First off, this film requires that you've seen the first Star Wars, there's no build up or character establishment, it just kicks into full gear right out the gate. This is actually a good thing in my opinion, since the film wastes no time, it just assumes you know these people and then gets moving immediately. Since I haven't watched the first Star Wars since I reviewed it, I felt a bit lost at first, but I got back into a Star Wars mood pretty quick. The characters are cool as ever, and I got a lot more behind Chewbacca in this film, in addition to the old characters, a few new ones are introduced that are also pretty cool, mainly Lando and Yoda. Lando, like Han, is a smuggler, and like Han, is one charming scoundrel, he's also a very interesting character, but for reasons I will not spoil, yep, we're still being sensitive with spoilers. Yoda starts off not how I expected him, I didn't expect him to bug the shit out of Luke, it makes sense now I think about it, but it's just not what I expected. When he becomes more like the Yoda I expected, he's cool, he's wise, and that scene when he lifts the sunk X wing was awesome, I'll admit that, I thought it was awesome. Something I'm confused on is that I don't feel this movie has any real bigger shit, what I mean by that is in the first film the rebels were out to destroy the Death Star, but in this film it's the Empire attacking the rebel base, which is only really going on for the first act of the film. The rest of the story is Luke training and Han, Leia, Chewbacca trying to evade the Empire. It's not that I don't like what's here, I actually really liked it, but I think some of it's gravity is taken away without that bigger shit. Speaking of bigger Shit, the Battle of Hoth is every bit as awesome as I'd heard, with the AT-AT walkers and all the lasers, and the Snowspeeder completely wrecking an AT-AT with a tow cable, it was all very cool. I do have one more problem with the plot though, the ending, it does what a lot of sequels do which is leave it's story completely open and with very little resolution of it's own. It bugs me when movies do this, and Empire Strikes Back, from what I've heard, was famous for it's cliff hanger ending, especially after it's bombshell plot twist.
Visual effects, just like in the first one, hold up really well, and still look pretty good, though I am more impressed here, mainly because of the Battle of Hoth and the cloud city. Again the AT-AT's looked really cool, and like I said in I think was my Pit of Peril review real models and pyrotechnics will beat CG any day, here's more of what I mean. The practical effects also look really good, even if Yoda looks a little funny, and I mean funny, when he's climbing around Luke's camp in the swamp it looks pretty dumb. The battles still look cool, with all the lasers and the smoke, and I thought the lightsabre battle was a lot cooler in this film than in the first film. The end of the lightsabre fight was also really cool, possibly one of the best scenes in the film. I've already mentioned Hoth, but the scenes in the asteroid field were pretty cool, mostly when the Tie fighters were chasing the Falcon and hitting the asteroids. But the scenes in the swamp were also really cool, not just because of how they looked, but because they were cool, particularly when Yoda appears and when he raises the sunk X wing. The scenes with Vader were also really cool, though he does choke out a lot of admirals. The cloud city was just the cloud city, but the scenes in there with the characters were really cool. And the carbonite scene was one of my favourite scenes in the movie.
This film is better than the first Star Wars, and it's a film I really enjoyed, it has great characters, a lot of really fun scenes, some dandy special effects and an awesome movie battle. Unfortunately though I do have my problems with the film, I'm not a huge fan of it's big cliff hanger ending. That said I had a lot of fun with Empire Strikes Back, and I'd strongly recommend it.
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