I watched The Empire Strikes Back a few nights ago, and realized that I probably need to keep a running diary the next time I do something like this. There were too many things I thought of that I've probably forgotten most of them by now. Regardless, here are a few thoughts I've put together about Episode V.
The Opening Crawl! Who doesn't get excited about that? Actually, I got pre-excited, because that opening music was also the DVD menu music, so I heard it and got all tingly, only for me to have to stop leaning back and enjoying myself and start having to use the remote. Blockbuster movies with iconic openings shouldn't have to have a DVD menu. You should just pop it in and go. If you want the menu specifically, that's what the DVD Menu button on the remote is for. Anyway, for the actual start of the movie, I paid attention to the words. And they're pretty lame and dumb. First off, the freedom fighters are actually the Rebel Alliance, and they're not led by Luke Skywalker. At that point, they're led by General Rieeken. Luke's just a commander, way down the chain of command. That's why he's out setting scanners while the generals and higher ups get to sit in the (slightly) warmer base. Secondly, if the galaxy has billions of planets, why is Darth Vader sending out thousands of probe droids? You're off by a factor of a million, there, Darth.
And speaking of Darth, when did we start calling everyone in the Sith by Darth this and Darth that? The Emperor was supposed to be Palpatine. Just that. Even the first few books only had Joruus C'Boath and Exar Kun. It wasn't until later that people decided Darth was a title instead of a name. Now go back and listen to Obi-Wan talk to his former pupil again, and it's really awkward calling him by his title instead of his name. Try replacing Darth with Lord or Sir whenever Obi-Wan speaks, and you'll get the picture.
Anyway, we see The Executor (the giant Star Destroyer) at the beginning. In lore, it's supposed to be 8 km long. The other star destroyers are only supposed to be 1.6 km long. But there's no way that The Executor is only 5 times bigger than the others. It dwarfs them by several time. It must be 30 or 40 km long. It's massive!
Anyway, it sends out its probe droids, which jet away. No one pauses to think that the Empire must have wasted incredibly large amounts of money on disposable hyperdrives. These things must go to thousands of different systems, most of which reside several light years apart. Maybe the Empire's accountants are steeped in the dark side of the Force. *waves hand* "You have been paid today." "[monotone] I have been paid today."
One of the probe droids crashes on Hoth (or as I like to call it, Saskatchewan on a good day). What a (plot-driven) coincidence! Luke goes over to check it out, but gets attacked and knocked unconscious by a wampa. Mmmmm ... Jedi ... The Force adds extra flavour!
Han goes back to base and has a ... not heart-to-heart with Leia, but I'm not sure of the part of the body responsible for sarcasm. Anyway, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher have great chemistry! "I would just as soon kiss a Wookiee" "I can arrange that!" *stalks off* "He could use a good kiss!"
But Han doesn't hear back from Luke, so he goes outside (at night, in the freezing cold) to track him down. Meanwhile, Luke manages to save himself from the wampa by calling on his rudimentary powers of the Force. Unfortunately, the Force doesn't tell him to do prudent thing and kill the wampa, then stay inside the cave, out of the wind. Stupid Force, where are its survival instincts anyway?
So Luke stumbles out into the icy cold and bitter wind. He soon collapses, but Obi-Wan appears to him in a vision and tells him to marry his wife and take her to Bethlehem, where she'll bear the Son of God. Oh wait, sorry! I'm getting my science fiction mixed up. *dodges thrown Christian debris.* No, Ben tells Luke to go to Dagobah and train with the great Jedi Master Yoda ("Y.O.D.A. Yoda. Yo yo yo yo Yoda.")
Han comes riding through the fading vision ("scuse me, old man") and finds Luke. Han's tauntaun collapses from the cold (Han's alright though, 'cause he's the star of the movie), so Han cuts its stomach open with Luke's lightsaber and shoves his hypothermic friend inside, then goes about setting up their emergency shelter.
The next morning, they get found by Rogue Two (Han's cell phone got no bars out there, so he couldn't call in that they were alright and Leia got worried and sent out a search party). Luke gets dunked in a Bacta tank to heal him all up, but the probe droid is still out there. Han and Chewie investigate and manage to trigger the droid's self-destruct, but it's already sent its findings back to The Executor. They've already gotten a number of false needles in the haystack, but Darth Vader is sure of this one. Plus, no one wants to disobey, what with the strangling and all.
