On Screen

...When the rebels are forced to evacuate their sanctuary, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and the robots head off in one direction, a jump ahead of the pursuing Imperial forces...

...But more depressing than the masochistic fantasies the film maker has fashioned for his namesake protagonist are the ways he dramatizes them on screen...

...Interestingly, the same cast seems better now than it was in Star Wars, perhaps because the special effects have been relegated to a supporting role...

...A monkeyish creature with rabbit ears sticking out sideways from his wrinkled dome, he looks like a simian John Houseman and sounds like a comic oracle, spouting inverted sentences and fractured English...

...Not since Marlon Brando's assorted beatings and other humiliations in One-Eyed Jacks has any screen hero endured the gratuitous pain that Luke suffers as an apprentice Jedi Knight...

...Luke abruptly abandons his training upon learning that his rebel comrades have been double-crossed by Lando Calris-sian, one of Han Solo's "friends," who has turned them over to Darth Vader...

...At the beginning of the story, the rebel forces led by Luke and Princess Leia, with the reluctant assistance of Han Solo, have retreated to the ice planet of Hoth, where they are under seige by Darth Vader and the Imperial forces...

...one cannot help suspecting that the only reason Lucas installed the Imperial Army in such silly vehicles was to engineer their ludicrous downfall...

...There is a lot more left unexplained in this follow-up to Star Wars—for instance, the total lack of a conclusion...

...With the Imperial soldiers marching him off to be quick-frozen in carbonite, Princess Leia blurts out, "I love you...

...Some of the dialogue throughout the movie is amusing, too, particularly the banter between Han Solo and Princess Leia...

...And as part of his training, Luke does battle in a black pit on Dagobah with someone who appears to be Darth Vader—but inexplicably proves to be Luke himself, or an android that (underneath the Vader outfit) looks just like him, or the embodiment of his Dark Side...

...Now Vader tries to persuade his long-lost son to follow in his footsteps...

...We never leam why he has been taken prisoner or who his captors are (they aren't Imperial forces...

...Later, of course, it becomes clear that her antagonism masks affection...

...Similarly, as he heads the ship into that treacherous asteroid field, she quips, "You don't have to do this to impress me...

...The sinister Vader's plan is to use Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and the robots as bait to lure Luke into the clutches of the Empire...

...In fact, her true feelings surface near the close of the film when Han Solo is apparently about to meet a dire fate...

...When rockets fail to destroy the walkers, Luke orders another tactic: Instead of missiles, the fighters shoot cables and lasso the walkers, bringing them to their knees...

...Then the movie ends—even though Han Solo is still in the clutches of the enemy, Darth Vader remains at large, Luke's severed hand has just barely been replaced with a bionic attachment, the rebellion continues to be on the verge of defeat by the Empire, and the Oedi-pal struggle is far from having been resolved...

...In the course of their escape from the ice planet of Hoth there are some touchy moments, because Han Solo's battered space ship stalls before rocketing into hyperspace...

...While the Imperial forces blast away at them, Princess Leia casually turns to Han Solo and, dripping sarcasm, asks, "Would it help if 1 got out and pushed...

...The Empire Strikes Back does have some enjoyable aspects...

...apparently the sole purpose of the episode is to inflict quite noticeable scars on poor Luke's face...

...Behind that ominous black mask is—are you ready?—Luke's father, who had "disappeared" many years before (or so Luke had been told by his family and Obi-Wan Kenobi...

...On Screen STAR WARS'II: AN UNEQUAL SEQUEL by robert asahina case you hadn't heard, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, C-3PO, R2-D2, Chewbacca the Wook-ie, Darth Vader and all the other heroes and villains of Star Wars have returned...

...Besides that icy cave where Luke was suspended, there is a vast cavern on an asteroid in which Han Solo hides his spaceship from the Imperial fleet (it later turns out to be the mouth of a beast that resembles a giant cousin of the creature in Alien...

...All we can do is try to figure out what George Lucas could possibly have had in mind while writing and producing The Empire Strikes Back...

...Luke," he announces, "it is your destiny...

...Yet the whole sequence seems more ridiculous than exciting...

...Luke's attempt to free his friends leads to a climactic and interminable light-saber showdown: First his hand is sliced off by Vader, who then wounds the hero even more grievously by revealing his own true identity...

