In the ‘Attack of the Clones’ thread, I noticed many people making loving comments about ‘The Empire Strikes Back’
Why do people love this one so much?
What are the best scenes?
The one part of it that bothers me is that Luke’s total Jedi training is probably less than a week. It starts when the Falcoln is in the asteroid field, and ends when they are at Cloud City.
Anakin is in training every day for 10 years and still isn’t a full fledged Jedi. How can Luke learn so fast?
because he has the most potentail of any Jedi EVER!!! Or maybe not.
Part of me is saying, does it really fucking matter??? He’s a FICTIONAL character for fuck’s sake.
And we really don;t know how much time it took for Han etc to get to Cloud City. It could have taken 6 months for all that we know.
Also, wasn’t Luke’s training not finished when he left to go rescue his friends on Cloud City? So to add to what WSLer said, we don’t know how long he was actually training for (although granted, it did feel like a very brief time), and we don’t know how much time he would have had left (and how much time he spent finishing up, between Empire and Jedi).
Soooo… why is ESB considered by so many to be the best Star Wars movie?
Are you sure it’s only a week? How long does it take to get from the Noad System (asteroid field) to Bespin – without a hyperdrive? Therefore, Luke’s training on Dagobah took several centuries. 
Then again, Yoda protested Luke’s abrupt departure by saying that his training was not complete. Of course, when Luke returns in RotJ, Yoda says his training was complete anyway.
[Dante Hicks] Empire had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds Vader is is father, uh Han get frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that is what life is a deries of down endings. All Jedi had was a bunch of Muppets.[/Dante Hicks]
Luke whips through Jedi 101 because he has big potential, and also because he’s receiving one-on-one training from Yoda, the biggest baddest Jedi master of all time.
The biggest difference between the original 3 and PM/AOTC is pacing. In Empire, for example, all of the action follows in a logical sequence; there aren’t any tangent elements like the underwater city, the trip through Naboo’s core, or the pod race (PM) or the romantic subplot, the kiddie Jedi or the factory sequence (AOTC). All of these bits were either unecessary or just overly long. PM/AOTC suffers from too much eye candy; too many set pieces thrown in for visual effect rather than to keep the story moving.
Empire and Return of the Jedi have a major edge over AOTC in the romance department. It wasn’t necessary to drag the plot down with a big sweeping love-in-the-field sequence; simple “I love you”/“I know” exchanges between Han and Leia gave the audience all the information required.
Empire gets high marks in particular because it has just enough romance, a reasonably cool lightsaber duel (though modern jaded audiences might consider it too slow), a solid climax (“I am your father”) and no damn Ewoks or other excessive cuteness.
One thing to remember is that neither Empire nor Jedi were directed by Lucas, and both had co-writers. PM/AOTC were under the exclusive creative control of Lucas himself, and it shows.
Because it had Lawrence Kasdan writing the screenplay. A quick peek at his CV at IMDB shows why.
And leave us not forget that Leigh Brackett, pioneer SF and screenplay writer co-wrote Empire.
Fenris
Bryan,
Then why isn’t New Hope better than Empire?
Well, for one thing, it was written and directed by George Lucas. For another, the SFX budget was a lot smaller.
Still, you can find many people who do like it better. For example, it rates higher on the IMDB Top 250.
I seem to remember leaving the theater in 1980 after watching Empire and thinking Star Wars (i.e. ANH) was better. At the very least, ANH had an actual ending and at the age of 11, I was somewhat unfamiliar with the whole “cliffhanger” concept.
Personally, I’d consider ANH (with Greedo not firing, dammit!) and ESB to be tied for first, with ROTJ, AOTC and PM lagging behind. Lucas, like Gene Roddenberry, had a good idea for a series, but that doesn’t mean either man had the talent to create follow-ups of consistantly high quality.
While not exactly as long and drawn out, I’d say that the detour into the mouth of that giant asteroid dwelling creature was a bit of a tangent element. Granted it doesn’t eat up much time, but it always seemed like a bit of a tangent to me.
I loved Empire for its demonstration of Imperial military promotions. I recall one character who starts out as a lieutenant, Vader chokes all of his superiors, and he’s an admiral by the end. “Apology accepted, admiral.” Gotta love it.
I think the famous “It’s not my fault!” line originated in this one, too…or at least, I don’t recall anyone saying it in A New Hope.
It’s darker, spookier, leaves you hanging, has more cool settings like Cloud City, Degobah, Hoth, etc.
The dialogue is a hell of a a lot better.
But most of all, it didn’t end with another stupid fucking “fire at the energy core, blow up the huge space complex and save the day” scene. I can’t beleive that after giving both Star Wars and Return of the Jedi that ending, Lucas had the gall to do it AGAIN with Phantom Menace. That pissed me off.
Yes, but as tangents go, it was a brief one. Consider what led up to it: Han, Leia, Chewbacca and C3P0 just barely get away from TIE fighters by flying into an asteroid field. Then they settle down from some repairs and obligatory sexual tension, then they get out and walk around for a bit (?), then Han realizes where they are and they bail. The “space worm” part was a 30-second afterthought to a scene that was necessary to establish 1)the Falcon was damaged (leading to the later “garbage” scene) and 2)Han and Leia were getting hot for each other.
Compare this to the “move through the planet core” sequence in PM. At least five minutes are wasted playing “red fish, blue fish”.
In addition to what’s been mentioned here, ESB also has the best sequence in any Star Wars movie: The Battle of Hoth. The first time that you see those walkers deployed and realize how big they are, it’s really scary (especially if you see it for the first time at age 9).
Empire has the most emotional resonance, the most fleshed out characterizations. Darth Vader, the driving force behind this film, is in it far more than the other two, and his coolness permeates every frame. After being a co-conspirator with Tarkin in New Hope and about to be a lapdog to Palpatine in Jedi, this was the only film where Vader was really out on his own, doing his thing. He ruled. And that glorious saber duel at the end…
As for Luke’s training… no, he wasn’t trained. Not much, anyway. Perhaps a month or two of training. Perhaps less. When Yoda dies in Jedi, Luke isn’t a training due to his talents (he simply has the rudimentary skills, he doesn’t know any of the underlying reasons for the Force or how to truly manipulate it), but by default. He’s all that’s left.
But he’s really all he needs to be. By the time of Jedi, Vader is a crippled old man whose been welded into a walking respirator, and the Emperor is physically frail as well. Plus, Luke’s destiny was not to destroy Vader and the Emperor, but to save Anakin. Anakin was the only one who could destroy the Sith… Luke was untrained in any real way, but his rudimentary skills were enough to get him in a position to rekindle the spark of humanity 25 years in the Dark Side had all but crushed out of his father.
ANH is kinda my favorite, just because I used to watch it several times a day on HBO when I was a kid. It’s the most ingrained I guess. I thought ESB was a little on the boring side when it first came out, but I like it better now.
It occurs to me that the AT-ATs weren’t such effective weapons. They’re huge and slow and have relatively little firepower for their size. The body section should have had a missle launcher or a small turbolaser or something.
Two words HOTH BATTLE
The AT-ATs were effective weapons of terror. They were stupidly huge, heavily armoured (the invincibility factor) and people who have a deep fear of being squished wouldn’t want to stick around to fight these things. Just watch all those Pansy rebels fleeing once the AT ATs reached the trenches. That wasn’t effective? They routed the entire defensive line and won the battle!