#EMPIRE RANKS STAR WARS SERIES#

None of that matters, apparently, compared to the booming declaration: вЂњI am your father!вЂќ 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. It twists the saga from the political to the personal, from space opera to soap opera. Despite its title, The Empire Strikes Back is rarely about the Alliance v the Empire, itвЂ™s about who is related to whom and who is in love with whom (the two sometimes overlap). You can sense that Lucas and his team arenвЂ™t focusing on the current film any more вЂ“ theyвЂ™re setting up the third part in what would now be a trilogy вЂ“ and they are no longer interested in wars in the stars. Watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back one after the other is like watching a hijacking: youвЂ™re seeing a juggernaut being held up and driven in another direction. And itвЂ™s just the first of many instances when The Empire Strikes Back asks us to pretend that Star Wars didnвЂ™t happen. But now the RebelsвЂ™ demolishing of the ultimate power in the universe is waved aside with an вЂњalthoughвЂќ? That, frankly, is not on. Another hailed it as вЂњthe ultimate power in the universeвЂќ. One of their big cheeses announced that вЂњfear of this battle stationвЂќ would keep every dissenter in line. вЂњAlthough the Death Star has been destroyedвЂќ? вЂњ AlthoughвЂќ? 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. вЂњAlthough the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.вЂќ вЂњIt is a dark time for the Rebellion,вЂќ says this prose preamble. My un-Jedi-like anger bubbles up even before the first scene вЂ“ at the beginning of the вЂopening crawlвЂ™ of introductory text, to be precise. My grievance is that it also betrays Star Wars, trashing so much of the good work that was done three years earlier. My grievance with The Empire Strikes Back isnвЂ™t that it sticks to the winning formula established by Star Wars: thatвЂ™s what most sequels do, after all. And while the screenwriters, Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett, did a clever job of revising and reshuffling our favourite scenes, that hardly compares to LucasвЂ™s achievement of dreaming up those scenes in the first place.Д«ut hereвЂ™s where things get tricky. Switch around the order of those events, and youвЂ™ve got The Empire Strikes Back. 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 ProwseвЂ™s body paired with James Earl JonesвЂ™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 вЂscoundrelвЂ™ 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. Whatever issues we geeks grumble about when weвЂ™re discussing the numerous prequels and sequels, they can all be traced back to 1980. (I know weвЂ™re supposed to call it вЂA New HopeвЂ™ these days, but it was called Star Wars when it came out in 1977, so thatвЂ™s good enough for me.) WhatвЂ™s more, it seems obvious that The Empire Strikes Back is the source of all the franchiseвЂ™s problems.

#EMPIRE RANKS STAR WARS SERIES#

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. Why Star Wars should have stopped at one film This article was originally published in May 2020. вЂњIt is because of the emotions stirred in Empire,вЂќ wrote Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times when the film was re-released in 1997, вЂњthat the entire series takes on a mythic quality that resonates back to the first and ahead to the third.

Directed by Irvin Kershner, itвЂ™s the Star Wars episode with the highest score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes (94%) and from viewers on Imdb (8.7), and the one that is said to elevate the saga as a whole.

ItвЂ™s 40 years this month since The Empire Strikes Back was released, and for most of that time the second film in the Star Wars series has been enshrined as the best: the darkest, the most complex, the most mature.

Empire ranks star wars