August Archaeology: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

This week, from 1989, it’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is hired to find the Holy Grail and his father (Sean Connery), who has disappeared while in search of the lost artifact. At the urging of hobbyist financier Walter Donovan (Julian Glover), Indy connects with his father’s expedition partner Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody) before discovering that the Nazis too are on his father’s trail. 

1. The ultimate McGuffin. They don’t call it the Holy Grail for nothing. Perhaps more so than the Ark, the Grail is immediately recognizable as an item of unspeakable value, even without the mysticism of eternal life. What’s more, Steven Spielberg and a passel of writers (including George Lucas) reframe the quest for the Grail as a quest for knowledge, not just for power. When Henry Jones, Sr., remarks at the end of the film that he has found “illumination,” he ties together the entire story in one word; amid deception and missed opportunities, the search for the Holy Grail is the search for truth. It can be tasted, but it can never be possessed. 
2. Sean Connery is a gem. Indiana Jones was born after Spielberg was unable to direct a James Bond movie, so it only makes sense that Indy’s father would be played by the best 007 there was. Once Connery comes into the film about halfway through, the movie practically bends around his gravity, and it becomes a centerpiece for his magnetic personality. He’s charming, funny, and so delightfully out of his element in the action scenes. I said two weeks ago that we deserved more movies with Marion Ravenwood; we certainly missed out on more father/son adventures like this one.
3. Friends in every town. We met Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) in Raiders, but they become full-fledged members of the adventure in Last Crusade. What a delight it is to see these two bring their special brands of levity to the film’s heady action sequences! While some have bemoaned the way these characters become comic relief, I think it makes them more likeable, not less. While Sallah counts camels, Brody gets to star in what might be the best joke of the film, in which Indy talks up Brody’s skills before cutting to Brody, hopelessly lost in Iskenderun and far from competent. The implication that Brody and Henry go way back leaves me surprised that we never got a prequel novel or comic book, if only to explain what “Genius of the Restoration” truly means.
4. The nature of choosing wisely. If Brody’s in the best joke of the film, the Grail Knight is surely given the second-best when he remarks, “He chose… poorly.” The climactic trials through which Indy must pass before finding the Grail, leading up to an unexpected encounter with the Grail Knight, are an excellent remedy to the old complaint that Indy doesn’t actually drive the plot of Raiders. Here, Indy has to think on his feet while solving a chamber of ancient puzzles, with one whopper of a payoff. I’d venture to say that J.K. Rowling cribbed a bit for the climax of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, in which her protagonists follow in Indy’s footsteps by braving a gauntlet of magical challenges.
5. But is it the best? As many times as I’ve seen the Indiana Jones movies, I truly cannot say which I prefer – Raiders or Last Crusade. They’re both exceptional, expertly crafted and infectiously fun. Raiders might be closer to the Platonic ideal of an adventure film, but Last Crusade is almost more compelling because the stakes are that much higher. (Plus, see #2 above.) But if you came to these reviews thinking I’d finally take a stand, I’m afraid I must defer. These are two perfect movies, and how do you choose between cookie dough and butter pecan? (Insert your two favorite flavors here.) I suppose the only correct answer is, “Whichever’s closest.” If Raiders is on, it’s Raiders, but if Last Crusade is nearer to hand, that’s the one.

As we ride off into the sunset, sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We’ll be back next week to close out the month with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

 

August Archaeology: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

This week, from 1984, it’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. After dodging gangsters in Shanghai, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) drops into northern India with his pint-sized sidekick Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan) and chanteuse Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw). The theft of a sacred stone leads Indy to Pankot Palace, where an ancient evil has taken root, and our favorite archaeologist may find much worse than fortune and glory in the caverns beneath the palace. 

1. PG or not PG? The old urban legend draws a straight line between Temple of Doom and the creation of the PG-13 rating later that year, and there’s a grain of truth to that. It’s easy to forget how downright scary Temple of Doom can be, especially in its back half; even to an adult, there’s something terrifying about the human sacrifices and death cults that pervade the caves beneath Pankot. It’s all shot in fiery reds, and John Williams takes the music in an unearthly direction, with the result sounding more like a horror film than an adventure flick. Raiders felt tame by comparison, thrilling but never quite as perilous.
2. Hats off to Mola Ram. While the Nazis are still the perfect foil for Indy’s gee-whiz brand of adventuring, let’s not forget what an excellent villain Mola Ram makes for Temple of Doom. He’s scary, with nothing redeeming about him, and his subterranean search for the lost Sankara Stones makes him a surprisingly apt antagonist for our archaeologist hero. Amrish Puri is expertly cast, with an intimidating presence even before he bulges his eyes and gives a mad leering smile. And speaking of “hats,” my compliments to the person who gave Mola Ram the sacrilegious cow skull for a headdress, melding Indian beliefs with Satanic imagery by way of Georgia O’Keeffe.
3. The biggest trouble with her is the noise. Fairly or not, so much of the film’s critical reputation falls on Kate Capshaw’s shoulders. On this latest rewatch, Capshaw is doing exactly what the script wants, playing this big-spirited nightclub singer dragged against her will into a series of nightmares. She screams more than 70 times in the film, which is profoundly irritating, but the problem belongs more properly to the script, which puts this fish so far out of water that everyone protests. She doesn’t grow, she doesn’t change, but neither does her environment change around her. Instead, we get a character who never wants to be here; it is, incidentally, the same complaint I have with most movies about The Hulk. If you don’t want to be a superhero, don’t be in a superhero movie.
4. A reactive protagonist. While some lament that Indy doesn’t govern the action in Raiders, I’m surprised the same complaint isn’t often leveled at Temple of Doom. Unlike the other films, where Indy is off looking for an artifact, Temple of Doom gives him minimal agency in his quest. The Shanghai opener is out of his control, he quite literally stumbles into the main plot, and once he gets to Pankot he’s only reacting to things that happen. Now I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, and perhaps it’s even clever given that this prequel is Indy’s “first” adventure, but it’s somewhat less than engaging to watch a protagonist who’s never quite in command of his narrative destiny.
5. Do I like this movie? Raiders and Last Crusade are Personal Canon material for me, no doubt about it, and I’m sure I don’t love Temple of Doom as much as those two. In fact, I’m usually sure that Temple of Doom is my least favorite Indy movie. But does that mean I don’t like it? I’ve never raced to see it – and indeed wondered if I could get away with August Archaeology without rewatching – but each time I watch it, I’m glad I did. The opener is a real banger, and the finale is terrific (both the mine car chase and the bridge sequence), though I’ll concede that the middle is a bit dull, stuck on gross-out sequences like the exotic banquet and the creepy-crawlie chamber. We’ll revisit the question in two weeks, but isn’t some Indy better than no Indy at all? 