...When he first makes his appearance in the swamps of Dagobah, Luke and we assume that Yoda is just another odd local, but the joke is on us once his real identity becomes apparent...

...An easy choice, you say...

...It is a dark time for the rebellion," the opening title announces, but it is darker for Luke, who is suddenly captured while on reconnaissance patrol and hung up by his heels in a frosty cavern...

...In Star Wars we had learned that Darth Vader, once an apprentice Jedi Knight studying with no less a master than Obi-Wan Kenobi, had succumbed to the Dark Side of the Force...

...The sole virtue of this nonending is that it brings an end (at least temporarily) to Luke's misery, Lucas' primary and perverse preoccupation in The Empire Strikes Back...

...Luke's ordeals continue after his rescue...

...On the ice planet of Hoth, for example, the invading Imperial Army storms the rebel settlement in giant "walkers...

...Yoda is one of the more delightful aliens to spring from Lucas' fecund imagination...

...For in glaring contrast to the first movie, an unabashed comicbook adventure featuring the heroic triumph of Good over Evil, Lucas here gives us a morally ambiguous psychological drama that simply cannot be sustained by the still cartoon-like characters and plot...

...He appears to have forgotten that the chief ingredient of Star Wars' success was its spirit of fun...

...These troop transports look like a mechanical hybrid of an elephant and a giraffe, their huge bodies perched on four long legs that shake the ground and pulverize anything unfortunate enough to remain in their path...

...With a group of fighters, Luke flies out to intercept the invaders...

...Somehow, he keeps popping up from beyond the grave throughout The Empire Strikes Back, a feat that is never really explained...

...But it is no more thrilling than anything in Star Wars, and the sequences on and underneath the various planets are considerably less compelling...

...I assume that Leigh Brackett, who was the author of some pretty snappy dialogue for Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep, should be given most of the credit for these exchanges...

...Making this peculiar wild and wizened alien the master of the dignified Obi-Wan Kenobi was a clever satirical stroke...

...c ^^^r till...

...Unlike Star Wars, a visual delight because of all the spectacular and colorful special effects exploding against the background of the black void of outer space, most of the sequel takes place underground...

...Luke heads off in another, toward the planet Dagobah, in search of Obi-Wan Kenobi's old master, Yoda, the only one left in the universe who can instruct him in the ways of the Jedi Knights...

...No amount of lightness, however, can lift this movie out of the swamps of Dagobah...

...After two hours, the movie simply stops, without any resolution of the plot or any warning that (unlike the original) the sequel will require a sequel...

...Luke's confrontation with his Doppelganger is merely one of the many murky episodes in this movie, perhaps meant to match the settings on Dagobah, a planet as muddy as Hoth was icy...

...Maybe he never really understood that...

...We could end this destructive conflict and bring order to the universe...

...After he finds Yoda, Luke is humiliated by him both physically and psychologically, and also is subjected to a series of mysterious, presumably meaningful aphorisms ("You must unlearn what you have learned...

...Yes, Obi-Wan Kenobi, too, even though he was supposedly killed by Darth Vader...

...And Paul Hirsch's usually skillful editing cannot disguise the inadequacies of the script...

...The special effects in The Empire Strikes Back do not stand the test of comparison very well either...

...Yet ultimately it must be said that John Williams' score, which bears no resemblance to his rousing music for the original film, sounds an unfortunately appropriate sour note for the entire production...

...Well, Lucas and his screenwriters, Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, have managed to create so many obstacles for Luke along the path to righteousness that evil begins to appear to him (and to us) as an attractive alternative...

...Or something like that...

...The chase that follows is a dizzying, breath-taking, extraterrestrial roller-coaster ride...

...The best sequence takes place in outer space, when Han Solo, fleeing Imperial Star destroyers, pilots his space ship into an asteroid field...

...Vader's startling revelation is accompanied by the surprising proposal that Luke join him and abandon the rebellion...

...Luke manages to resist his father's advances and to escape with Princess Leia, Chewbacca and the robots...

...It seems that Luke must choose between training for the noble life of a Jedi Knight or surrendering to the Dark Side of the Force...

...Macho even to the bitter end, he replies, "I know...

...Irvin Kershner, who has done some excellent if very different work in the past (including Loving), directs competently enough, but it is obvious that the project belongs to Lucas...