So the Empire invades Hoth. The Admiral in charge doesn't do a good job, and gets strangled (tele-strangled, no less. Vader's not even in the same room). The captain (Piett) gets promoted, and sends down his walkers.
These walkers seems wildly impractical. Sure, they withstand almost all blaster fire, but they're vulnerable to tripwires. Tripwires! Even Ewoks could have handled them. Oh, wait, bad example. Also, they appear to have maybe 2 guns total (in lore, there are supposed to be some more on the sides) that can shoot in a cone in front of them. The cone is pretty skinny, so it looks like they're awfully bad for anything other than enemies convinced of the merits of frontal assaults. Then I thought that maybe there used to pacify more primitive civilizations. After all, if 10 m high walkers suddenly showed up in medieval times, we would have fled in terror, or bowed down and worshipped our new (vengeful?) gods.
The rebels on foot, having no sense of strategy (or the common sense to spread out) get shot at by the massive mechanical beasts. Rogue Squadron leads the counter-attack in newly-refitted snow speeders, and do an alright job. Luke flies cover for Wedge as his tail-gunner (Janson) snags a walker with a tow-cable and wraps it up. The walker falls to the ground, and suddenly it's armor is useless. A few blaster shots and it explodes. Apparently the armor effectiveness is proportional to altitude.
After Dak (his tail-gunner) is killed, Luke gets shot down. This is the first of two shots following Luke in on a crash. The first one has the camera right behind Luke's head. The second one (Luke's crash on Dagobah) has the camera right in front of Luke. Both of them look down the nose of Luke's craft as it crashes into whatever (snow, then water). Irvin Kershner likes certain shots, and this is one of them.
After the evacuation is done with the aid of a giant ion cannon that can disable star destroyers (and gee, why don't they bring them everywhere they go? Useful things, those ion cannons), Luke splits off from the rest to go to Dagobah. Han gets Leia out on the Falcon after she can't get to her transport, but bad problems ensue. Specifically, the hyperdrive doesn't work. So when they get pursued by Vader's fleet, they can't outrun them. Both Han and Chewie meddle into the guts of the Falcon, begging the question of who's flying it? They leave the controls unattended (well, Leia's there but not doing much) for a few minutes. But there are star Destroyers right on their tail, requiring many delicate manoeuvres to out-pilot. They eventually run into an asteroid field, because the enemy would have to be crazy to follow them (or just scared spitless of Vader). The enemy follows them in.
Han flies them closer to a large asteroid, and here we get the second of the shots that Irvin Kershner likes. The Millennium Falcon flies away from the camera, then loops around and comes back. It happens twice more - once when they finally get out of the asteroid field and are being chased by Star Destroyers (the loop back to attack their pursuers before clinging to the back of the bridge pylon) and once at the end of the movie, when they loop back around to pick up Luke, who’s dangling from a conveniently placed weather vane (some thoughtful designer thought it should go right under the garbage chute. Right). Anyway, this time they continue the loop to fly into a rather large cave.
Vader gets a call from the Emperor, wanting to know progress, so the Executioner pulls out of the asteroid field while the smaller star destroyers continue to get pounded by rocks. Whenever Darth Vader and the Emperor talk, I always get this in my head. "What the hell's an Aluminum Falcon?!?"
Meanwhile, Luke takes his X-wing to Dagobah. His instruments short out, and he miraculously lands in the tiny patch of land that also contains Yoda. After Artoo gets eaten and vomited back out (great camera work there, actually. We get a shot of Luke's eyes as he follows R2-D2's trajectory, but we don't actually see the droid flying through the air. It's implied, only done very well), Luke sets up camp. It's invaded by a short green creature who'd fit perfectly in with the cast of the Muppets. Really, Yoda's first appearance totally reminds me of a small, green, force-sensitive Fozzie. He takes Luke back to his hut, and then reveals his true nature, while an incorporeal Obi-Wan tries to convince Yoda to train Luke, possibly because they're so much alike. Look out for the part where Luke casually tosses a large snake of the table before ladling some soup into his bowl. Anyway, Yoda gives in, and the training montage begins. (It's a good thing Han Solo didn't have to come here, because there are snakes everywhere!)
Luke pretty much fails spectacularly at being a Jedi throughout this movie. He's quick to draw and ignite his lightsaber, even striking first when he faces Vader on Bespin. He fails in the cave (although he does learn an important bit of foreshadowing). He fails at lifting his X-wing, because he doesn't believe. He finally fails to complete his training, rushing off to save his friends instead of becoming the person who could save the galaxy. The only good thing he did on Bespin was to take R2-D2 there (who saved his friends' butts) and learn about his father.