You tell me: is Temple of Doom the worst Indiana Jones film, or is it quietly the best? Sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. We’ll be back next week to ponder whether the franchise’s best is actually Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. 

August Archaeology: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

 

First up, from 1981, it’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is tasked with finding the fabled Ark of the Covenant, a biblical artifact of unspeakable power, before the Nazis unearth it. Indy enlists the help of former flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), and the race is on across continents as old rival René Belloq (Paul Freeman) dogs Indy’s every move.

1. The music. You don’t need me to tell you that John Williams is the greatest film composer of all time. Just listen to the iconic and unforgettable “Raiders March,” thrill to the spectral and mystic “Miracle of the Ark,” and swoon to “Marion’s Theme.” Williams famously drafted two separate themes for Indiana Jones, uniting them both at the suggestion of director Steven Spielberg. Yet the two themes gel so well together, melding the triumphant march with a sense of the hard work it takes to get there. Each musical motif swirls into the film as though Williams is speaking a language all his own, commenting on the plot and driving us furiously into the action.
2. Speaking of the action… I can’t count how many times I’ve seen Raiders, but it’s tremendously exciting every time. From the pulse-pounding opener, which puts one very much in mind of a James Bond pre-credits sequence, through the climactic desert chase, Raiders gets the blood pumping. The best part about the action is how often it’s used to develop and humanize the characters, as when a tired Indy laconically guns down an overeager swordsman. Ditto for the small beats where Indy catches himself enjoying the violence, only to wince and remember that he’s been shot in the arm. Raiders practically reinvented blockbuster movie pacing, and it’s not hard to tell why.
3. What a world! The world-building in Raiders makes writing look easy; I should only hope to write a story this good. The film effortlessly introduces Indiana Jones as a superheroic archaeologist and a world-renowned scholar, and it gives him such a richly textured background filled with fascinating characters who have their own complicated history with Dr. Jones. When we meet Marion or Belloq or Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), we can tell immediately how they know Indy, what each thinks of the other, and what might happen next time they’re in a room together. Moreover, Spielberg deftly introduces the Ark into the film’s world through sophisticated lighting tricks and audio cues (like soft winds or, yes, Williams’s score). It’s an overall unified narrative where no piece is wasted – smart filmmaking at its smartest.
4. Is this the best supporting cast of all time? Harrison Ford rightly takes up a lot of oxygen when we talk about great performances in Raiders, but everyone else nails their roles. Karen Allen is superb in all the moments where she refuses to be the damsel in distress, and it’s only too bad that she wasn’t in more Indy films (or, put another way, that there weren’t more Indy films for her to join). Meanwhile, Paul Freeman dials up the smug smarm of the enemy archaeologist Belloq, a walking moral compromise; he sells the competitive rivalry with Indy almost immediately. Then there’s the stalwart John Rhys-Davies and Denholm Elliott, about whom I’ll say more in two weeks. (So to answer my question, I’m sure I’m forgetting another movie, but Raiders has to be in the conversation somewhere.)
5. The formative years. My dad brought home a copy of Raiders on VHS back during a McDonald’s promo circa 1991, and the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Raiders was a seminal moment in my moviegoing career. For my money, it’s everything a movie should be – a brisk adventure that puts well-crafted characters in impossible situations with nothing less than the fate of the universe at stake. It’s also a period piece, which helps explain my obsession with movies like The Rocketeer and The Mummy. It’s unlikely I saw this before Star Wars, but it’s possible; either way, it set a high bar for every subsequent movie to come. You don’t get on the Personal Canon any other way.

What more can one say about one of the greatest movies ever made? Sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Raiders of the Lost Ark. We’ll be back next week – back in time, that is – with the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. 

Bat-May: Batman (1989)

I have so many fond memories of this movie that I scarcely know where to begin an objective review of Tim Burton’s Batman (affectionately dubbed Batman ’89 by a generation hoping – nay, longing – to distance it from an earlier era’s Batman ’66). I can’t recall with precision the first time I saw the film, but I can say with confidence that it was the very first DVD I owned, a gift from my father when the home video format was in its nascence. But when I first built my Personal Canon in 2016, it was a natural inclusion; I’ve loved this film for years, and it occurs to me that its peculiar bizarre nuttiness has really permeated my identity as a moviegoer.

Batman redefines the Dark Knight more than two decades after the go-go groovy incarnation embodied by Adam West and his Swinging Sixties interpretation. Here, Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) is a brooding specter of unrelenting justice, a mystery to his city and to Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), who’s come to town to photograph Bruce’s vigilante alter ego, The Batman. While busting up criminal activity at Axis Chemicals, Batman inadvertently creates his greatest nemesis when Jack Napier emerges from a vat of acid as The Joker (Jack Nicholson), a self-described homicidal artist with murderous plans for Gotham City.

 

Batman is a film that is so iconic because of how quickly it dominated the cultural landscape. Much has been said and written about the cultural saturation of the film, how it changed the superhero genre and action films more broadly, how it reimagined how a blockbuster could perform at the box office. Nicholson’s Joker is both inextricable from the actor’s persona and yet wholly of a piece with the villain’s own flexible characterization; meanwhile, Keaton is to this day still proudly declaring, “I’m Batman.” While the comics had been taking Batman grim ’n’ gritty since the early 1970s (peaking in 1986 with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns), Batman has the titanic reputation of being the movie that set the superhero genre down the straight and dour path.

 

This is not to say, however, that Batman isn’t a whole lot of fun. In my reviews of Batman: The Animated Series (and even The Killing Joke), I’ve consistently noticed how Mark Hamill’s Joker sets me giggling on a dime, but I’d forgotten that Nicholson’s Joker has the exact same effect. Nicholson’s strength comes from imbuing casual lines like “You’ll never believe what happened to me today” with deadpan sarcasm and repressed theatrical fire, to say nothing of how well that unique Joker look has aged, even on Blu-Ray. His wheezing laugh, too, so quintessential to any successful Joker, is a hoot, especially when it transforms into a fearless manic cackle, often looped over the following scenes, giving the sense that this movie is well and truly The Joker’s. Keaton’s great, too, a perhaps unexpected choice; in fact, he’s so good that we’ve all forgotten that there’s an extended sequence of Bruce Wayne in blue jeans, which feels more out-of-character than having Joker (spoilers) revealed to be the murderer of Thomas and Martha Wayne. But Nicholson doesn’t lean on his reputation; he earns top billing on the poster with a riveting performance that’s so markedly different from Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn two decades later.

