richtersaurus's Movie Review of Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

What can I say?
richtersaurus - wrote on 12/02/08

This film is the ultimate in popcorn movie entertainment, and at the same time, a monumental film that has changed the way stories are told in films (especially in sequels, but I'm looking at this film as its own monster). We open with a giant battle, still holding up 28 years later, with animation that still holds up 28 years later. We see the for all intents and purposes first incarnation of Buddha on the big screen in Yoda. We see one of the greatest movie villians appear and disappear for just the right amount of time for us to fall in love with Boba Fett. We see an amazing light saber duel and a huge twist that has rocked the film industry forever.

The one thing though about this film that makes it so good (though it is a little oxymoronic of me), is that all the heroes lose in this. The Rebels lose the Battle of Hoth. Boba Fett gets Han Solo. The supposed friend in Lando Calrissian sells his comrades and his city out. Luke loses a hand and has a mind-shattering revelation. By the end of the movie we're almost feeling like the good guys are back at square one, and the thought of everything being resolved in one movie seems near impossible knowing where they stand.

This film also has the best performance (in my own opinion) of Harrison Ford, who transforms from the bullheaded narcissist from A New Hope to a loving, caring hero until he's frozen and taken away on the Slave spaceship. The movie I believe has also the greatest on-screen romance since Casablanca.

In closing, I must also add about the cinematography about this film. The effin color palette of this movie is so beautiful. The abundance of blue really adds to the cold, gloomy, melancholic feel of the film, and mixed with the oranges of the hellish factory on Bespin, the wise green look to Yoda, or the flood of black used for the emptiness of space really delivers (I think maybe even moreso than Apocalypse Now) an extremely detailed world inside of this movie, and through the use of colors, really helps us rather easily enter the world that we've been thrown into.