“There is a great disturbance in the Force.”
Being a seven-year old boy who saw The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980) in a theater was a really big deal.
I remember being grossed out by the guts of a Tauntaun, embarrassed by constant kissing between Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) or Leia and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), and I was shocked by the paternal reveal that defines the movie.
Over the years, each of these elements has become less memorable. Instead, I now marvel at the world building, and related product development, that Norman Reynolds’s production design team spearheaded.[1] I also admit to being mildly ashamed of some of the wooden dialogue that pepper the movie despite the professionalized sheen of then-high-end special effects and rich sound design. In the main, I think Empire is a crackerjack example of studio entertainment that sets the table for all modern franchise pabulum in Hollywood.
The story follows George Lucas’s 1977 blockbuster A New Hope. We open with a text scrawl that explains how an imperial super weapon, the Death Star, was destroyed by a group of rangy rebels, and the Empire’s chief cop, Darth Vader (embodied by David Prowse but voiced by James Earl Jones), is now on the hunt for Luke, a Rebel-aligned super boy with telepathic abilities linked to a power called “The Force.”
Onto ice planet, Hoth, where Vader invades the Rebel stronghold, only to see the Rebels mostly escape. Luke heads for Dagobah to meet an old Jedi called Yoda (Frank Oz), who teaches Luke about The Force. And Luke’s friends, Leia, Han, and the bear-like Wookie Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) seeking ship repairs and a good night’s sleep.
Other stuff happens, too. Han and Leia fall in love; Luke talks to ghosts; lots of imperial leaders get choked out by Vader; Yoda speaks gibberish; a pair of droids, R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), kvetch like vaudevillians; and a Black guy, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), joins the cast wearing a terrific cape. The end.
Most people agree that Empire is the best of the original Star Wars movies. I concur, but now that affection is tangled up in so many subsequent developments that “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” is just a stand-in for all the incestuous court intrigues of millennia of human history, as strained through late ’70s American pop culture. I now think a lot about the conditions that made Empire possible and I have a counterfactual: If Vader had kept his britches on as a young man, and if earnest young White people could’ve accepted the guidance of their elders, rather than acting out as the privileged Boomers they are, then the whole mess could have been averted. No Vader sex life = no Luke or Leia = no Jedi awakening = peace.
A corollary point: Yoda is a Zen koan come-to-life as a green-skinned monkey-bat man, and would hanging out with him really be so bad without the Skywalker mythology to sort out?
Answer: no.
–November 30, 2019
[1] I personally have two Princess Leia action figures from 1980, one in Hoth outfit and one in Bespin gown, and I must acknowledge https://www.jedibusiness.com as a resource for discovering all of the many versions, improvements, and derivatives of action figure lines from the Star Wars universe, which definitely kindled my memories of playing with multiple Lukes, Leias, and Hans, and all of their many allies and enemies.