 

The older I get, and even as the world begins to retreat from the notion that superhero comics are (or at least ought to be) strictly for kids, I give a lot of thought to why these characters have become a kind of religion for me. Why do I cling to these four-color figures? In the case of this film, I think part of the appeal was that Batman was, for me, one of the first grown-up movies I’d ever seen – or at least it was one of the first that felt grown-up. It was a movie that didn’t talk down to me, didn’t try to pretty up the world. It painted a picture of life as a horrific carnival, Gotham City as a funhouse reflection of what civilization ought to be. It felt larger than life, but simultaneously it seemed entirely within reach, more gothic than the bright colors of a comic book page and yet divorced enough from reality that I could access it without fear. And it was a movie that didn’t really look like anything else I’d seen; it was almost certainly my first Tim Burton film, and the way it manages to make the dated feel timeless gave the film a very specific stylized identity I couldn’t find elsewhere on the video shelf. (His next film, Edward Scissorhands, feels very much a period piece, an homage to 1950s Anytown, USA.)

 

Of course, any discussion of Batman has to acknowledge the exquisitely baroque score by Danny Elfman, which has become the gold-standard anthem for multiple generations of Bat-fans. (No matter what you thought of the theatrical cut of Justice League, you had to love hearing that theme once more. It just felt right, scoring Ben Affleck astride the Bat-Signal.) The Animated Series owes so much to Elfman, as does this film overall. I’ll even venture to say that Elfman’s score is a character in itself, serving the same inextricable role here that John Williams’s work does for Star Wars; put another way, this film doesn’t work without Elfman’s ostentatious gusto over the scenes. That Bat-theme, the playful Joker melodies – heck, even the zany zeitgeist of including Prince in a few key scenes – there’s a reason these tracks are seared into our brains (and it’s not just the Lego Batman games, which aired them on an obsessive loop). Elfman is doing career – and genre – defining work with Batman.

 

If you haven’t seen Batman in a while, it’s high time for another look. On this latest rewatch, I was quite surprised by Alfred’s subplot. If at all, Alfred’s role lives on in cultural memory for the moment when he escorts Vicki Vale into the Batcave, blowing Bruce Wayne’s secret identity. But it’s a moment that the film earns by continually seeding Alfred’s desire for Bruce to move on and find safety in an end to his nightly crusade – all of which, if it seems faintly familiar, seems to anticipate Michael Caine’s “I won’t bury you” plot from The Dark Knight Rises. Michael Gough is quiet and unflappably avuncular as Alfred, a pitch-perfect counterpart to the high mania of the film’s dueling leads, but his deep compassion is so key to the character often brushed off as Batman’s butler. 

 

I was also struck by the mystery atmosphere that pervades the film, which feels quite fresh nearly thirty years later. We’re so used to superhero films that walk us through the origin story as a matter of course. But here, Batman’s backstory is presented as something of a mystery; it’s The Joker who gets the straightforward origin, lending further credence to the notion that the film is as much (if not more) his as Batman’s. Of course, it’s hard to imagine any filmgoer who doesn’t know who Batman is and how he came to be (I’ve only met one such person in my life), but the film introduces the familiar story beats in an innovative story structure that doles it out slowly, with gravity. When we finally get to the shooting of the Waynes, it’s nightmarish and ethereal, a hazy encounter with trauma, and it’s presented as the final cue to understanding Bruce Wayne’s psyche.

 

On that count, I’m not sure that the film succeeds – nor, I think, does it want or need to do so. Burton is content to leave Bruce Wayne as a somewhat enigmatic freak, locked in a chicken-and-egg struggle with Jack Napier. Who created whom? Were it not for the film’s ironclad concrete conclusion, one might almost imagine Burton’s universe operating under the conditions suggested by Heath Ledger’s Joker in his final sequence: “I think you and I are destined to do this forever.” With the news that Michael Keaton will be reprising his role in the Ezra Miller Flash film, at least half of that statement ended up applying. As for me, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time, so I’ll be returning to it forever.

 

Batman is rated PG-13. Directed by Tim Burton. Written by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Billy Dee Williams, Michael Gough, and Jack Palance.

For more Bat-May action, the good folks at Collected Editions posted my review of Batman: The Movies, the comic book adaptation of the Batman Quadrilogy. Give them a click - no one reviews comics like Collected Editions!

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

On the occasion of thirty years (and nine days) after its theatrical debut, Big Trouble in Little China marks the first installment in The Cinema King’s “How’d He Miss That?!” series. By virtue of this series existing from a position of “catching up,” it’s assumed that the critical consensus is already pretty positive on these flicks. (Here’s hoping I’ll still have interesting things to say.) And in the case of Big Trouble, I don’t have a surprise for you – I really enjoyed this one.

Kurt Russell stars as Jack Burton, ostensibly the hero of a battle between ancient factions of Chinatown, roped into action by his gambling buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dunn) to save Wang’s fiancée from the primeval villain David Lo Pan (James Hong). With the help of lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) and sorcerer cum bus driver Egg Shen (Victor Wong), Jack Burton bumbles his way through adventure, but don’t worry, baby – it’s all in the reflexes.

First of all, I have so many thoughts about Jack Burton, who had the effect on me of presenting himself as the surprise father of about five of my best friends and brother or cousin to at least a dozen more. Before this past weekend, Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was my go-to reference when it comes to blundering action comedy, but Jack Burton is truly God’s perfect idiot (Ryan Reynolds, eat your heart out), the first name in action buffoonery. The script does a very clever thing at the beginning when it tells us that Jack Burton is a hero, only for the film proper to reveal that he’s a self-confident figure of swagger and bluster with an empty head and more expository questions than Ellen Page in Inception. It’s inspired casting, then, that Kurt Russell is next to appear as Star-Lord’s father in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, as one could draw a straight line through Jack Burton to Peter Quill.

Jack Burton is a delightful inversion of the “white savior” narrative into which Big Trouble could have easily tripped and fallen, but it’s Jack Burton who does the stumbling, to the delight of this viewer. It reminds me a little of a self-aware Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, turning its gaze inward rather than toward genre films of old. Indy is very much of its time (that is to say, a time gone by), unapologetically throwing back, but Big Trouble is re-visionist in a different way, imagining what Temple of Doom would be like if Indy were wholly out of his element, with neither his whip nor his wits about him – just a plucky can-do attitude and a belief in a cause, even if it’s a world he doesn’t fully understand.

