Review: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The Empire Strikes Back

Rating

Director

Irvin Kershner

Screenplay

Leigh Brackett, Lawrence Kasdan, George Lucas

Length

2h 04m

Starring

Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, Frank Oz, Alec Guinness, Jeremy Bulloch, James Earl Jones (uncredited)

MPAA Rating

Review

Three years after the wild success of Star Wars, George Lucas allowed others to take his story forward, entrusting the writing and directing of the film to those who proved to be good caretakers of the series with The Empire Strikes Back.

Set years after the destruction of the Death Star, Darth Vader and his Imperial fleet are still trying to root out the location of the Rebel Alliance and stop them thwarting the Empire’s plans. The Rebel base on Hoth is compromised forcing Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Leia (Carrie Fisher), C3PO (Anthony Daniels), and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) to flee and find refuge with an old friend of Han’s, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams). Elsewhere, Luke (Mark Hamill) is seeking training in the Jedi ways from Master Yoda (Frank Oz) on a remote swamp planet. Whether he’s ready or not, he finally leaves Dagobah and embarks on a journey to thwart Darth Vader once and for all.

While the performances are, on the whole, a bit more consistent in this second chapter, they are still not great. Familiar for what is needed but otherwise unimpressive. The storyline, however, is much impressed. Written by Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett and directed by Irvin Kershner, the trio bring a fresh feel to a series that could have grown stagnant in its second outing. Yet they delivered one of the all-time great sequels. The plot takes a decidedly darker turn in this outing. While the original wasn’t exactly frothy or light, the second digs into the more harsh elements of the franchise, putting the heroes into dangerous and downright deadly situations and forcing them to adapt and grow rather than stagnate. Kasdan, Brackett, and Kershner proved to be the perfect catalysts for change in this outing.

Of the film’s design elements, the sound design and visual effects are even better than the original, taking the lessons of the first film’s fantastic use and improving both the skill and technological advancements to achieve them. Those updates and advancements help the immersion of the audience grown to an almost subdermal level, which helped the entire series of films build itself into a foundational juggernaut.

The production design is once again brilliant and while the uniform planet designs return, they don’t create as much of a detraction as in the original film. The editing helps keep them more contained and less oppressive, which in turn makes them more riveting. The designs are part of why the series has done so well and the entire creative team rightly deserve the acclaim they have received.

The Empire Strikes Back has a legacy that few can deny and even looking back critically on the output over the years can’t tarnish the shine the film still has. It’s one of the few films in the entire franchise that can’t easily be torn down because of minor or major flaws. While the original Star Wars gets all the credit for setting the stage, this film improved it and built the universe into what it is today.