It was 35 years ago today that one of the greatest Science Fiction films, one the greatest sequels, and one of the best films of a franchise was released at the Seattle International Film Festival. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
(It has actually premiered a few days earlier in DC to a limited audience, but I digress.)
Remember 1980? In the world before Twitter, Google, text messages, etc. a person could go see a movie and enjoy the shock, suspense, or twist without (likely) having already been informed by 500 other people.
What was your reaction when the revelation that Darth Vader was Luke's father was revealed?
So why was Empire the "best", in my opinion:
- In general the whole movie, effects included, felt more organic - even the puppet space whale.
- I like that the Rebels lost at every turn
- Luke and Yoda's scenes; Han and Leia's scenes. The interactions between the actors felt real, and not contrived. Luke's training felt like a true struggle, as opposed to going through some motions.
- We still didn't know Luke and Leia were brother and sister, so Luke and Han were still romantic rivals for Leia
- Darth Vader choking multiple people to death for being insolent
- There were no large scale crazy space battles with thousands of ships buzzing around like fireflys at the campfire
- The settings - Hoth looked and "felt" like a frozen wasteland. Cloud City looked like a futuristic place without being completely overboard. (remember this was 1980)
- The lightsaber fight between Luke and Vader in Cloud City. While the action of future lightsaber duels/ fights was more stylish, the harsh simplicity of the Carbon Chamber with the shadows and dull orange glowing lights, and later the grey engineering areas lent themselves to the most believable duel.
