrated. You know what is a good movie? A New Hope. That's a good example of a great adventure-action movie.

The best things in Episode V are the whole first act and the Dagobah sequences. The Cloud City is meh, it could have done better. The main problem is the waste of potential. Where's Curuscant? Show me the capital planet, show me more of the Rebel Aliance and the political state of the Galaxy. All we got is Han and Leia being chased by the Empire. The soundtrack is good and so are the visual effects, but the script lacked stuff IMO.

 

It's in fact my favorite SW movie, Empire makes a thing that rarely a sequel does, do better than the first movie, in acting, effects, history, tension, i understand people that thinks this film overrated, but it's fact that this film, makes Star Wars a myth for all of us.

 

While I don't agree with what you regard as flaws in ESB, I also consider ANH better. To me it is still the superior film, while ESB is one of the best sequels there is. I do however also find it slightly (sometimes considerably) overrated.

 

I too, didn't have any time for Empire growing up as a kid, but it is now by far my favourite movie of all time. From a movie making perspective, I think it's the strongest of the saga, and like many have said before me, the whole "feeling" of Star Wars seems to come from this movie. The score is easily William's best work (for SW) and I truly believe Ivan Kershner to be the most competent director.

I can also appreciate that Empire isn't for everybody, and of course people are going to have different favourites, but I think it's a laughable concept to see Empire as the worst of the saga, no matter what "certain point of view" you take. It's probably overkill and I know you were only using them as examples to express the concept of looking at it differently, but I'm going to address your points individually anyway.

Star Wars (A New Hope) doesn't have a beginning either, and that's a very successful stylistic choice. It has also been pointed out that you can't fault a sequel, by definition, for not having "a beginning". If that were the case, this problem isn't unique to Empire and 4 of the 6 7 movies suffer from this problem.

We don't know this for sure. It's superfluous anyway as a large chunk of Empire is look getting trained. In fact, I would argue it's a safe assumption that Luke DOESN'T have any training between the two movies.

Not exactly sure what you're trying to suggest with this point? The fact we don't see them falling in love? We don't see Anakin getting trained by Obi-Wan between TPM and AOTC, but it's not inconceivable to think it happened. If we were using this idea as a criteria for worst film in the franchise, other movies are far more guilty then Empire so it doesn't really matter anyway.

I'll concede the point that it's a stretch for Vader to go from generic henchman to main anagonist, but it's hardly criteria for Empire being a bad film. In fact, it's probably the reason the film is so successful. As for why it happened, you could assume after the Death Star is destroyed, Vader gets more power to hunt down the rebels because they are clearly more organised than the Empire first thought. Alternatively this could have been the Emperor's plan all along independent of the DS getting destroyed as the government became more and more centralised (remember that the Senate is dissolved during ANH and the regional governors, or Moffs, took direct control. It's not a stretch to believe Vader's "promotion" was the next step in this change of government).

As for them knowing it was Luke? The Rebels would have used him as a poster boy for freedom. The propaganda would have been unbelievable, I'm sure.

They're not really in a worse situation, so much as the same situation as before. Not sure what it is we're supposed to be finding out.

It doesn't depend on the other movies to make it better, only to give the story context. Again, you can't say a sequel itself is flawed for not standing on its own. I think you'll find that the original is the ONLY film in the franchise that doesn't rely on anything else to make sense. Empire is no more guilty of this than Revenge of the Sith (which I will assume is still your favourite movie), so you can't pick and chose when to make this argument.

I agree that it's not an ending in a conventional sense where the plot has concluded (i.e. it's obvious there will be a next movie) but that's not the same thing as the movie not ending. The overarching tension of the film is Luke training to become a Jedi, and in doing so he must confront Vader (or conversely, the tension set up from the Opening Crawl is that Vader is scouring the galaxy looking for Skywalker, and so the entire film is about him trying [and eventually succeeding] to do so), and the climax of the movie is their confrontation, so from that perspective the climax of the film is resolved and therefore the movie does indeed, "end" appropriately.

Again, I know you were just toying with the idea that the Empire *could* be considered the worst, but I just don't think that's physically possible.

 

I think Empire is unique among even good sequels in going in such a different direction and tone than the first film, especially after the first film already was very highly acclaimed.

I think there is an element of a lot of fandoms that feels darker is necessarily better (and in a way it at least is more rewarding to older viewers) and that probably does help TESB in its overall status and yet even people who don't feel that way still really like and respect it.

As a kid I thought and to an extent today I still think it's a little too dark, unrelentingly so (in particular I don't like that Luke basically fails all of his tests with Yoda) and yet that aspect is still really interesting and there are a lot of other fun and impressive and entertaining aspects.