Movie Club: Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back

Community Introductions & Off Topic
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WELCOME EVERYBODY TO THE RELAUNCHED DISCUSSION THREAD OF THE NEW MOVIE CLUB, DESIGNED TO RUN PARALLEL WITH R.O.C.K.S.
A big thanks to everyone that are joining us through all of this.

The next few weeks, Movie Club and ROCKS are doing a tie-in. Move Club we’re doing the original Star Wars trilogy, ROCKS will be focusing on a different animated Star Wars cartoon each week.

This week we’re doing the very first Star Wars film, episode 5, The Empire Strikes Back.

I understand that there are multiple versions of the original trilogy, due to George Lucas’ controversial decision to re-edit them. There is no restriction on which version you watch here. You can watch whichever version of it you choose.

Remember any ideas for films to discuss are most welcome, and should be made on the Movie Club Introduction thread (the sticky one).

Just a friendly reminder to everyone that, whilst fans are obviously welcome to passionately discuss and give their views on these episodes, please remember to keep things on a friendly footing and respect your fellow posters.
Also, please do not post where or how to find the full movie online. And do not post asking others to PM it to you. You are however allowed to watch the movie in whatever manner you want.

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Regarded by many as the best Star Wars movie. I am not sure. I definitely like it but my favourite will always be Return of the Jedi.
Regardless though it is definitely a masterpiece. 5/5.
TESB was the third Star Wars movie I ever seen.
After seeing it, so much of the stuff from Return of the Jedi made a lot more sense.

Hard to pick a favourite scene as there is so many. The battle on Hoth was great, as was Luke’s duel with Vader but if I had to really pick I suppose I would have to say Luke’s scenes with Yoda on Dagobah.

A really refreshing and interesting scene in the movie is Luke’s confrontation with Vader on Bespin. Luke faces Vader to try and save his friends and engages Vader in a duel even though he is very outmatched. Unlike a lot of films and TV shows that have the hero face the villain and suddenly gain talented fighting skills and defeat him. TESB has Vader toy with Luke throughout the battle. Although Vader is impressed with Luke’s skills and his ingenuity he knows he is the superior warrior. It isn’t until near the end of their duel that Luke gets in a lucky hit on Vader that makes Vader react really violently and sever Luke’s hand.

Since 1980-present they have made Luke ,Han, Leia and Chewbacca action figures to represent all of their different looks throughout the film. You think of a scene, there is an action figure of it.

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I wanted to write my views of ESB but after reading what Mark wrote, I think I will just be repeating his words as my feelings for the movie are almost identical to his. :biggrin But I’ll keep it short and write them anyway.

Yes, in pretty much every aspect, ESB is the most superior Star Wars film, and that includes the prequels, the sequels, the midquels and spin-offs. The first was simple good vs evil, with black and white characters. But this one explores the characters in more depth and we see grey areas in them. The story and everything else appears to be aimed at a more mature audience.

The scenes on Dagobah with Yoda are the best. It’s nice that such a great and wise Jedi master is depicted as a funny little alien living a simple life. Even though he acts like a kid at times, his wisdom is beyond question and it is really great how he teaches Luke in the simplest yet most effective ways. “Only what you take with you…” one of the best lines in the movie. Again the special effects team really did a fantastic job with Yoda. If the puppet hadn’t been convincing, the movie would have failed terribly.

But like Mark, my favorite is still ROTJ. As a kid, I didn’t like ESB too much because of its darker tone. As an adult, I have come to appreciate its brilliance in terms of storytelling and performances. Even the special effects are better than ANH. But even now, ESB feels too much like a cliffhanger episode. I don’t get the satisfaction at the end that I got from ANH and ROTJ. There is no “good has conquered evil” ending. It’s left hanging in the balance. Luke’s training is incomplete, he got his butt kicked, Han is frozen in carbonite etc etc.

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Live action will always be better than CGI. It’s amazing how much more life like the puppet in the OT is compared to Yoda in the PT. Although granted they couldn’t have a puppet having a really convincing lightaber duel but they should have used a puppet for all the other scenes and just used the CGI for the duels.

What is interesting though is Luke’s training is all force based like meditation and moving objects. He doesn’t receive and duelling/fighting lessons except for his experience in the cave. As Yoda said Luke wasn’t ready.

It would have been interesting to see how things would have progressed if Luke hadn’t went to try and save his friends. As all he did was go walk into Vader’s trap. If he had have stayed he would have received lots more training from Yoda. Leia and Chewie would have still escaped with Lando’s help and they could all have went after Han together.

