- Joined
- Dec 11, 2018
- Messages
- 1,185
- Trophies
- 0
Audiences might love it, but The Empire Strikes Back is actually the worst Star Wars film.http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20200430-star-wars-why-the-empire-strikes-back-is-overrated?ocid=twcul …
This might come across as a contrarian hot take, but it seems obvious to me that the best film in the Star Wars series is, in fact, Star Wars. (I know we’re supposed to call it ‘A New Hope’ these days, but it was called Star Wars when it came out in 1977, so that’s good enough for me.) What’s more, it seems obvious that The Empire Strikes Back is the source of all the franchise’s problems. Whatever issues we geeks grumble about when we’re discussing the numerous prequels and sequels, they can all be traced back to 1980.
Key events in Star Wars include Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) being knocked unconscious by a wilderness alien; Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) being captured by Darth Vader (Dave Prowse’s body paired with James Earl Jones’s voice); Luke learning about the Force from a Jedi master in a remote cave; a lightsaber duel that ends badly for the good guys; a ‘scoundrel’ abandoning the Rebels before having a change of heart; and a protracted battle between the ranks of the Rebel Alliance and the heavily armed Empire. Switch around the order of those events, and you’ve got The Empire Strikes Back.
But here’s where things get tricky. My grievance with The Empire Strikes Back isn’t that it sticks to the winning formula established by Star Wars: that’s what most sequels do, after all. My grievance is that it also betrays Star Wars, trashing so much of the good work that was done three years earlier. My un-Jedi-like anger bubbles up even before the first scene – at the beginning of the ‘opening crawl’ of introductory text, to be precise. “It is a dark time for the Rebellion,” says this prose preamble. “Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.”
Haaaaang on a minute. “Although the Death Star has been destroyed”? “Although”? The sole aim of the heroes and heroines in Star Wars was to destroy the Death Star, a humungous planet-pulverising spaceship of crucial strategic importance to the Empire. One of their big cheeses announced that “fear of this battle station” would keep every dissenter in line. Another hailed it as “the ultimate power in the universe”. But now the Rebels’ demolishing of the ultimate power in the universe is waved aside with an “although”? That, frankly, is not on. And it’s just the first of many instances when The Empire Strikes Back asks us to pretend that Star Wars didn’t happen.
Watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back one after the other is like watching a hijacking: you’re seeing a juggernaut being held up and driven in another direction. You can sense that Lucas and his team aren’t focusing on the current film any more – they’re setting up the third part in what would now be a trilogy – and they are no longer interested in wars in the stars. Despite its title, The Empire Strikes Back is rarely about the Alliance v the Empire, it’s about who is related to whom and who is in love with whom (the two sometimes overlap). It twists the saga from the political to the personal, from space opera to soap opera. Is it possible to say whether the Empire is better or worse off at the end of the film, after all that supposed striking back? Not really. None of that matters, apparently, compared to the booming declaration: “I am your father!”
Why The Empire Strikes Back is overrated
The general consensus is that the second in the Star Wars trilogy - released 40 years ago - is the best. In fact, it’s to blame for the franchise’s problems, writes Nicholas Barber.
www.bbc.com