I’m not a big kung-fu/karate movie aficionado – Kill Bill is about the closest I get – but kudos to Big Trouble for tricking me into watching a martial arts movie and then enjoying it. Of director John Carpenter’s work, I’d really only seen Halloween before, but Big Trouble demonstrates he’s as deft with action and comedy as he was with suspense and horror. (I still remember fondly the moment Halloween unironically elicited the cliché, “Oh, no, he’s right behind you!” from me.) After seeing firsthand how versatile Carpenter is, you’ll be seeing more of him around these “How’d He Miss That?!” parts.

At a smidgen more than 90 minutes, Big Trouble is brisk and breezy, with levity that never forgets to let the audience in on the joke. It’s a film that steadfastly refuses to take itself too seriously, and it left me wanting so much more even though the script smartly admits that there’s really nothing more for Jack Burton to do here. I’m exceedingly curious about the recent comic book sequel, to which Carpenter has been contributing, because Big Trouble is the kind of film that introduces you to a bunch of fascinating people you’d like to continue seeing. For one, what’s ahead for Jack Burton and Gracie Law, a Howard Hawks couple by way of the Coen Brothers? And is the kind of movie magic that, like lightning, never strikes the same place twice?

Big Trouble in Little China is big fun, smartly directed and cleverly scripted. I can’t quite say how I missed it, but I’m glad to have caught up with it when I was ready for it.

Big Trouble in Little China is rated PG-13. It’s pretty tame by modern standards, mostly kung-fu action with comedic effluvia, punctuated by a few moments of women wearing wet, semi-translucent clothing.

The Top 10 Return of the Jedi Musical Moments

In the wake of my most recent semimonthly rewatch of the Star Wars trilogy (that’s the Original variety, naturally), and in anticipation of The Force Awakens this December, I present another Top Ten list.  No, not a Top Ten ranking of the films in existence – the correct answer, by the way, is 5, 4, 6, 3, 2, Clone Wars, 1 – but a more musically minded listing.

The task was arduous, though, and I couldn’t bear to throw that many children to the wolves. Rather than rank the ten best tracks from 797 minutes of movies, I’m going to break this down by film. Here we present the third in an ongoing series of lists, “The Top 10 Return of the Jedi Musical Moments!” (Look at it this way, you’re getting more posts – one for each movie!)

A note on sources:  we’re talking, of course, about the music composed by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. For source/cue division, I’m using both the 1993 four-disc “Anthology” box set and the 2004 two-disc “Special Edition” reissue editions, so track listings may vary for those playing the home game.

10. “Han Solo Returns”
 We start the list off with a track that would have been higher, if only more of it had been used in the film. Williams composed a divine tuba motif for Jabba the Hutt, though you won’t hear much of it in the film. What was used, though, sets the mood well for the slimy gangster’s slovenly den of miscreants, with a nice reprise of “Han Solo and the Princess” when everyone’s favorite scoundrel is rescued by “someone who loves [him].”

9. “The Emperor Arrives”
 Williams is the master of the musical leitmotif, and in this piece we see is skill at blending the old with the new. In an amazing piece of musical storytelling, he begins with a brassy rendition of the Imperial March, which surrenders – as its on-screen embodiment kneels – to the Emperor’s theme (about which, more later). For an introduction to the Emperor, it’s perfect, telling us that he’s scary in a different way than Vader is, but it doesn’t do as well out of context because of its brevity on the soundtrack releases.

8. “Fight in the Dungeon”
The first action cue of the film is a great example of what Williams can do with a small piece of music not oriented around particular motifs. Instead, he turns in a delightful one-off track to score Luke’s battle with the rancor, conveying the creature’s shambolic motion and the carnivorous peril of the scene. Let’s be honest, the original rancor special effects were a little bit dodgy, but Williams’s music, as ever, carries the day.

7. “Victory Celebration”
 For all the changes from the original 1983 release through the Special Edition and beyond, here’s one I genuinely don’t mind and indeed prefer. The “Yub Nub” track, though viewed with nostalgic glasses, is a little hokey even for Star Wars. Williams’s second try, though, paints a musical landscape as the Special Edition cut shows us a more galaxy-wide approach to the end of the Empire. It’s a more world-music finale, one that crescendos nicely into the End Titles.

6. “Parade of the Ewoks”
 Say what you will about the Ewoks – characters made to sell toys, teddy bears that make the film too juvenile – Williams weaves them into the musical tapestry of the universe perfectly. Recalling also his work on the Indiana Jones films roughly contemporaneously, “Parade” introduces the playfulness of the Ewoks with a melodic versatility that fits equally well in an action cue.

5. “The Emperor’s Death”
 For the climax of the film, Williams throws it all against the wall – the Imperial March, the Emperor’s theme, the Force theme – and at least for those of us who grew up playing X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, this track is indelibly imprinted on our minds. It fits brilliantly with that arresting image of the Emperor’s electrified fingertips and with Darth Vader’s final decision in the battle for his son’s soul – and, ultimately, his own.

4. “Luke and Leia”
 Lest anyone think that Williams phoned it in for the trilogy’s finale, “Luke and Leia” might be considered his last great original composition for the Star Wars universe (until, that is, 1999). It’s a soft melody that reminds me of the high romances of the 1940s, only it’s applied to the tender moment when Luke divulges that he and Leia are siblings. It’s reprised when Leia breaks the same news to Han, and it’s one of the more underrated pieces in the film.

3. “Into the Trap”
 Speaking of underrated, this track often gets overshadowed by Admiral Ackbar’s sloshy “It’s a trap!” Undeservedly so – its recent appearance on Star Wars: Rebels (which, by the way, has been doing a phenomenal job of remixing Williams’s work) speaks to its potency as a piece of space action music, its militant opening foreboding the titular track and paying off the much slower rendition as heard in... you guessed it, #2 on this list.

2. “Main Title/Approaching the Death Star”
 It initially surprised me that I didn’t have a hard-and-fast favorite opening sequence from the six films: I can name my favorite film (Empire), favorite bounty hunter (Boba Fett), favorite lightsaber duel (Luke vs. Vader at Bespin), but I hadn’t given much thought to “opening scene.” Hands down, though, it’s this one, which opens with a majestically confident version of the Imperial March, showing us all the pomp of the Empire at its peak in the austere yet incomplete Death Star II.

