Quick recap: A young man learns the startling truth about his lineage while his friend learns the art of ‘cooling down’.  A good time was not had by all.

Neat!

Fun (?) fact: In the original movie, one of the asteroids was actually a shoe. According to IMDb, ‘The rumor is that George Lucas asked the SFX people to redo the scene so many times that they got annoyed and one of them threw in their shoe’. The scene has since been corrected- or ruined- depending on who you ask.

This is for all you Leia/Wookie shippers out there!

My thoughts: Like any patriotic American, I fully agree that Episode V is the best. I mean, I’m sure there are people who might argue for IV or VI, but when the apocalypse is nigh they will surely see the error of their ways. As for the small percentage of the population who would vote for Episodes I-III, I truly hope they are in therapy getting the help they so sorely need.

So, you ask, why is The Empire Strikes Back the best of the original trilogy?

Well, first of all, slap yourself for even asking. Now, think about all of the pop culture references we have, thanks to this one movie:

• Boba Fett
• Yoda!
• Han Solo frozen in Carbonite
• ‘I love you’ ‘I know’
• the whole ‘I am your father’ thing
• AT-ATs

Tons of stuff that I didn’t even mention are as a result of The Empire Strikes Back. And not just all the fun stuff, this movie is DARK. One of the reasons I love it is because it ends with the good guys losing. I love most superhero movies, but it’s annoying after awhile to have them save the day, only to come back for a sequel and do it all over again. Star Wars is all about the never ending battle of good and evil, which I think appeals to most people and in some crazy sense, makes the world more believable over all.

I got to watch this with my 5 year old on Star Wars Day, since he is just now getting into the fandom. He said he was a little bored by all of the Leia/ Han Solo scenes, but loved anything with R2D2. He was underwhelmed by the big reveal of Luke’s father but I think it was mostly because he was hoping for more info about Chewbacca.

Final review: 5/5

Up next: Being There