@Wilycub have you ever heard of ''Shadows of the Empire’'? It’s a novel from the early/mid 90’s. They also made a video game, graphic novel adaption and a series of figures based on the book. It’s quite good and details Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie etc trying to rescue Han before Boba Fett delivers him to Jaga. It also explains why in ROTJ Leia is wearing the Boasch bounty hunter disguise.
More importantly it explains some of Luke’s experiences which prepare him to face Vader in ROTJ.

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Agreed. Though I think they did use a Yoda puppet in “The Phantom Menace” as the CGI tech wasn’t that advanced to create Yoda (even though they could make a CGI Jar Jar and many other aliens :confused:)

Not familiar with it. But as I said earlier, I’ve never been a huge fan of SW so never really bothered with anything except the movies. I should check it out though. Would be interesting to read in details about things which weren’t shown in the movie.

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In the mid 90’s when I started seeing Star Wars books in hops I usually bought them with my pocket money so by the time I finished High School I had about a dozen or so of the books. I didn’t get around to reading most of them until after college.
I recall at the end of year awards in 1998 I got a book token/voucher for Eason as a prize so my Mum and Dad took me to the city and I recall using it to buy Dark Forces Rising the second book in Timothy Zahn sequel trilogy. I had the other two book Heir To The Empire and The Last Command since 1995. So it was nice to finally complete the set.
Ironically I got those books in the order I got/seen the OT movies. Book 3 first, book 1 second and book 2 third.
My favourite expanded universe novel is The Courtship of princess Leia. The novel has a wonderful illustration painting by Drew Struzan.

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Just finished watching. This is a curious film. The action, the effects are breathtaking.

Not to mention the debut of the Imperial March music. You know, THAT bit dah-dah-dah-duh-ba-dah-duh-ba-dah! Apart from the main title theme, it’s the most iconic bit of music in the whole film franchise.

There’s a lot of noteworthy points about this movie. First off is that absolutely NOTHING goes right for the heroes. In no way whatsoever is their position improved from where they were at the start. Not even the fact that Luke has had a bit of Jedi training.

Secondly, yes, the characters get a lot more depth. One thing that was sort of missing from the first film was any depth to the characters, it was a straight up “McGuffin Action Sequence Movie”, for want of a better description (not that that’s a bad thing, it worked brilliantly!). Han is really annoying at the start towards Leia. And when she kisses Luke - the kiss, incidentally, that I thought I was looking for in the first film! - I got the impression that it was more to rub Han’s nose in it than anything else. Of course later on, she and Han do get somewhat closer, in that cliched romcom way . . . OK, I’ll stop rolling my eyes. It’s pure jealousy.

Luke’s encounter with Yoda is very well done. The first Star Wars film I ever saw was The Phantom Menace, so I knew who Yoda was right away. I envy those people who saw this back in the day when they didn’t know who Yoda was, and felt Luke’s confusion. There he was, looking for this great Jedi master, and here was this silly-but-wise little green character preaching to him like a new-age self-help manual, and who turned out to be the Jedi Luke was looking for. Further proof that Lucas was still winging it a bit, when Obi-Wan’s ghost talked about Yoda having trained him. Evidently Qui-Gon hadn’t been invented yet! But yes, considering that Yoda is a little green puppet with an intrinsic comic side, however else you dress him up, that bit could have broken the film, but it didn’t, it worked well.

We get to see more of Vader’s power with the force here - he can actually kill men with the power of his mind. That’s one bad guy you really don’t want to get on the wrong side of. I’m sure we all have people we’d like to do that to!

Agreeing with @Mark M here, this film didn’t go down the cliched road of the hero saving the day at the end in spite of all the mess-ups earlier. Absolutely Vader was toying with Luke all the way. And of course, yes, Luke didn’t play any part in the other characters’ escape at the end - quite the reverse, he was the one who needed rescuing by them! And of course, the little teaser of Leia’s awareness of Luke in advance of the big reveal in ROTJ . . .

In any event, once again excellent.

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I always found that odd. As Ben tells Luke of the Jedi who taught him, I was quite confused when I first seen Episode One and seen Obi-Wan with Qui-Gon. Don’ get me wrong Qui-Gon was an awesome character, and played by a great actor, it would have been nice to have seen Yoda training Ben.

Although in Episode 2 there is a scene with Yoda training younglings so maybe that was in reference to some training he got from Yoda at the Jedi Temple rather than being Yoda’s Padawan.
Oddly enough though Yoda was Dooku’s Master, whom was Qui-Gon’s Master who was Ben’s Master.

One of the big script changes they made to Episode 3 was Palpatine revealing to Anakin he was his father! One of the reasons Lucas decided to leave it out was he thought it would make the prequel trilogy too much like the original trilogy.

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I can see how that would have been too much of a cliche, yes!

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Indeed although Palaptine being his father would kind of have been a better explanation.

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