1. “The Return of the Jedi”
Also known as “Sail Barge Assault,” there’s no question that this is the strongest piece from Return of the Jedi. I mean, it’s in the title! In all seriousness, though, it’s a rousing action track that emblematizes the best of Star Wars – the hopeful triumph of the forces of good against overwhelming odds, a wonderful warm-up for the last great battle of the Rebel Alliance, but a confident and well-choreographed reunion of old friends amid the most celebratory rendition of the main theme. It’s no coincidence that the trailer for The Force Awakens evoked this moment with its iconic bum.... bum... BUM, which I daresay is to Star Wars what that iconic first chord is to “A Hard Day’s Night.”

Hit the comments section to tell me your favorite Return of the Jedi musical moment! And be sure to subscribe up above to make sure you don’t miss my move into the prequel trilogy!

The Top 10 Empire Strikes Back Musical Moments

In the wake of my most recent semimonthly rewatch of the Star Wars trilogy (that’s the Original variety, naturally), and in anticipation of The Force Awakens this December, I present another Top Ten list.  No, not a Top Ten ranking of the films in existence – the correct answer, by the way, is 5, 4, 6, 3, 2, Clone Wars, 1 – but a more musically minded listing.

The task was arduous, though, and I couldn’t bear to throw that many children to the wolves. Rather than rank the ten best tracks from 797 minutes of movies, I’m going to break this down by film. Here we present the second in an ongoing series of lists, “The Top 10 Empire Strikes Back Musical Moments!” (Look at it this way, you’re getting more posts – one for each movie!)

A note on sources:  we’re talking, of course, about the music composed by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. For source/cue division, I’m using both the 1993 four-disc “Anthology” box set and the 2004 two-disc “Special Edition” reissue editions, so track listings may vary for those playing the home game.

10. “The Magic Tree”
 While I’m scratching my head at the name of this track – it’s a cave, not a tree – there’s no denying that it’s a subtly effective piece that communicates the eerie nature of Luke’s Dagobah experience without overplaying it. Williams wisely refrains from deploying “The Imperial March” in this moment, going instead for a creepy synthesizer that nicely complements the mystery and atmosphere conjured by director Irvin Kershner’s ominous cinematic vision.

9. “Lando’s Palace”
 This light and breezy track does so much for the film that I almost think it’s the most underrated piece in the film. You may have been taken in by Billy Dee Williams’s charisma (and really, how could you not?), but the bouncing majesty of this piece as he gives his grand tour of Cloud City lulls you into that false sense of security – just before Williams pulls the musical rug out from under your ears and reveals the menace lurking in Cloud City. It recurs in the film’s final segment to remind us of Lando’s true allegiance, an effective refrain.

8. “Luke’s Rescue”
 Another very short piece, and I confess I have very fond memories of hearing it in many Star Wars video games as a youngling (most memorably in the opening scene of Star Wars: Dark Forces II). But it’s a nice bit of musical reassurance that Luke Skywalker is indeed going to be okay, a jaunty 90 seconds or so that communicates the lifted spirits of the snowspeeder pilots at finding their generals alive.

7. “Yoda’s Theme”
 One of a number of original themes Williams composed for Empire, “Yoda’s Theme” makes it this high on the list for being longer than the others thus far, and second, for its versatility in the way Williams uses it throughout this film and the next one. But it also discloses the idea that “wars not make one great” – where Darth Vader gets a brassy bombastic anthem, the great Jedi Master Yoda gets a more contemplative, more melodic piece that bespeaks his great wisdom.

6. “Yoda and the Force”
 And speaking of ways that Williams weaves “Yoda’s Theme” into the film, I get chills thinking about this moment, and it’s due almost exclusively to the way Williams’s score builds as Luke tries, then fails, to lift his X-Wing from the swamps of Dagobah before Yoda’s theme rises triumphantly over the score, with a dramatic fanfare (which you may have recently heard in trailers for The Force Awakens) closing out as Luke and the audience stand agape at Yoda’s power.

5. “The Battle of Hoth”
 This is one of my go-to tracks for pumping myself up, getting myself in gear – all the clichés entailing motivation are addressed by this track. It begins with the Rebels rallying their forces before the Imperials attack, and then it’s ten minutes that just don’t stop. If you think a track of this length is cheating, I can distill “The Battle of Hoth” to the five-note ba-dum ba-dum-bum percussion that scores the march of the AT-AT walkers and that really says what the battle is all about: a hopelessly outgunned force fighting with all they’ve got against a relentless enemy.

4. “Han Solo and the Princess”
 I could never understand why, when “Across the Stars” was released on the Attack of the Clones soundtrack, it was hailed as the first great love theme in the Star Wars franchise when “Han Solo and the Princess” so clearly fits that bill. The best use of it comes when Han and Leia have their romantic “My hands are dirty too” rendezvous, but it’s one of those pieces that conjures up the entirety of the relationship in about three minutes. If we don’t hear this piece in The Force Awakens, we riot.

3. “The Asteroid Field”
 Would you believe that Han Solo doesn’t have his own theme? “The Asteroid Field” is the closest we come, and fortunately it’s a doozy of a track and in any other film would probably be the standout musical sequence. (However... check out the rest of the list!) It’s a grand sweeping action track that begins with a wonderful variation on “The Imperial March” but quickly segues into a frenetic collision of ideas as Han struggles to repair the Falcon before launching his audacious escape attempt with a track that positively soars.

2. “The Imperial March”
 Do I need to justify this one? It’s a track that has very nearly supplanted the “Main Theme” in terms of recognizable association with the film franchise, and it’s so iconic that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t part of Darth Vader’s cinematic DNA from the very beginning.

1. The entire last half-hour of the movie.
Before the masses rally up in arms at my #1 choice, consider the following: I will put the last thirty minutes of Empire against any consecutive half-hour of film score out there, because nothing can be more epic, more comprehensive, more engaging than what John Williams gives us for the finale of Empire. In a musical landscape of love, loss, struggle, and revelation, Williams manages to weave all the film’s signature motifs together in a powerhouse suite of sorts which works just as well detached from the film as it does in context. It’s become my default music lately, perfect for study sessions, long drives, cleaning the house, or strolling around the block. If you want to know why John Williams is the maestro, the last half hour of Empire has your answer.

Hit the comments section to tell me your favorite Empire Strikes Back musical moment! And be sure to subscribe up above to make sure you don’t miss my “Top 10 Return of the Jedi Musical Moments!”

