The Empire Strikes Back

So in another article. I talked about the series of events that made It’s a Wonderful Life a classic christmas story. Not to take anything away from what Episode Five is, but I feel it does have that same element.

See, out of the three in the original trilogy, I remember watching The Empire Strikes Back over and over again. This is because at one point the movie would play on NBC a lot of times along with Return of the Jedi  (Which I do not remember as fondly). I don’t know why Star Wars was not played over and over again, must be some odd licensing thing, but during the 80s I remember watching Five (and Six) a few times on network television and it was the first of the Star Wars films I saw.

But I will stay this, this is possibly the reason I love the film so much but I would bet money since the entire world hands down agrees that the Empire Strikes Back is the very best then there has to be more to it than what I am explaining.

The music. Darth’s Vader’s theme song. Changing the tone of the picture. It’s the tune of evil.

A few special effects don’t hold up to my modern eyes (Not even the special edition version, after all those effects are twenty years old), but overall, the movie is made so well that you don’t notice. The actions sequences still hold up today, especially that one on the snow planet with the walkers (Also my  favorite level on Star Wars: battlefront).

Plus I much prefer the Yoda in puppet form than the CGI version that would come later. CGI makes sense cause it allows him a wider range, but the puppet has so much more character. I also feel in this day an age it’s a matter of preference, the mainstream audience as a whole likes CGI much better over anything else, it’s the reason why a lot of stop-motion animation movies are not as successful as 3D animations.