246. Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back; movie review

STAR WARS - THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Cert PG
127 mins
BBFC advice: Contains moderate violence, mild threat

Covid lockdown has taught me that some films really do need greater scrutiny to reveal their quality.
I last watched Irvin Kershner's Star Wars - The Empire Strikes back five years ago and was quite caustic towards it.
However, I have since got into the latest Star Wars trilogy and that may have influenced my thinking as I skipped back in time.
So, for the first time in everyfilm's ten years, I am going to pick apart my own review.

In 2015, I stated that I remained untouched by the "hype around Star Wars". well, I can report that no longer is "sci-fi a (completely) foreign field to me".
And I claimed that it had made so little impact on me that all I could remember was how foul it would have been to spend the night in the inside of one of the dead llama-type creatures.
This time, I was keyed up to see how its history fitted into the recent Star Wars trilogy and the return of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher).
Thus, when I wrote in 2015 that "I was as lost with the storyline of The Empire Strikes Back", I clearly wasn't in 2020.
I also withdraw my accusation that the acting is "appalling, particularly by Hamill and Fisher." Ok, it isn't John Gielgud standard but I had previously missed the tongue-in-cheek nature of the movie,
I am afraid I am still a bit lost on Yoda speaking in badly constructed sentences but I guess it has become another reason to remember the franchise.

Overall, I have begun to enjoy its familiarity and found myself rooting for the good guys even though I knew exactly what was going to happen.
Suddenly, it would appear that the force is with me.

Reasons to watch: A sci-fi classic
Reasons to avoid: Hammy dialogue

Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 8/10

Did you know? In an early draft of the film, Luke was going to travel to the planet of Bog (instead of Dagobah) and receive training from a frog-like Jedi named Minch. In later drafts, Minch was renamed Yoda.

The final word. Mark Hamill: “In the script that everyone got, the line was, ‘You don’t know the truth. Obi-Wan killed your father,’” Hamill says. “I thought, ‘That’s a major twist!’ If Alec Guinness is the ultimate bad guy, I didn’t see that coming.” Starwars.com

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