Still The Best
As a kid I never actually owned a copy of Empire Strikes Back, instead of owning a copy I had recorded it when it was playing on one of the local TV stations onto a VHS which I kept losing. To watch it I had to fast forward through the ads and every time I watched it the quality got a little worse. Empire Strikes Back has always been my favourite movie and I still remember choosing not to watch it some days because I didn’t want the quality to get worse in case I wanted to really really watch it another day. It is quite the Star Wars first world problem I had. In fact, I never owned a copy until about six years ago which to this day I still don’t understand how I couldn’t have owned such an amazing film for such a long time.
Empire Strikes Back is the only Star Wars film I can watch and feel the same way about as the first time I saw it. It’s the only original Star Wars film that I remember watching for the first time and I remember watching the battle on Hoth and being amazed and thinking about how awesome it is. To this day I still think that maybe a little less as more and more Star Wars is thrown at me but still heaps. Empire Strikes Back has this really cool style to it where it is different from A New Hope, in the way the story is told, yet has the same characters and similar emotional levels.
The story in A New Hope is very straightforward and is simply laid out yet the story of Empire Strikes Back is intricate and each scene is the next step towards each reveal, as opposed to simply travelling through space. Luke’s journey and the rest of the gang’s journey are happening side by side as your thoughts and worries are split between the two parties. You wish Luke well in his training yet you know that Han, Leia, Chewie and C-3PO need his help to get away from the empire. You are treated with a similar dilemma to Luke’s as he has to choose between training to be a Jedi or saving his friends.
This is where we get down to what The Last Jedi will be. Many criticised that The Force Awakens was a rehash of A New Hope, despite some big story differences, and now many worry that the same will happen for The Last Jedi but in comparison to Empire Strikes Back. I don’t blame these people because where the story is, right now, does match up perfectly to the story in Empire Strikes Back, Luke with Yoda and Rey with Luke as their friends fight for their lives, and they could easily make the same small mistake that fans thought they made with Force Awakens. I don’t think it’ll happen though.
Empire Strikes Back is notorious for Darth Vader informing Luke that he is Luke’s father and Rey’s story is at a similar interesting point that could be similar. I think what you’ll end up seeing is something that starts to look like Empire Strikes Back but then one moment early on that washes that all away and creates this whole new experience entirely. Imagine if you will a reveal the size of Vader being Luke’s father but at the very start of The Last Jedi. A reveal that you wouldn’t have to wait for the next movie for but instead, it just jumped out of the screen at you at lightspeed. You’d be caught off guard and the film’s long runtime would breeze by. This is what I think will happen in The Last Jedi and it will take some form of inspiration from Empire Strikes Back because how can you not really. Empire Strikes Back is one of the best and most iconic films of all time and to simply ignore its style and ideas wouldn’t be wise. I would be more than fine with The Last Jedi taking a few ideas from Empire Strikes Back because if it works and it works twice than why change it, yes you could risk it and do something different but I want something that makes the universe connected and doesn’t make each film estranged from each other. My main question is, will The Last Jedi top Empire Strikes Back?