Movie Review
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ollywood loves to make sequels of successful films in the hopes of earning more money. Unfortunately, directors nowadays lose sight of what made the original successful and end up delivering an inferior follow-up. Perfect examples include the recent “Sex and the City 2” and last year’s “Transformers Revenge of the Fallen” but there are exceptions such as “The Dark Knight.” After the unprecedented success of the original “Star Wars” in 1977, a sequel was all but guaranteed and Lucas immediately set to work on writing “Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back.” Curiously, he decided to not direct the film and instead focus more on overseeing the visual effects through his startup company Industrial Light & Magic but maintained complete creative control. Irvin Kershner was personally asked by Lucas to direct and although he was initially hesitant that he would do as good a job as Lucas, his agent changed his mind. “The Empire Strikes Back” is one of the darkest entries of the saga and does what Hollywood still struggles with today: delivers a sequel that raises the stakes and improves upon the original in every way, no small feat considering how well-received its predecessor was. The characters are more developed, the actors are more confident, the action is more intense, and the film ends with an epic lightsaber duel and an ending that has come to define the saga!
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Three years after the destruction of the Death Star on Yavin 4, the fledgling Rebel Alliance is forced to relocate to a new base on the ice planet of Hoth. The Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader (voice of James Earl Jones), is obsessed with finding Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who delivered the shot that destroyed the Death Star. Using his fleet of Star Destroyers, he deploys thousands of probe droids across the galaxy to search for
“No, I am your father!” the rebels and crush their insurrection. Back on Hoth, Luke sees one of the probes crash to the surface and goes to investigate on his tauntaun but a wampa ice creature suddenly attacks him, knocking him unconscious. The creature drags Luke to his cave as his next meal. At Echo Base, Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) becomes concerned when Luke hasn’t returned and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) decides to go look for him despite the temperature dropping to dangerous levels. Luke manages to escape from the wampa by slicing off its arm with his lightsaber but succumbs to the extreme cold. He sees the spirit of his friend and Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), who urges him to go to the Dagobah system and complete his training with Yoda. As the spirit fades away, Han suddenly arrives but since there’s no way to get back to base (his tauntaun froze to death), he sets up shelter for the night. The next morning, Rebel snow speeders rescue them. Han and Leia’s relief that Luke is all right is shortlived, as an Imperial probe droid discovers and transmits Echo Base’s location to Darth Vader. As his fleet comes out of hyperspace, Vader prepares for a ground assault, sending an army of AT-AT’s to attack the base. The rebels try to hold them off with snow speeders as all personnel begin to evacuate but it soon becomes clear that they are fighting a losing
battle and are forced to retreat. Han takes Leia aboard the Millennium Falcon and departs from Hoth. With Echo Base lost, Luke and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) set a course for Dagobah in his personal X-Wing to look for Yoda. Meanwhile, the Falcon is unable to escape the Empire’s fleet of Star Destroyers due to a broken hyperdrive, forcing him to take refuge in an asteroid field. Luke successfully arrives on Dagobah and meets Yoda (voice of Frank Oz), and is shocked by the Jedi Master’s diminutive stature. At first, he refuses to train Luke because he lacks patience but Obi-Wan’s spirit convinces him otherwise. Back in the asteroid field, the Falcon finds itself inside the mouth of a space slug but they manage to escape and evade the Imperial fleet thanks to Solo’s quick thinking. He decides to set a course for Bespin, where his old friend, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), is the administrator of Cloud City. Unknown to Han, Vader has hired a group of bounty hunters to
capture him, which includes the famous Boba Fett (voice of Temuera Morrison). As Luke continues his training with Yoda, he sees a vision of the future where his friends are in pain. Overcome by this premonition, he decides to abandon his training and rescue them despite the insistence of Yoda that he is not ready to face Darth Vader. At Cloud City, Lando agrees to help fix the Falcon’s hyperdrive but Movies & Music