The Terminator (1984)

When I announced in my review of Terminator Genisys that I’d never seen the original Terminator, you’d think I was confessing that I hadn’t had my requisite vaccinations. Such was the public outcry that I pushed James Cameron’s 1984 original to the top of my list. My immediate reaction was one of surprise (at the subsequent direction of the franchise) and then satisfaction. I liked it, but then I hadn’t expected I wouldn’t.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the eponymous Terminator, sent from 2029 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in 1984 before she can become the mother of future resistance leader John Connor. Her best defense is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a soldier with John Connor, also sent back in time, albeit to save Sarah from the Terminator.

There is something quite graceful about the simplicity of the plot, an art lost, I think, on today’s bigger-is-better cinematic culture. Having seen all the other installments in the franchise, there weren’t a lot of surprises to be had from The Terminator, but I was struck by the nimbleness of the film. I almost wish I’d seen this one first! It throws you into the plot without much exposition, allowing for a few nifty twists (like the presumed assumption that Kyle Reese is also a Terminator, until the film reveals that he’s not). Instead, the backstory comes in whispers and gaps, where Kyle gains Sarah’s trust during brief respites from the chase narrative.

This structure of the film led me to a feeling of surprise that The Terminator gave rise to a multi-picture science fiction franchise. In fact, I wouldn’t have expected that at all; I would have sooner assumed that The Terminator was a horror film than science fiction. Aside from the time travel element, which isn’t foregrounded at all, The Terminator has much more in common with John Carpenter’s Halloween than Terminator Genisys. There are all the tropes that were satirized in Wes Craven’s Scream – the relentless killer, the death of the sexually active, the one-last-scare in which said killer gets back up... all of which Cameron executes quite effectively. Indeed, as bored as I have been with Cameron’s more recent bloated material (e.g., Titanic, Avatar), I’m fascinated by what he can do with a much smaller scope/budget.

Going forward, it’s hard for me not to compare The Terminator to the recent Terminator Genisys, and I think the former certainly offers a few lessons as the franchise continues. First, keep it simple: the plotline of the original introduces only as many timelines as it needs to tell a coherent story. Next, keep it focused: the Terminator is terrifying because it’s relentless, not because there are a lot of them. Finally, keep it real: the Stan Winston robotics are much more chilling because they have weight, and there’s something genuinely creepy about the stilted movements as opposed to a smooth computer-generated Terminator. (This from a guy who thought the Cybermen were scarier before they could run.)

There is something very engaging about seeing Sarah Connor’s plot arc develop during the film, and Linda Hamilton does a compelling job going from naïve to tough. But maybe that’s the problem with the most recent films – we’ve covered this ground already, and it wasn’t bad the first few times. It might be sacrilege at this point (or just out of the question, depending on how many contracts have been signed), but maybe it’s time to be done with the Connors. Can the Terminators go after someone else? Can they go further back, maybe to the Old West? (Can there be a joke about Westworld in there somewhere?) Heck, I know they’ve faced Superman at least once.

Whatever the future of the Terminator franchise, it isn’t written yet, and we’d do well to look to the past for inspiration. But let it be a thematic inspiration, not a narrative one. This one was done well enough the first time around, and there are only so many diminishing returns until the well runs dry (and only so many clichés one can fit into a single sentence). As I remember, the second one entertained the heck out of my preteen self; stay tuned to see if it holds up on a rewatch.

The Terminator is rated R. Surprisingly, most of the blood in the film comes from The Terminator, whose flesh coating bleeds like a normal human’s, including a few gruesome moments of self-surgery on his arm and eye. Two men are seen nude from behind, and one of two sex scenes shows a woman topless (the second includes no visible nudity).

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Of the original trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the least fondly remembered.  It’s a prequel which departs somewhat radically in tone and in cast from its two companions, and it contains a few very ill-advised creative decisions, about which director Steven Spielberg has said that the best thing to come out of the film was meeting his wife Kate Capshaw.  But on revisiting, there’s more about Temple of Doom to enjoy than not, though it’s still far from the other two in my eyes.

A year before the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) careens off the heels of one adventure and into an Indian village where the children and a sacred stone have been abducted by the sinister forces of Pankot Palace.  His compatriots, lounge singer Willie Scott (Capshaw) and pint-sized Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), follow Indy into the eponymous Temple of Doom, where they face the brainwashed hordes who obey the devilish Mola Ram (Amrish Puri).

Let’s say the obvious – the film is culturally insensitive to the max, if not unspeakably racist.  It deals heavily in the “white savior” archetypal narrative without challenging that trope in the least, to the point where we literally have a British cavalry arriving just in the knick of time.  Now, it’s possible that Spielberg is playing with the old adventure serial formula from the 1920s and 30s – as suggested by some cliffhangery moments like the inflatable raft parachute over a cliff – and it does give him some of the ookier moments of the movie like the chilled monkey brains dessert, but the fact that the film seems at times virulently demeaning of India is a bit troubling.

The other major issue with the film is, perhaps surprisingly, Kate Capshaw’s performance.  After Karen Allen’s deft and empowering female lead in Raiders, Capshaw’s Willie Scott is a colossal step backwards.  She’s fantastic at screaming her lungs out and standing around rather uselessly, and if that’s the character the filmmakers really wanted to create, kudos to them.  But the result is something akin to the worst excesses of the “Bond girl” stereotype over in the James Bond franchise (to which, to be fair, both Spielberg and George Lucas claim Indiana Jones is partially indebted).  She is largely unwatchable and impossible to sympathize with, and I can’t help but wish Indy and the filmmakers had left her behind on this adventure.

Now for the good news:  I actually liked the film much better than I thought I would.  I’ve been going back and rewatching the films in order, and usually when I do this I skip over Temple of Doom in order to get to the vastly superior (and probably perfect) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  This time, however, I’m glad I stopped off in 1984, because the film does a number of things very right.  For one, the character of Indiana Jones is very well-developed in this film, following a compelling arc from an obsession with “fortune and glory” to a more sobered approach to archaeology and sacred artifacts.  Ford does great work as the protagonist, who’s still heaps of fun to watch.

And for all the cultural insensitivity at play in the film, it does give a very well-crafted tone to the film.  For any of the viewer’s qualms about Temple of Doom, it more than lives up to its name (and the PG-13 rating it inspired).  This original trilogy does seem to be a series of three masterpieces in setting a mood: the first, a sense of high-stakes adventure amid danger; the third, a rollicking romp through the feel-best action comedies.  Here, the tone is nearly relentless dread amid dingy and red-tinted sets; the darkness of the film pays off the character’s arc in a dénouement in which (spoilers?) all balance is restored and good triumphs.  In this sense, Temple of Doom uses its own gloom to say something important about morality.

