The Empire Strikes Back: How The Great Got Better

The Empire Strikes Back:
How The Great Got Better
by Dileep Rao

The second installment of the original Star Wars trilogy, Episode V--The Empire Strikes Back is, perhaps, even better than its predecessor. From its stunning and transporting opening on the ice planet Hoth and Luke's hallucination of Obi Wan, the film begins on a much more substantial tack. This is probably mostly due to the work of Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, the screenwriters for this outing. The Empire Strikes Back is slick and smart. Lucas recedes to a kind of creative Presidency and deploys substantial talents to create the film. Along with Kasdan and Brackett, Irvin Kershner, a brilliant visualist, is brought in to helm as director, and the blockbuster box office take of the original Star Wars brought Episode V a substantially greater budget.

The Empire Strikes Back is that rarest of film treats--a sequel that crystalizes what was great about the original, raises the import of what we knew then and spins a larger universe for the first story with the second. Episode V is a much quieter film; there is no Death Star, no impending planetary doom. As the middle act of a three part drama, it's darker and deepens the story, placing our characters in moral and physical danger greater than the trenches of a giant space station.

First, the action set-ups with the amazing (yet totally impractical) At-At Walkers takes our breath away, as we are confronted not only with the truly awesome depth and power of the Empire, but also the plucky, homespun virtuosity of the Rebels. Leia and Han are in much deeper trouble, trying not to fall in love and failing to notice that they missed that boat in the last movie. Han is confident, roguish and infinitely cool. We learn more about the Force early on, how Luke has grown to be able to fetch his saber and save his tail from the snow monster on Hoth.

Luke follows Obi Wan's spiritual suggestion and seeks out the Jedi Master Yoda. There are some hijinks when he encounters the tiny wrinkled sage who speaks, as someone once said, like a fortune cookie. Frank Oz does wonders to bring this puppet to life, achieving the first great collaborative performance in a film between puppet and master. Yoda is one of the movie's greatest creations: part imp and part spiritual master, he is beguiling, simple and powerful beyond our estimation. His training of Luke is zen-like, but at times, Yoda shies from explaining the Dark Side of the Force (perhaps because Lucas himself had no idea how to explain it himself), and this is a good thing. It deepens the mystery of the Force, both its nature and the Jedi's relationship to it.

The encounter in the cave is one of the movie's most daring and symbolic pieces, presaging everything in the oddest of ways. Yoda's training and Luke's resistiveness are core to his failings as a student and will haunt him later in this film. Yoda's simple exchange with Luke about size and power--Luke's sulking,"You want the impossible," and Yoda's, "Always with you, it cannot be done"--is followed by Yoda effortlessly lifting the giant X-Wing from the swamp and sailing it through air like a parlor trick. Luke speaks for us in that wondrous moment ("I don't believe it...") and Yoda, his voice simple and deep, as if coming from God, succinctly replies, "That is why you fail." My Lord, Brackett and Kasdan are good here.

Leia and Han's deepening romance also gives a more grown-up feel to this film; the humans are decidedly front and center as all the whiz bang special effects technology whirls around them. This, in fact, is the great strength of the first two films: the world and techno gadgetry is atmospheric. These films are about deep conflicts, love and family, good versus evil, the power of ambition and the obligation to do right. Nothing about The Empire Strikes Back is weighed down by concept (with the possible exception of a set piece about a giant space-based worm).

Vader returns, terrifying and supreme, the instrument of purposed evil. He is shiny now, not matte, but every bit as fascinating. There are tantalizing glimpses of offscreen activity that are the peak of this movie's taste: the momentary sighting of Vader's head as a mechanical device plants his helmet on him. The ghostly apparition of the Emperor, that root of evil at last gives us the face, or hood, behind all this power.

Episode V also marks the first appearance of an African-American in the Star Wars world, Lando Calrissian. Played by Billy Dee Williams with a suave swagger, we believe that he and Han were cut from the same cloth, born of the same world. Lando is interesting, but he is played with a flat temerity at times that does not serve the story. Still, his role as betrayer and redeemer are well plotted; the film would not work without his presence. R2D2 is his fun self, a goofball in a dark picture about the loss of idealism and the testing of beliefs. C3P0 is affable but mostly ridiculous. His constant state of disassembly is cheap but effective.

This film is no day in the park. The characters are put through the wringer in this outing. Luke confronts the horrible truth, which, to most of us in our childhood came as the largest shock of all time, ahead of Santa's identity and the Tooth Fairy's wallet. There is a stunning poetry in the moment that his parentage is revealed. Luke loses a hand, something personal and deeply traumatizing, which symbolically places him on a path toward Vader's fate of becoming, as Obi Wan once put it, "more machine than man."

There is also an offer by Vader which is, on its surface, stunning. He offers Luke rulership over the galaxy, as father and son. And Vader is hard to read; we don't know if this is a subterfuge to defeat Luke and turn him to the Dark Side or if it's a threat to unite and decapitate the Empire of its emperor.

Han faces a fate that is utterly unique, a brilliant invention that is horrific and dandy for the plot. His exchange with Leia--her "I love you," his "I know"--is one for the ages.

The film is beautifully shot and precisely paced. It looks amazing, even today, and it runs like the greatest of big films. It is thrilling, its plot revelations astounding and it raises the whole universe to another level of credibility and destiny. It leaves us in an utterly dark hole, a deep place of somber reflection at what a dangerous enemy can do when confronted. As Luke stares at his new hand and Leia pines for a lost Han, we know that the final chapter, whatever it is, has already been heavily paid for. What could possibly come next?

Dileep can be reached at dileep@babblog.com.