My The Empire Strikes Back review is going to be short on balance and long on gushing, because this is probably one of the best Star Wars movies and maybe one of the best movies ever. It had it all, and it had one of the darkest endings I’ve ever seen in a film like this. I’d give it a 10 out of 5 and mean it, and I’m only half joking about the number. After A New Hope I wasn’t sure how they’d top it, and they didn’t just top it, they went somewhere I didn’t expect them to go. This is a sequel that treats you like you’re grown up enough to take a downbeat ending, and I loved it for that. It’s the same reason I came round on Spider-Man 2, where the hero hits bottom before he gets back up, and why Captain America: The Winter Soldier worked on me earlier this year, pulling the floor out from under everything the first film set up.
What follows is a full walk through of the story, with spoilers, because there’s so much in here I want to talk about, and then my thoughts on what worked, what hit me hardest, and why I’m giving it the score I am. If you haven’t seen it yet, go and see it first. It’s worth going in cold.
The story so far: Hoth
It picks up three years after the first film, with the Rebels driven off Yavin and hiding on the ice planet Hoth. Darth Vader has sent probe droids out across the galaxy to find them, and one of them lands on Hoth and sets the whole thing in motion. Luke Skywalker is a commander in the Rebellion now, and he’s out on patrol when he gets knocked off his feet by a wampa, a big white snow monster that drags him back to its cave. Han Solo, meanwhile, is getting ready to leave the Rebels to go and settle a debt with Jabba the Hutt, and there’s a lot of friction between him and Princess Leia over it.
When Luke doesn’t come home, Han rides out into the freezing night on a tauntaun to find him. Luke gets free of the wampa with a bit of help from the Force, and he ends up half frozen in the snow, and the sequence where Han stuffs him inside a tauntaun to keep warm is one of my favourite stretches of the whole film. It’s cold and bleak and you can feel the wind, and Han riding out after his friend says a lot about who he is, whatever he claims. Then the Imperial fleet turns up and everything kicks off. The Rebels have a shield and an ion cannon, but Vader’s troops land and the AT-AT walkers start rolling across the ice, enormous and slow and scary, and the base starts to fall apart.
The battle on the ice
The battles here were excellent. I had the Star Wars action figures, the same kind of thing as G.I. Joe but with the Rebels and the Empire, and the ice planet play set that went with it, and I played with them for years as a kid. The ice planet, the walkers and everything in between were all there, so seeing the real thing on a big screen was just a kick. The AT-ATs coming over the ridge are huge, and watching the snowspeeders try to bring them down with tow cables is great stuff. It’s a big battle and you can follow every beat of it, which not many films manage. The closest recent thing I can think of is the finale of The Avengers, which also keeps a huge fight readable from start to finish. Luke gets one of the walkers with a grenade and a lot of nerve, and it’s a proper hero moment.
What I love is that the Rebels lose. They get out, but the base is gone and the Empire is winning, which is not what you expect from the second film in a series that started with a happy ending. Leia gets away with Han, Chewbacca and C-3PO in the Millennium Falcon, and Luke heads off in his X-wing with R2-D2 to follow what Obi-Wan’s ghost told him, which was to go to the Dagobah system and find a Jedi Master. The heroes are all running, and Vader is right behind them, and the film never lets you forget it.
The Falcon, the asteroids and Han and Leia
The Falcon escape, with the hyperdrive that won’t work and the asteroid field that Han flies straight into, keeps the fun going even though things have turned so bleak. It’s a great chase, with the ship dodging rocks the size of mountains while the Imperial ships close in behind it, and it never lets you sit back for a second. Han and Leia end up trapped in a cave together while they wait for the Falcon to be repaired, and it’s here that their bickering finally turns into something more. The romance between them is a real surprise, and it’s one of the things the film does best. Han is a rogue who’s only ever looked out for himself, and Leia is a princess who’s used to giving orders, and watching them circle each other, and finally kiss, is the heart of the first half.