Really, Luke has his best Jedi moment when he's in the wampa cave on Hoth. He calms himself down and uses the Force to grab his lightsaber. This is especially brilliant because up to that point, he had no idea that the Force could be used for Telekinesis. Up to that point, it had only been used for influencing minds, blocking stinging bolts from a remote with a lightsaber, and improving aim in an X-wing. Oh, and talking once your dead. So the fact that Luke used it for something so physical is rather impressive.
Mind you, he's supposedly had about 3 years after he blew up the Death Star to train, but the only mentor he had taught him for roughly 3 days before he was killed. So Luke's been figuring all this out on his own, and still managed to save his own bacon with his powers.
Anyway, we see the training (and failure) montage, and Yoda explains that sometimes Jedi will get visions. Past, present, futures. Right at that instant, Luke gets a vision (how convenient) of his friends being tortured, so he decides to rush off and save them. Yoda and Obi-Wan urge him to stay, but he's adamant. He packs up his X-wing (and cleans more snakes out of its turbine intakes) and takes off. All that time in the swamp, his cockpit must have smelled like feet.
Back in the dark asteroid cave, everyone's trying to fix the ship. Han and Leia have a moment, but it's spoiled by C-3P0. Leia also spots something outside the ship, so the crew go outside to investigate, putting on gas masks. Here's what gets me about this scene, that I only realized this time I watched it. THERE'S NO AIRLOCK IN THE CAVE! IT'S ALL VACUUM! YOU'D NEED A SPACESUIT. THEIR BLOOD SHOULD BE BOILING, YOU STUPID, STUPID WRITERS!!! Seriously, given what they find out about the cave (it's the digestive tract of a worm), you could expect some of the folds of its intestines to trap air. But then, how would the Falcon fly in and out of that? They fly right out of the mouth into space, implying that the inside of the worm is all vacuum. And yes, it has atmosphere and mist. And Mynocks. How has this been overlooked for so long?
Anyway, they rush back into the Falcon and take off before they get trapped inside the worm, escaping from its mouth. Of course, if they left from its mouth, they probably entered through its other end. Do you know what that means? It means Han Solo might be a hotshot pilot and all around scoundrel, but he literally does not know an ass from a hole in the ground!
After escaping, they're promptly pursued by the Imperials again. The Empire has just hired bounty hunters to look for them (Bossk, Zuckuss and 4-LOM, Dengar, Boba Fett, and IG-88a), but it looks like they won't be needed. Oh, whoops, the Falcon pulls a nifty move and hooks itself to the back of the bridge of the star destroyer. Apparently, there are no windows back there ("hey, there's a giant piece of junk stuck back here!")
They wait until the Imperial fleet breaks up to go to hyperspace, then float away from with the trash that's standard procedure to dump before certain actions. They're closely followed by Boba Fett, in his ship Slave One. Of course, it looks like Slave One is maybe 500m behind the Falcon, leaving us to ask the question "What, don't you guys have a radar?" No, no they don't.
This whole scene begs another question. The Falcon is on Hoth, with a broken hyperdrive. So they take off and dodge into an asteroid field, still in the Hoth system. They emerge from it and get attacked by Star Destroyers, still in the Hoth system. They pull their "gnat on a hippo" routine until the ships go to hyperspace, upon which they float away, still in the Hoth system. Then, Han says they can make it to Bespin. Wait, is Bespin in the Hoth system? No, Han implies it's in a different solar system. HOW CAN THEY DO THAT WITH A BROKEN HYPERDRIVE?!? Actually, this fact has been pointed out before, but it's amazing how many things in this otherwise great movie make me irrationally irritated.
Han, Chewie, Leia, and C-3P0 arrive on Bespin, and manage to wrangle a parking spot on the floating city. Lando Calrissian (man, Billy Dee Williams is charmingly good here) comes out to meet them, toys with Han, and becomes smitten with Leia, blowing Threepio completely off. Threepio gets distracted by a potential R2 unit and wanders off, only to get blasted (poor Anthony Daniels. So good at what he does, yet he's reduced to a robot. A dead robot). Soon they get invited to lunch, only for Boba Fett to show up with Darth Vader. Han shoot him, but Vader blocks the shots with his hand (awesome!) and pulls the gun from Han with the Force.
