Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back review 1980

This review of the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, ran in The Weekend Australian on Saturday August 9, 1980.

film scene 'STAR WARS' movies actor Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker with Yoda 'Return of the Jedi' characters Actor Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker with Yoda in

This review of the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, ran in The Weekend Australian on Saturday August 9, 1980.

Star Wars sequel has us begging for more

By Geraldine Pascall

“I don’t believe it,” says Luke Skywalker to Yoda, the Jedi master, who is trying to teach him how to use the Force.

“That’s why you failed,” says Yoda, his ancient netsuke face crinkled with infinite doom.

And that’s when I knew. I hadn’t understood at all, I hadn’t believed. Now I have to admit it, I can hold out no longer.

If I sound a bit like Han Solo arguing with See-Threepio, you’ll understand: the Force has hit and it is irresistible. The Force may even be with me.

I take back what I said about Star Wars: it is not comic-strip cliche and puerile metaphysics dressed up with sophisticated special effects. I’ll give away my Tinker Bell stickers and stop singing Kubrick forever to the tune of the Blue Danube.

If it’s not too late I recant. As long as George Lucas will spend the next 21 years producing the rest of the three Star Wars trilogies - that’s one every three years - I can say it: The Empire Strikes Back is splendid.

It’s not just that The Empire cost more than twice as much as Star Wars ($22 million to $9 million) and that it has 414 separate special effects to the other’s 380. Nor that since it’s opening in the United States in May it’s been doing better box-office than Star Wars at the same time and Star Wars, which at last count had hit $500 million, is the biggest grossing film ever.

I just have to know what happens next.

The Empire Strikes Back is no bland derivative. It has all the freshness and exuberance of an original. A marvellous space fantasy full of dazzling spectacle, exciting adventure, strange creatures and the mythic clash between good and evil.

It has wit, style, romance and a spanking good story. There is sophistication and care in every production detail and even the characters are allowed a little development. Most importantly it ends on a cliff-hanger.

When Lucas made Star Wars he had an outline that covered the years before the fall of the republic and the years after when the republic was restored. But then he counted himself lucky to get enough money to finish one film. Now he can at least contemplate a solid nine.

Lucas obviously has all the confidence of Star Wars’ success, the certainty, this year anyway, that he knows what the public want and the desire to create legends and not just pop art special effects.

He’s not worried about all the Star Wars imitations or close encounters with relative failures like Star Trek, The Black Hole and Alien. As story writer and executive producer - all the films will have different directors, this time Irvin Kershner - he has gone into this one as enthusiastically as the first. He’s certainly not worried about teasing our imaginations.

So The Empire Strikes Back is Star Wars: Part V, the second film in the middle trilogy. There is no neat, they-lived-happily-ever-after ending. It’s a multi-million dollar, 1980 version of those Saturday matinee serials. It’s our movie past and our television present. It’s Jet Jackson, Flash Gordon and Captain Marvel in Panavision and Dolby Stereo.

And who can resist a continuing story?

This one begins, once upon a time in a galaxy far away, on the glacial planet of Hoth. The remains of the brave rebel alliance, under command of the spirited Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), are making a stand against the evil might of the Galactic Empire.

All the old characters are there: the gallant, gee-whiz Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), galactic Galahad and one true hope of the Jedi masters, keepers of the Force; the dashing, daring Han Solo (Harrison Ford), space swashbuckler with an eye on the princess; the tall, hairy Chewbacca, his faithful Wookie co-pilot, and the droids, beeping and tootling along, Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio.

Out in the Empire flagship, sending his robot probes all over the galaxy, is the dastardly Darth Vader, arch villain of the Empire, Dark Lord of the Sith, leader of the Imperial Forces and a Jedi Knight who turned to the dark side of the Force. He is really after Luke Skywalker, to persuade him to use his power for evil instead of good.

And there is Ben Kenobi (Alex Guinness), Luke’s first Jedi teacher and a sort of cosmic fairy godfather who can now only appear as an incorporeal holograph as Darth Vader knocked out two of his dimensions in Star Wars: Part IV.

While Ben talks to Luke and Han saves Luke from freezing to death and Leia rejects Han’s advances with “laser-brain”, there’s a magnificently staged battle, looking for all the galaxy like a remake of a rout on the Russian Front except that the tanks are giant mechanical dinosaurs, the planes are nifty space jets and the guns are disintegrating lasers.

After playing space chicken with an asteroid field, Han and his trusty Falcon, with Chewbacca, See-Threepio and the Princess on board, head for a mining colony space town run by his sometime derring-do friend, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), a new character for the saga and the first black one.

Meanwhile Luke has landed on the murky planet of Dagobah, where Ben Kenobi had told him he will find Yoda, the Jedi master, who has been training Jedi knights for 800 years and who will teach Luke how to use the Force.

The creation of Yoda would be reason enough to make The Empire Strikes Back. This incredible, wondrous fellow - a 26 inch tall puppet operated by Frank Oz, the man who moves Miss Piggy - is the wise old owl of every fairy tale. He’s Wind in the Willows, Beatrix Potter and Hans Christian Anderson. With his wizened face, like the miniature countenance of a Japanese netsuke, his long thin ears that register his emotions and those worldly, knowing eyes, he conveys as much humanity as any live actor.

For the rest there are stunning space battles, betrayals, confrontations, duels, torture and bravery. There is Darth Vader, infinitely more complex and stronger than in Star Wars, towering over it all, almost as grand in his saturnine wizardry as John Williams’ still soaring music; there is Han Solo, captured and frozen.

And throughout, with much more emphasis on the symbolic thrust of the Force than before, there is Luke Skywalker’s quest for this cosmic Holy Grail.

Lucas did not have to go back far for his legends. The Empire Strikes Back is the stuff of the Knights of the Round Table, of Jason and the argonauts, of any pilgrim’s progress.

It is the classic continuing story of man’s search within himself to find the good and the humane and to conquer the irrational. That is the beautiful simplicity of what George Lucas is doing, so successfully and so lucratively. Entertainment is just one part of it.

But I still want to know what happens after this one. I’ll have to wait another three years to find out.