My reaction was probably very close to the video you linked. I went to see it with my folks as a late B-Day present when I turned 6 in 1980. 
I remember being shocked - being barely old enough to understand just how “wrong” that was. I seem to recall asking my dad how it could be and he was bemused and unhelpful as he wasn’t a huge fan of the series even though I was (Star Wars Poster and big comforter on the bed).
The whole cave sequence made no sense. And it never did, after Jedi, or now.
I thought Vader was very possibly lying about the reveal. Why not? I probably sent a letter in Starlog to that effect.
I might have thought Leia was the "another:, but her being Luke’s sister never crossed my mind.
Even by Empire I was beginning to be dissatisfied with the movies. Jedi didn’t help at all. One good movie and…poop. Now six prime movies later, still one good movie and poop. And Rogue One.
I was 5 when I saw it back in 1980.
I don’t recall reacting to that big reveal at the time, perhaps I was too young to really understand its implications.
However, I do remember being absolutely shocked when Han Solo was frozen in carbonite. The hero losing was not something that I imagined possible at the time. And I had to wait three years to see how it would all be solved. Three years!
Keep in mind that George Lucas based Star Wars on the mythological work of Joseph Campbell to give it emotional resonance.
It’s almost impossible for anyone nowadays to watch The Empire Strikes Back the same way original audiences saw it, because the film’s “big surprises”—not just “I am your father” but also the fact that that little green muppet is actually the Jedi master Yoda—are the things that everybody knows going in.
I was the same age when I saw The Empire Strikes Back, but I hadn’t seen Star Wars before watching it (I think I was vaguely familiar with the characters of the first film from toys or storybooks or whatever).
I don’t think I understood anything that was going on in Cloud City, but I thought the Hoth and Dagobah stuff was pretty cool.
To keep an eye on it?
Or maybe the force is strong where he decided to settle, which is expressed by “hot spots” for both the dark side and the light.
Of maybe it was created spontaneously by the nearby presence of a powerful Jedi Master.
Or maybe evil places like it are common throughout the galaxy, but only the Jedi can sense them.
Who knows? It’s an evil place. They happen.
As a kid, my take on it was entirely different: Luke asks what’s in there, and Yoda replies only what you take with you — and literally the next thing Yoda says is that Luke doesn’t need to take his weapons in there, and literally the next thing that Luke does is take his weapons in there, all confrontational-like. And then Luke is confronted by someone who’s strong in the force and has a matching weapon.
I didn’t see it as an evil place. I saw it as a place where, yeah, if you go in with a fear-leads-to-anger-leads-to-hate attitude, and weapons at the ready, that’s what you’ll encounter — but, I figured, if you go in with the opposite mindset and no weapons, then the cave would hold a mirror up to your soul and show you, uh, sunshine and lollipops and rainbows, is all.
So, uh, not an ‘evil’ place so much as a ‘you’ place.
I agree with this entirely. Also, Yoda is near there because you need it to train Jedi.
It always annoyed me that Yoda later referred to Luke’s “Failure at the cave”, because how was that a failure? I mean, seeing a prophecy about yourself can’t really be a “failure”, can it? Later ignoring the prophecy, maybe, or even embracing it, if it leads you to evil, sure, but just seeing it? How is that a failure?
Kinda like I’ve heard some drugs affect people. You can have a good trip or a bad trip depending on your attitude as the stuff takes hold. Plus / minus some factors based on your underlying personality type.
I definitely owe a big thank you to my sister, psychobunny. She saw the movie before I did, and told me that there was an incredible twist, but didn’t tell me what it was. We then went to see it together, and every time there was a plot development, I would ask, “Is this the twist?” She kept telling me that when it happened, I would know. When we finally got to the reveal, I was completely shocked and knew immediately that that was it. Good times. Empire is still on my list of top ten movies to this day.
Great username/post!
a.k.a. “The Outernet”
It depends on were you hail from; in certain parishes of Louisiana, for instance…
This was a shocking twist at the time, comparable to the end of Les Diaboliques or the true parentage to Evelyn Mulwray’s daughter in Chinatown. And despite all of the gaslighting that George Lucas has done over the years it was not part of some epic story arc or reference to Roman imperial history but a late story development based on an offhand comment by screenwriter Willard Huyck at a dinner with Lucas and his wife, Marcia, who related the story.
As @kenobi_65 notes, there was a lot of discussion and theorizing about whether Vader was lying to manipulate Luke and so forth. I think people at the time mostly ignored the “There is another…” comment between Yoda and the Kenobi-Ghost, and all available evidence points to that being a random hook with no particular plan which was also integrated late in story development instead of the unlikely coincidence of Leia being Luke’s brother who she just happened to find because his uncle bought a stolen droid with the Death Star plans loaded into his memory. It is clear that Lucas never had any kind of masterplan for any of the films (no, not even the prequels) and was never actually sure he’d be able to get the actors back for the third film (Mark Hamill was in a terrible car accident just a few months before the beginning of principle photography on Empire, Carrie Fisher was already experiencing bipolar episodes and evidencing severe addiction problems, and Ford wanted Han Solo to stay frozen in carbonite indefinitely, or just killed outright), so essentially every plot turn in the original trilogy of films was kind of improvised during filming and the scenes stitched together into a coherent narrative in editing.
Stranger
It was a much bigger reveal than Bruce Willis being alive.
Well, yeah; Bruce Willis is usually alive.
Lol, I did not want to spoil a 25 year old movie.
Check back soon.
Campbell’s influence is its own myth. Lucas only found out about Campbell and his theories during rewrites of Empire. It’s a purposeful revisionist history, like most of the “making of Star Wars” story.
That car accident was actually in January, 1977, while the original film was in post-production. I have always suspected that Luke getting his face mauled by a wampa at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back was a way to provide an in-universe explanation for the fact that his face looked a little different after the car accident.