That, and it’s an enjoyable ride along the way.  In terms of dark second installments in a trilogy, it’s not The Dark Knight or The Empire Strikes Back, but it is a film that, I think, deserves revisiting from older fans who brushed it off in their youth because it wasn’t as lighthearted as its companion films.  Surprisingly, the best part of the film on this most recent viewing wasn’t the infectious fun of Short Round (who remains a scene-stealer of the highest order and gets one of the best moments when he tells Indy, “You’re my best friend”) – it was the fact that Temple of Doom isn’t a creative failure.  It’s a much smarter film than it seems, and I’m surprising myself by how much I liked it.  I went in expecting to review it very much in the “Yes, but...” vein, but instead I’m coming away with a resounding thumbs-up.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is rated PG.  It’s probably the most intense of the four films, dealing with a human-sacrificing Thuggee cult who is fond of removing their victims’ hearts and then dropping them into a pit of lava.  There’s an aborted seduction scene in which “primitive sexual practices” are discussed, and Indy gets in one S-bomb.  Other scenes of violence – fistfights, shootings, stabbings, and being eaten by alligators – play out with either fake-looking or no blood.

Licence to Kill (1989)

Where I thought The Living Daylights was a welcome return to form for James Bond if a little unmemorable, I have much nicer things to say about Timothy Dalton’s second outing as the British superspy.  Although Licence to Kill isn’t a perfect Bond film, it does make me wonder what a third Dalton entry might have looked like.

After his old pal Felix Leiter is attacked on his wedding night, James Bond (Dalton) springs into revenge mode against the man responsible, drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi).  Cut off from official British support and on the run from his own friends as well as Sanchez’s, Bond teams up with Sanchez’s pilot Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) to bring the kingpin’s empire down around him.

If The Living Daylights was a throwback to the Sean Connery era, Licence to Kill is definitely a precursor to the current Daniel Craig incarnation.  Dalton’s Bond is dead serious here, more so than in his debut film.  In fact, Bond only starts cracking one-liners at the very end.  It’s entirely consistent with the tone of the film, which is really quite grim, though it does seem a little less like James Bond and more like a generic action hero.  Either way, Dalton is an infinitely compelling lead; his determination and moral outrage is very well played, and it’s great fun to watch him scheme against Sanchez.

That level of intellectual sophistication is another very welcome tonal shift in Licence to Kill.  Where some Bond films have been content to let Bond blunder into the plot (or, more frequently, have the plot assigned to him), Dalton’s Bond takes charge almost immediately, shooting out when necessary but also – and this is something I’d love to see Bond do more often – setting up dominoes and tricking Sanchez into knocking them over.  It’s nearly impossible for me to reconcile the fact that this film is directed by John Glen, who previously inflicted Octopussy upon us.  It’s probably Glen’s best directorial outing; he keeps the pace moving for the entire runtime with no real dead spots.

In a weird way, Davi fills the humor void left by Bond with a litany of droll puns; for example, after feeding a man to a shark, he notes wryly, “He disagreed with something that ate him” (a line from Fleming’s Live and Let Die novel).  Elsewhere, he carves out a romantic rival’s heart and calls it “my little valentine.”  Davi and/or the screenplay is obviously trying to set Sanchez up as Bond’s true opposite number, though the comparison doesn’t quite work with such a humorless Bond.  It does make Sanchez a memorable villain, a nice change of pace from the world-domineering evildoers who’ve preceded him in this franchise.  (Keep your eyes peeled for a very young Benicio del Toro as Sanchez’s creepy crony Dario.)

Licence to Kill is a very gritty Bond, and for me that’s really not a bad thing.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this film is actually quite underrated in the Bond canon.  True, it’s not an honest-to-goodness Bond film without the punchlines, but it melds enough of the Bond trappings – including a much-enhanced role for Desmond Llewellyn’s gadget-happy Q – with classic late-80s action flair to create an entertaining and enjoyable Bond film.

Licence to Kill is rated PG-13 for “for action violence and drug content.”  This is definitely the bloodiest Bond to date (and maybe still is to this day):  men are fed to sharks, exploded in compression chambers, ground up in a shredder, shot, impaled, exploded, and lit on fire – all in unflinchingly graphic detail.  (I cringed twice, and I’m made of relatively stern stuff.)  Drugs are mentioned, sold, and processed on screen, though none are used.  As far as sexual content goes, this is probably Bond’s least libidinous outing.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of Goldeneye (1995) on June 7, 2014! 

Return of the Jedi (1983)

At the end of the Star Wars trilogy, it’s virtually impossible to top The Empire Strikes Back, which truly is a perfect movie.  But fortunately Return of the Jedi isn’t a fumble – think Godfather III without Sofia Coppola.  It’s a fitting conclusion to the Original Trilogy, though a few beats feel repeated from Star Wars.

The Empire has begun constructing a second Death Star, but before the Rebels can launch their attack Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) must rescue their carbonite-frozen friend Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from the slimy clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt.  After that memorable first act, Luke must contend with the revelations about his father while all his Jedi training tells him he must face Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones) one last time while his friends launch an assault on the Death Star’s shield generator on the forest moon of Endor.

I have a very vivid memory of the first time I watched Return of the Jedi – I was eating bubble gum ice cream (we had gone to Baskin Robbins between the Jabba and Endor scenes), and the lush greenery of the Endor sequence impressed me, since I had only seen Empire Strikes Back on a black and white television.  Now, I’m not that old, but I have a harder time looking objectively at Return of the Jedi than at the prequels, partially because of this childhood remembrance; I don’t have a problem, for example, with the cuddly teddy bear Ewoks (though I think that using Wookiees might have been more interesting), and the first act in Jabba’s palace is really more of an extended precredits sequence in the James Bond tradition.

But it all adds up to something really quite entertaining, even if it steps on the toes of Star Wars a bit with a retread of the Death Star trench run climax.  After the sturm und drang of Empire Strikes Back, Jedi feels refreshing without the whiplash of an abrupt course correction.  The Jabba sequence, more prologue than plot, really only serves to get Han Solo back into the story, but director Richard Marquand keeps it interesting by populating the scene with fascinating visuals and a fantastically confident performance by Hamill.

