EMPIRE

(Note: the following post has a very high geek rating. I don't geek out too often, but when I do, I go all the way.)
I rented and watched the DVD Empire Strikes Back last Tuesday, the day the trilogy was released. I love all three films, but I think Empire is easily the best of the three. Wampas, walkers, asteroid fields, the Imperial March, the Super Star Destroyer Executor, all there just like I remember it from that warm May day when one of the neighborhood moms took all of us neighborhood kids to see it at Cinema East in downtown Nyack.

I know that George Lucas has said that the Star Wars saga is essentially the story of the corruption and redemption of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, but the original three films (Episodes IV, V, and VI) have, for me, always turned on one character: Han Solo. While Anakin/Vader's story is grandly wrought and mythic in scope, Solo's story has always seemed to me more profound because it is smaller and more personal. He's just a working man trying, in Episode IV, to get paid, and, in Episode V, to score with Leia. It's really only in Episode VI where he has his Rick Blaine-like realization that there are larger issues at stake, and that he has to choose a side and do the right thing. Of course, unlike Rick Blaine, in Solo's case doing the right thing allows him to get the girl, so there is the possibility that he agrees to accept a commission in the Rebel Alliance as a means to sealing the deal, so to speak, with Senator Organa (D-Alderaan).

Throughout the first three films, Solo provides the entry point for audiences into the Star Wars universe, he was hiply sardonic without being anachronistic, providing the perfect "in" for jaded 70s audiences more used to gritty realism that was in filmic vogue. It's precisely the lack of that kind of character that makes Episodes I and II so weak. Okay, there's also the the fact that George Lucas is possibly the worst director of actors since Ed Wood, treating his cast not so much as cattle as like model trains to be run through intricately designed digital sets.

LUCAS: Cut, print. That's a wrap!
EWAN MCGREGOR: But George, I tripped on my robe.
LUCAS: Ahh, don't worry, in reality, Obi-Wan would have that problem all the time. Anyway, we can fix it digitally in post! Let's move on!

And the scripts...oh, the scripts. Everyone speaks in knock-off high-Arthurian profundo-speak, and because there's no Solo character to puncture the grandiosity, it very quickly begins to grate.

All that was pushed to the back of my mind as I thoroughly enjoyed watching Empire again. Yeah, Yoda is still pretty damn impressive for a muppet, but Empire is Solo's movie. Two words, people:

"I know."

Related, and because it makes me feel less geeky by comparison, here's a fellow who has charted the relative strengths of the ships of the Empire versus those of Star Trek's United Federation of Planets. Needless to say, the Empire utterly dominates. Enjoy.