After enjoying a pleasant meal together (presumably), the rebels get tortured. Just for fun, or possibly just to break their spirit. Chewie has his eardrums assaulted with loud, painful sounds (Justin Bieber?) while Han gets strapped into bed of something that looks quite painful. It's said to fire every pain receptor in the body, which makes sense, given the screams we hear from outside the closed door.
Chewie finally gets some piece and quiet, so he partially reassembles C-3P0. He saved the parts from being disintegrated by Ugnaughts, who decided to play Wookiee in the middle with Threepio's head. Really, you're playing that with a creature that can rip your arms off? Smart guys, these Ugnaughts.
Anyway, Chewie puts Threepio's head on backwards. It's too bad droids aren't plug-and-play. But this leads to the question of why would Chewie screw up like that? He's incredibly bright, from a technologically advanced society, but can't tell a droid's front from his back? Actually, if you look carefully, you can see Chewie quietly urffing to himself. It's possibly he did it just to see if it could be done, or maybe he did it just to piss C-3P0 off. I can see anyone doing that to the most annoying guy of their crew, can't you? I could totally see Leonard putting Sheldon together backwards, just to annoy him. Sheldon wouldn't be able to sit on his favourite spot properly, which would bring no end of delight to Leonard.
Han and Leia get dumped in Chewie's room, and Lando comes in to explain. He had to get the Empire off his back, and that was about they only way to do it. Han will be frozen in carbonite to test the process, to make sure that it's safe for Luke.
Han and Leia admit their love (sort of) right before he's frozen, and then off he gets packed onto Slave One. Lando turns on the stormtroopers to save Han once he realizes the Empire will never let him out of their clutches. Leia convinces Chewia that he's reasonable, and they flee to the Falcon. If you look closely, the stormtroopers have even worse aim here than in A New Hope, and this time there's no excuse for it. Even when R2-D2 spends far too much time dancing around in the middle of a firefight, no one thinks "Hey guys, lets aim for the slow-moving, mobility-impaired robot that constantly hacks our systems and gets those guys out of jams." Nah, they just aim for the walls around our heroes, and boy do they get shot up. Maybe it's the guns that are defective, because with nearly 30 millenia of space-faring, war-bringing technology, apparently no one's thought of putting an auto function on them. What the hell does the Empire use for suppressive fire? They have to pull the trigger each time they need to shoot!
Meanwhile, Luke lands and gets manoeuvred through Cloud City like a diabolical rat maze. He eventually winds up in the carbonite freeze room, where Darth Vader steps out to confront him. Luke ignites his lightsaber and takes the first swing, and they do awkward battle (Luke's still learning the basics, and Vader is mostly mechanical). Vader eventually forces Luke to fall into the Carbonite Freezing device, but he leaps out when Vader isn't looking. Vader turns back to see Luke dangling from some hoses. He takes some whacks at him, but Luke puts his vine-climbing skills to good use (remember that shot? Back on Dagobah, of Luke climbing a vine with Yoda on his back?) by climbing higher. He flips down, grabs his lightsaber, and the battle is rejoined.
Eventually, Luke ends up facing Vader on a catwalk that actually complies (marginally) with OHSA. It has actual guardrails and everything. Too bad guard rails are not really lightsaber-proof. Anyway, Luke loses his hand and nearly his sanity when Vader reveals the truth about his parenthood ("Luke, I am an actor being voiced by James Earl Jones!") No, No that's not true! That's Impossible! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! Anyway, Vader offers Luke the chance to rule the Galaxy together, but Luke (say what you want about his Jedi skills, but he damn sure has the courage of his convictions!) chooses death instead and falls down a hole, slides down a tube, and manages to hang onto the aforementioned weather vane. He calls out to Leia in the Force, and so we get the last of the loop arounds (again, you've had intra-galactic travel for millenia, but no one's invented the handbrake u-turn?) to rescue him.
The movie ends with them (possibly) outside the galaxy, although the background of stars seems to counteract that possibility. If they were outside the galaxy, the other stars would be grouped together in galaxies of their own, not spread out like that. And most of them would be too dim to see. Anyway, Luke gets a replacement hand that looks and functions exactly like a real hand, Lando and Chewie go off to start the plan to rescue Han, and Leia sticks around to help Luke recuperate. Then the credits roll while the Star Wars theme music plays. Yay!
Despite what you may think from reading this post, I absolutely love this movie. Not quite as much as Return of the Jedi (because Jedi had better fights and a happier ending), but quite a lot. Possibly more than A New Hope, but I'm not sure. Anyway, step one in preparation for Star Wars: The Old Republic is something something something ... complete.
