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!

Never Say Never Again (1983)

We’ve been doing this review series for fourteen months now, and I always tease the next installment by saying that “James Bond will return,” but it’s been a bit of a downward spiral these past few months as we hit the doldrums of the Roger Moore era (or should we say reign of error?).  Finally, with 1983’s Never Say Never Again, we can officially say:  James Bond is back, baby.  And with Sean Connery back at the helm, it’s almost enough to overlook the film’s faults.

Essentially a remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again finds Connery as an aging 007 pulled out of therapeutic retirement to counter SPECTRE’s latest plot for world domination.  While investigating Domino Petachi (Kim Basinger), the sister of a dead Air Force pilot, Bond realizes that two missing warheads are in the possession of Domino’s domineering lover Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer).

It seems odd to remake an entry in the canon less than twenty years after Thunderball, but the success of Never Say Never Again is largely due to the work of two men – Sean Connery and director Irvin Kershner (who, of course, helmed The Empire Strikes Back).  Kershner keeps the film moving, avoiding the dull bits with a good action sequence or attractive cinematography, and Connery slips back into the role with all the charisma we’d expect from a veteran thespian.  The decision to foreground Connery’s return as a crucial plot element is an inspired one, and it’s woven quite seamlessly into the tapestry of Thunderball for a film that seems familiar yet cleverly updated. 

The graying Bond plotline fits perfectly with the spa retreat portions of Thunderball, also giving Connery a solid action sequence after a frankly lackluster opening (the jungle infiltration here fails to live up to Thunderball’s jetpack funeral crash).  And Connery’s roguish sense of humor plays well opposite a frustrated M; though the “upper management loathes Bond” plot doesn’t quite mesh with what we’ve seen from previous films, a more welcome change is the newer camaraderie with Q – whose previous frustration with 007 gives way to a warmer embrace when he realizes how much fun it is to have Bond/Connery back.

Indeed, Never Say Never Again is an extremely fun outing for Bond.  It mercifully avoids the slapstick comedy of, say, Octopussy (released the same year), but Connery plays the role with a wry wink and a powerful penchant for opportune one-liners.  Brandauer too, as a contemporary Peter Lorre type, plays his madman baddie with gleeful insanity (which he proudly admits when one character labels him as such).  The big surprise here is Basinger’s Bond girl; while I’m not the world’s biggest fan of hers, she plays second fiddle to Connery without succumbing to the empty-headed bimbo stereotype, instead offering a Domino whose anger at her brother’s death is palpable.  More importantly, Bond’s seduction of Domino is entirely plausible, even in spite of the wiry gray tint in Connery’s sideburns (okay, maybe even because of the gray).

It’s not a perfect Bond film – Goldfinger can rest easy in that regard.  Because it’s a one-off in a sideways universe version of James Bond, we never get closure on Blofeld, who remains at large; it’s a shame, since Max von Sydow’s master criminal role is a treat and mixes menace with that classic British smug satisfaction.  Perhaps the biggest crime, aside from a motorcycle in place of an Aston Martin, is that the score is wholly devoid of the classic Bond theme.  For legal reasons, of course, it couldn’t have appeared, but in this regard Thunderball has the advantage; nothing beats a John Barry score.

If someone somewhere layers a Barry soundtrack over this film, though, we might be looking at a solid silver to stand beside Goldfinger.  As it stands, though, Never Say Never Again is a pleasant detour away from the catastrophe of the mainstream franchise, and I’ll never say never ever to more Sean Connery.

Never Say Never Again is rated PG.  Bond beds three different women, one of whom wears a translucent leotard.  The typical amount of fistfights and gunfights transpire, though with a little more blood than in the mainstream series thus far; one person explodes.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of A View to a Kill (1985) on March 7, 2014!