My Review of "Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back"

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back came out back in 1980. Of all of the movies in the franchise this has got to be my favorite movie. Watching it back I noticed that the new movies and TV shows are kind of ruining this movie. Still entertainment wise I would equate the original movie like Alien and this would be its Aliens sequel.

The movie starts off not too long after the events of the first movie. The rebels had a big victory with the destruction of the death star. The Empire isn't too happy about it. So they're stalking the rebels while they're hiding on a remote frozen planet called Hoth.

There we get reintroduced to the gang. It seems that they've all bonded pretty well and this first portion of the movie really establishes their tight nit relationship with one another. Luke gets into trouble and despite Han having to go pay his debts to Jabba the Hutt he decides to help his buddy out.

Through Luke's interaction with a wild sasquatch he gets a message from Obi-Wan to go to Dagoba to learn from a mysterious Jedi master named Yoda. This whole first portion of the movie makes for a pretty good introduction and splash to the movie.

Everything gets put into motion when the Empire discover the Rebel's secret Hoth hideout. Everyone gets split apart. Han and Leia are on the run from the Empire and Luke goes to Dagoba in search of Yoda. It then becomes two grand adventures.

Eventually we realize everything becomes interconnected. Darth Vadar is only chasing after Leia and Han to make them bait for his trap for Luke. He as well as Obi-Wan had sensed that Luke has a large connection to the force. Should Vader get Luke to join the dark side instead of the force then all is good with the Empire. It sort of feels a little bit like a role playing video game at that point with destiny and being the one.

This movie has pretty much everything in it. We have such an assortment of characters and they push their characters in this movie. The previous movie just introduced us to the characters but this movie builds upon their personalities. I can see how tons of people would gravitate to this one because everything is much more established.

I relate this to the Alien and Aliens sequel because the first one was done in a more slow burn kind of way. This sequel is much more action oriented and you can tell the budget for the film was way bigger. Everything is grander in scale and they made it work really well.

There is a lot to love about this movie but there's so many things that later movies and TV shows have done that kind of start ruining this movie. One of the big issues is the fact that C3PO and R2D2 are in episodes one through three. You'd think Vader would recognize these droids or them with him. This is similar to the situation with the previous movie and Obi-Wan and the droids. They should never have had the droids in any of the prequels.

A huge problem recently was with the TV show Andor. The timeline for this show is before they were even building the death star. Well there's a ton of politics and money behind this. As a result you see people wiring large sums of money to people. Well this is a huge problem if you look at this movie. The big story is that Han was owing money to Jabba the Hutt. You'd think he'd be able to wire the money to Jabba instead of traveling intergalactically to give it to him personally.

Then again you have to recognize this movie was made in 1980 when this idea wasn't even fathomable. Today it seems a bit weird how they can travel through lightspeed and yet they don't have e-transfers. I really wish the new movies and shows would tone it down with some of the crazy technologies and making things look so huge in fights with the force. They really make these movies kind of not make sense after a while.

Overall, there's still a lot of fun to be had with this movie. It's a fantasy science fiction movie so I can't look at these movies logically. Still you'd think that they'd be consistent with their world building. It makes you confused sometimes. As a movie alone this is still a great movie despite things that have been retroactively added into the franchise lore. I still have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. It's a classic and I'm sure with more changes to the Star Wars franchise this movie will become more and more confusing.