20. The Empire Strikes Back

by Andrew Cook

I was asked to write about Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back for the countdown. Empire Strikes Back is one of the first films I fell in love with as a kid, and it’s an honor and joy to get to share my thoughts.

Empire Strikes Back is a wonderful film, and an immensely influential one that has defined our approach to sequels and mythological storytelling. It’s beautifully written, filmed, and scored, and Ben Burtt’s sound design is as essential as ever. Empire Strikes Back has a secret weapon, however, that takes it to a new level of depth: context. Empire Strikes Back has the privilege of being intricately connected to six other films, forming a thematic and conceptual nexus that makes each individual film more profound.

I’ll try not to spend too long on plot summary since I’m sure we’re all familiar, but I’d be remiss not to comment on how beautifully the film begins. The Empire Strikes Back opens by rendering the victory at the end of the previous film into a painfully short-lived respite. This is a great beginning in it’s own right, but is perhaps the first example of a great film being made greater by it’s inclusion in a whole. Over the series’ seven films, especially the prequel trilogy, Lucas and his collaborators build a theme of war as inherently Pyrrhic victory, of the need to put an end to violence and exist peacefully. Symbiosis, if you will. This theme begins in the previous film with Obi-Wan’s non-violent sacrifice, and it’s expanded upon here, but it only grows more powerful in subsequent films, and upon viewing the saga as a whole. From the total failure wrought by the heroes’ aggression in The Phantom Menace to the militaristic self-righteousness of the Jedi in Attack of the Clones to the moral decay of Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, reverberations within the saga echo off each other.

As the story starts rolling on the frozen tundra of Hoth, a veritable South Pole that sets off the film’s brilliantly deceptive geographical journey, several things become immediately clear. For one, though Lucas’ world feels just as real and developed as the first time around, ESB exudes a commensurate polish in place of the original’s grubby charm. Another thing we realize is Star Wars has broadened its storytelling style from cheeky Saturday matinee serial to full-on soap opera. The film is just a little slower, more openly dramatic, willing to sink deeper into its emotional beats. A romance blooms between the roguish Han and proud Leia, played with the full weight of a turbulent 50s film romance. It’s hard to understate the effect this has had on film and television. From Sam Raimi’s Spiderman to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, a playful first installment followed by more earnest storytelling in the sequel has become the norm.

Before long our heroes’ stories diverge. Luke leaves the snow for the equatorial swamp of Dagobah, where he begins to train under Jedi Master Yoda. As with Hoth, it’s immediately obvious how big this film feels in comparison to its predecessor. As beautiful as Lucas’ depiction of Tattooine was, Irvin Kershner matches his compositional efforts. Hoth and Dagobah manage to feel even more organic, mysterious, and endless.

Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO take to the stars with Vader in hot pursuit, get eaten by a giant worm that gave me an almost existential terror as a child, and 3PO becomes almost unbelievably insufferable. Vader’s pursuit is filled with tantalizing little odds and ends that are perhaps the most influential aspect of this film: the joy of the unanswered question. Vader’s scars and his conversations with the Emperor and Boba Fett all deepen the mystery of the story without making an effort to provide an answer right away. This applies to Luke’s time with Yoda on Dagobah just as much. The intoxicating curiosity of the dangling thread at once grounds this film and adds a touch of the uncanny. Many of the great science-fiction pieces of the last thirty years have sought to recapture this heady mixture, especially in television. Lost, the aforementioned Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Battlestar Galactica, as well as films like Primer and Donnie Darko owe ESB a debt in this regard.

Finally, the story converges in Cloud City, a kind of pastel noir mining settlement high in the sky of the planet Bespin. Sure enough, as the characters reach a city in the upper atmosphere everything comes crashing down. Han is frozen in carbonite, Leia and Chewbacca lose the person closest to them, and 3PO ends up in pieces, meanwhile Luke is chewed up and passed through the bowels of the city. Our heroes, it seems, flew too close to the sun.

The Empire Strikes Back works very well on it’s own, but it does have flaws. Though the film is in keeping with Lucas’ sensibilities in aesthetic and pacing, it doesn’t quite explore its characters as deeply as the rest of the series. Motivation is often offered, but on the sly, and is often just strong enough to keep the story sensible. Take, for instance, Luke’s decision to leave his training with Yoda and travel to Bespin. The film subtly expresses Luke’s impatience, his need for external attachment and meaning, and the fact that he just plain isn’t ready. His entire time on Dagobah is spent in failure. He fails to identify the Force within Yoda, he fails to balance the stones, he fails to trust the Force in the cave and confront the unconquered aspects of his personality, and he fails to recover his X-Wing. This is all in keeping with Luke as a character, but it isn’t mined for much drama nor does it carry much depth thematically.

When Luke reaches Bespin he doesn’t make much of an effort to rescue his friends, despite them being the reason he came. They rescue themselves while Luke makes a beeline for Vader. The idea of Luke being obsessed with revenge after Obi-Wan’s death in the first film is a tantalizing consideration, but it isn’t meaningfully explored, and the Shakespearean portent of positioning Obi-Wan as the ghost driving Luke to revenge, which would offer both a chance at deep motivation and the ability to contrast this with the pacifism of the Jedi, is a total missed opportunity. Textually, Vader has more motivation to confront Luke than vice versa! To the extent motivation is given in some of these key scenes, it’s mostly functional, a way to get Luke from place to place as needed by the plot.

This is where context comes in. The Star Wars prequel trilogy adds significant depth to Luke’s decision by developing the theme of characters blinded by emotional attachment, and the strength of that attachment causing them to misjudge the consequences of their actions. Seeing Anakin’s overconfidence lead him to failure, and then seeing his guilt over killing Dooku cause him to fall prey to the same passions now threatening Luke throws the dilemma into terrifying relief.

The Prequels add significant depth to Obi-Wan’s refusal to aid Luke in his fight against Vader as well. As presented in Empire Strikes Back his decision seems arbitrary, even petty. Watched alongside the Prequels it becomes clear that Obi-Wan considers Luke’s abandonment of his training in pursuit of revenge to be a moral failure on Luke’s part that goes against his conscience and breaks the Jedi code. This realization, thanks to its context in the broader saga, makes Obi-Wan and Yoda’s sorrowful conversation in the lights of Luke’s rising X-wing hit much harder.

These flaws aren’t merely mitigated by Lucas’ other films; they’re welcomed into the series thematic nexus and become outright strengths. The privilege of seeing Anakin’s failure under the same crucible adds a sense of tension to Luke’s journey and underscores the importance of his staying on the straight and narrow. It shows why it’s dangerous for Luke to have so much of his father in him, but it also contrasts them as people.

Ben Burtt and John Williams’ excellent work with sound design and music, Irvin Kershner’s striking visual composition, and George Lucas and his collaborators’ bold screenplay all work together to deepen and further legitimize Star Wars’ magical world. The Empire Strikes Back is vintage Star Wars, which more than earns it a place on any list of great sci-fi. However, it’s interesting and necessary to note it’s place in a larger saga, how it enriches six other films and how those films enrich it in turn. Its placement in a series makes it an even better film, and even more worthy of discussion.