Happy Birthday Empire

To celebrates my favorite movie turning 30, I wrote the following piece for ADW #55.

Empire Strikes Back is my favorite movie of all-time. It takes and expands on ideas introduced in Star Wars. The same message of hope against all odds is the present, but the villains really beat the snot out of the main characters for the duration of the film. In the end, seeing that they survived the day (and all the odds), all you’re really left with is hope. Kind of. It might be the best movie ever where the bad guys win.

As in Star Wars, the rebel alliance struggles to overthrow the evil empire. At the onset of the film—on frozen and barren Hoth—we see just how out matched the rebels are. As the rebels flee the planet, the main characters split up. There is room for multiple characters to make a journey of self-discovery—though Luke Skywalker’s is still at the forefront.
Jedi-wannabe Skywalker travels to Dagobah where he meets and learns from Jedi Master Yoda. No character grows more than Luke. He goes from rebel pilot to Jedi-in-training to battling Darth Vader in a light saber duel that culminates with the greatest twist ever: “No, I am your father.”

In a separate part of the galaxy, Princess Leia and rebel pilot Han Solo try to escape Empire capture. Along the way, their characters grow in leaps and bounds from the first film and fall in love with each other, making Han’s innevitable capture all that much more emotional for us, the audience.

Even though the overall outlook of the film is bleak, the message is hope, never giving up. Just when we think Luke’s ship will stay at the bottom of the lagoon forever, Yoda is able to easily raise it through his faith in the Force.

This is my favorite movie of all-time, and I highly recommend it to everyone. It’s a movie that crosses multiple genres—action, science fiction, drama, romance—and pulls it off successfully. It is inspirational, overcoming insurmountable odds and never saying, “I can’t.”