Hamill’s turn as Luke Skywalker, now a full-fledged Jedi Knight, makes me very excited for the as yet unnamed Episode VII, because by the time Jedi rolls around the core group of performers are obviously very comfortable in their roles; if Star Wars felt a little bumpy for the fresh-faced nature of the cast, the big three are their characters in this installment.  The Han/Leia relationship comes to fruition here, and Ford & Fisher play it very well, very naturally, with a nice reprise of the “I love you”/“I know” exchange. 

The stakes are upped by the appearance, finally, of Emperor Palpatine, portrayed with fine villainy by Ian McDiarmid.  For a role that’s mostly sedentary, McDiarmid exudes menace with every snarled vowel and malicious glint in his eye.  Furthermore, the Force-lightning trick works better here than in Attack of the Clones, because it’s the only weapon the decrepit Palpatine has beyond his words; it’s a fantastic surprise that the wizened old geezer can actually do real damage.  This new villain perhaps mitigates the overly adorable nature of the Ewoks, who manage to dismantle an Imperial garrison with sticks and stones; with Palpatine commanding the fleet from the air, the Empire continues to feel like a true threat.

But in spite of the compounded darkness in the film, Return of the Jedi is probably the most feel-good of the franchise.  Star Wars tastes good going down too, but the original film carries more of a sense of astonishment at innovation than comfort at the company of old friends.  Return of the Jedi feels like the band getting back together, with all the laughs and nostalgia that a fine epilogue should have.  For a series that begins as ill-advisedly as The Phantom Menace did, Return of the Jedi brings us back to where we ought to be – a definitive science-fiction epic for the ages.

Return of the Jedi is rated PG for “sci-fi action violence.”  More of the same from the last outings, really – lightsaber duels, a mechanized hand is severed, explosions and blaster fire, and one skimpy metal bikini.

Thanks for joining us today for “Star Wars Day”!  We’ll be back tomorrow with a review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and then again on Wednesday for the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month!

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

If Star Wars is a perfect movie, it may seem hard to believe that The Empire Strikes Back is a more perfect movie.  The Empire Strikes Back follows religiously in its predecessor’s footsteps, though it turns the excellence up to eleven with a darker yet more human story that takes its characters to their most emotional moments.

Three years after the destruction of the Death Star, the Rebel Alliance’s hidden base on the ice world of Hoth is discovered by the Empire, and the Rebels flee after a spectacular battle in the snow.  Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) journeys to Dagobah to continue his training as a Jedi under the tutelage of the diminutive Yoda (Frank Oz), while Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) fight their mutual attraction and the pursuing Empire.  All three become pawns in a larger game controlled by Darth Vader (David Prowse & James Earl Jones), who wants revenge for the Empire and holds a dark secret about what really happened to Luke’s father...

The Empire Strikes Back amps up everything that Star Wars did correctly but augments the gee-whiz science-fiction angle with a more grounded sense of characterization.  The characters in Star Wars seem a lot like archetypes, which isn’t bad for a high mythic narrative, but The Empire Strikes Back really plays up the personalities of Luke, Leia, and Han (and, to a degree, Darth Vader).  It’s really the result of stronger writing; I’ve chastised George Lucas all along for creating relatively flat characters (cf. the Plinkett rule), but Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay feels much more three-dimensional and even more engaging.

Subsequently, the core cast members all rise to the occasion.  The will-they/won’t-they courtship between Leia and Han is positively electrifying, and Fisher & Ford nail the dynamic with a healthy dose of wry banter and lingering glances.  Even before we fully learn that the two are in a Benedict/Beatrice standoff, the chemistry between them tingles, and you’ll be pulling for them to end up together long before Han delivers his iconic last line (ad-libbed, to boot!).  As for Hamill, he’s given the unenviable task of acting opposite a puppet for much of his screen time, but his work onscreen is so compelling that you might forget Yoda is a glorified Muppet.  (One senses that Yoda’s introduction is what Lucas wanted out of Jar Jar Binks, but as per usual Empire offers a masterclass in how to do a movie right.)

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that The Empire Strikes Back is one of the principal forerunners of our current grim-n-gritty approach to genre narrative.  Without Empire’s focus on the darker side of conflict, both internal and external, I doubt we’d have The Dark Knight and its ilk.  I don’t want to take away from Christopher Nolan’s accomplishment – he really did kickstart the movement in comic book films – but there’s much in Empire that feels comparable to the Nolan level of respect for the source material.  Director Irvin Kershner regards the Star Wars franchise incredibly reverently, telling a story with tremendous sincerity that aims not just to entertain but to follow a strand of very human logic and emotion that just happens to have dueling lightsabers, asteroid fields, and little green gurus.

As in Revenge of the Sith, the third act of Empire is frankly astonishing.  (The key difference being, of course, that the rest of Empire is unproblematically dynamite, as well.)  Underlined all the while by a tour de force score by John Williams, which works beautifully even through the headphones of an iPod, all the film’s plotlines come to a boil on Cloud City, with Han and Leia trapped in Vader’s web.  Emotions are running high – love, betrayal, fear, resolve, Vader’s menace.  As Luke comes to the rescue, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the good-vs.-evil plot, even though we know the forces of good are horribly outnumbered.  The revelation of Vader’s master plan and his darkest secret are exceptionally memorable, very well-crafted by all hands on the creative deck.  It’s a moment that sweeps you up, 34 years later, making you feel as excited as the first time you heard the words, “No, I am your father.”  And even having the prequels tell you that already, even after it’s been homage’d very nearly to death, Jones’s delivery is still powerful enough to send a chill through you.

The film ends in a very grim place, though as the credits roll there’s a breathtaking feeling of having been taken on a whirlwind journey through a galaxy of exciting possibilities, guided by an able pilot in the form of – no, not Han Solo, not even George Lucas – director Irvin Kershner and his able copilots Brackett and Kasdan.  The Empire Strikes Back was long my favorite movie of all time (up until, at least, I finally saw Casablanca), and it’s still Top Ten material for me, standing solidly in the ranks of the perfect movies.

If nothing else, it’s fine context for the strangest thing that Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) has ever done.

The Empire Strikes Back is rated PG for “sci-fi action/violence.”  A few lightsaber duels transpire, and two result in dismemberment.  Darth Vader force-chokes a few minions to death, and a character is frozen in carbonite amid fears that he might not survive.  Other laser blasts and explosions occur, as do a few kisses.

We’ll be back in two hours for the final installment of this review series, a look at Return of the Jedi!