And it’s never as simple as good guys running from bad guys, because everybody’s tested. Luke’s more impulsive now, Leia’s sharper and in charge, and Han is torn between his debts and his friends. Darth Vader is a different kind of threat here too, because he’s not just a villain in a mask, he’s a man with a very personal stake in finding Luke. He hires a lineup of bounty hunters to track the Falcon down, including a quiet, armoured figure called Boba Fett, and Fett’s the one who actually follows them to Cloud City. Everything feels bigger and more dangerous than before, and nobody’s safe.
Dagobah and Yoda
Then the heroes split up, and the film gets properly interesting. Luke goes off to Dagobah after Obi-Wan’s ghost, and it’s a foggy, muddy swamp where he crashes his X-wing into the water and ends up wandering around among the vines, and it feels like a whole different film. He meets a tiny green swamp creature who turns out to be Yoda, a Muppet and a mentor and the wisest person in the film, all at once. The training is simple and strange, with Luke carrying Yoda on his back as he runs through the trees, and Yoda talking in that backwards way that you can’t help but copy afterwards. “Do or do not. There is no try” is the line everyone’s already repeating, and it’s easy to see why.
Yoda tests Luke’s patience, and Luke is a man in a hurry, and he’s got a vision of his friends in danger that he can’t ignore. The cave scene, where Luke faces a version of Vader and sees his own face behind the mask, is a strange and unsettling moment, and I thought it was some of the most interesting stuff in the film. Obi-Wan’s ghost turns up to say his piece, and there’s a sense that Luke is on the edge of something bigger than he can understand. I loved every minute of the swamp. It’s a whole different tone, quiet and mysterious, and it’s a big reason the film feels so rich.
Cloud City and the reveal
Meanwhile Han, Leia, Chewie and C-3PO end up at Cloud City, run by Han’s old friend Lando Calrissian, and it all looks so nice until Vader steps out of the shadows. Lando’s betrayed them to save the city, and you don’t hate him for it, which says a lot for how well he’s written. It’s the sort of thing that makes this sequel so different from a normal blockbuster follow-up. Cloud City is elegant and calm, with the walls and the lights and Lando smiling in his cape, and it’s all so friendly that you know it can’t last. When Vader is sitting there waiting at the dinner table it’s a proper jolt.
What more could you ask for in a movie? You’ve got Luke being trained by Yoda, then going after his friends against Yoda’s advice and confronting Vader, losing a hand, and finding out Vader is his father. The grand reveal of Vader as the father is one of the biggest moments I’ve seen in a cinema, and it landed right in my stomach. The duel in Cloud City is a long, tense scene, with Luke up against someone far stronger than he is and the two of them fighting in the dark among the pipes and the steam. Luke loses his hand, and then Vader tells him the truth, and Luke chooses to fall rather than join him. It’s one of the most shocking scenes I’ve ever watched, and the way the whole thing plays out, with the music and the silence, is just perfect.
Han being frozen in carbonite and taken away by Boba Fett just before that is an incredible scene. Leia tells him she loves him, and Han, before they lower him in, answers her with a simple “I know,” and it’s exactly the right thing for him to say. It’s a goodbye that’s funny and sad all at once.
That ending
Then it ends, and that’s what really gets me. Luke is hurt and alone, having fallen rather than join his father, and Leia and Lando pick him up in time. Han is gone and nobody knows if he can be saved, and the Rebels are regrouping with no certain victory. It’s about as dark an ending as I’ve seen on a film like this, and I loved that they had the nerve to do it. The last shot, with Luke and Leia and the droids looking out at the stars, is quiet and thoughtful and a little bit hopeful, and it’s a perfect way to close a film that’s been so dark.
I can’t wait to find out what happens next, even though that’s going to be a long wait. I’ve sat through my share of cliffhangers, the end of The Pandorica Opens among them, and nothing’s left me hanging quite like this. It’s a film that leaves you with questions. It had everything I want from Star Wars and a lot that I never expected, and it’s the sort of film I’d happily watch every week.
Rating: 10 out of 5. Really good, and I’d go again tomorrow.