#8. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1997) w/ Michael

In this podcast, Andrew reviews Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back with Michael.

~ FILM SUGGESTIONS ~

Comment about films you guy's want to see, and I'll credit you.

~ HOST ~

Andrew Heilman is a student film producer, owner operator of Heilman Productions (a free-lance media/film production company in Silicon Valley) and social media editor.

~ GUESTS ~

The guests for this show are people who are not actively seeking a career in the film and television industries.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Both Sides, a podcast between a film industry insider and an outsider to get their unique perspectives on movies. I'm your host, Andrew Hamlin. Today my guest is my friend Michael, and we'll be watching Star Wars Episode 5, The Empire Strikes Back. Stay tuned till the end to hear our final reviews of the film. In case you need a refresher or you've never seen it, here's the story in a nutshell. After the Rebel Alliance suffers a major defeat, Luke Skywalker trains with Jedi Master Yoda while his friends flee the Empire, culminating in a devastating confrontation where Darth Vader reveals a massive secret. Now, let's talk about this movie. So what did you think?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

I think this movie was everything that uh like in terms of like, you know, a sequel, like I know that there's actually a trilogy, the original trilogy, but like as a sequel to just like four, a new hope, uh Empire Strikes Back is like an upgrade in a way that I never quite have ever seen in terms of a sequel before. Like in just every literally every single way it's better, in my opinion. Yes. Aw. So I don't yeah, that's what I got to say.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yeah, it's it's the kind of movie that you watch and then you re-watch. Like, there's a reason this is the most iconic one that people come back to all the time because it just I don't know, something about it. It has that oomph of just meaningfulness that obviously the first one is meaningful, but this one really does feel like it it delves deeper into the whole message of the Jedi and the whole message of the political structure and why there's a rebel, there's a rebellion in the first place, and you know, it's there's so much lore building in it. And you know, I was I told you at the beginning to kind of like before we got into the movie to kind of like see, try to find where you can see where they improved the overall filmmaking process, and I talked about the performances of how in the first movie in A New Hope, it's kind of more of a reaction-based acting where something happens in the story and then the the characters react to that in however emotional way that they want, versus that there's I think there's so much more subtlety in the little nuances between the characters in this movie that is there's more time devoted to those moments. They don't really move the plot along, but they make the movie feel so much more real because we see these little smiles of Leia reacting to Chewbacca over the phone, and we see these little moments of you know, there's this there's this one moment where Luke Skywalker is talking to Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi um Yoda doesn't want to train Luke because he's immature and whatever. And then Obi-Wan is kind of like coming in and saying, kind of basically agreeing. And then Luke Skywalker kind of gets like so amped up that he in Yoda's little hut that he kind of hits his head, like he says, I'm re I'm ready, I'm ready, and then he hits his head on the ceiling. Now, he could have said, I'm ready, I'm ready, and then Yoda interrupt him, but because he said, I'm ready, I'm ready, and then he hit the ceiling, that is visual storytelling showing you that he's immature, that he, you know, there's more to the character than what he just says. And that's in every little section of this movie is that you have a character and then you see them, you see their emotional range. I think this is probably one of the best Harrison Ford performances I've ever seen, just because of the way that and granted, this could be because all the all the actors have had, you know, a few years to warm up to their characters and really understand what's going on, which I think there is an aspect of that in it. But I chalk up a lot of it to being because there is more of an emphasis on these characters and their inner relations in the drama between the characters. I chalk up a lot of that being in a lot of that realistic real realism. I chalk it a lot up to George Lucas not directing it because George Lucas has directed four Star Wars movies. He's directed A New Hope, he's directed Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. I think Revenge of the Sith is his best directed Star Wars movie. I think Revenge of the Sith has the best, the least clunky dialogue. I think it has the best performances, I think the character relations, and you can't just have the thing about acting is you can't have one performance. Acting doesn't work if all of the other characters don't support each other. Because if it doesn't matter how good one actor is, if all of the side actors react to everything that one actor says in a really unrealistic, weird, clunky way, it ruins the whole scene. And this movie is so indicative that every single character is treated with so much time and finesse and nuance that we get to really see their emotions and the way that they interact with each other that I don't think we got to see in A New Hope.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, I agree a lot. One of the things I definitely noticed was like in A New Hope, the Empire was obviously like probably still winning, but they were like haphazardly. They were winning besides themselves. Um whereas the moment that the Death Star, like you mentioned, the Death Star plan failed, showing that like the Emperor the Empire's higher ups in terms of the political side are not your military mind. The moment that that military can pass to Vader in Empire Strikes Back, it's just success after brutal success after brutal success. I mean, he is going off. Uh Vader really comes to life and almost feels like this mov he's the main character. Yeah, I could like what a striking performance. This is the movie you should like people should look at and that's why Vader is so fucking badass.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Like, yeah, and I was comparing him to Napoleon earlier, um, because Napoleon has that kind of mentality where he comes in history, he comes to prominence as this no-nonsense general. He kills three million of his own soldiers in his lifetime because he's just like an absolute like fiend kind of general where he just he doesn't care who gets hurt or what happens, he's gonna accomplish his goal. Um, and that is a very menacing kind of character arc to put on Darth Vader and makes him so much more of a threat. And, you know, this this franchise, at least the first six movies, are about Darth Vader. They're about Anakin Skywalker, and it's cool to see the transition of Darth Vader not really being being introduced, but you know, being introduced in the fourth movie and then becoming such a big prominence. Like I love that political, you know, that kind of subtextual political transition from the higher-ups who operate the Death Star giving, you know, losing that battle, and then Darth Vader becoming like the main component that moves the whole political organization. Um, it's not really talked about a whole lot. It there's more of a stress obviously put on Luke Genhan and Leia and the Rebels and everything, but I've always liked the political underlings, uh underlinings of uh the Empire and Everybody. And there's so many interesting things about this movie. I know one thing, uh Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker, he got in a crazy car accident, like near career-ending car accident, because whenever an actor or an actress gets in an accident that completely alters their face and body, they kind of you know get looked down upon and then not hired for similar reasons. Like Mark Hamill got like a complete fate, like refacial surgery and everything. Like the scars you see in the um uh when he gets saved from the cave with the whatchamacallit, Yeti thing. Um, the scars on the face that you see in the medical room are real scars that he had from getting in this crazy car crash that could have ended his his career, um, let alone his life, of course. Um and that they were able to really like utilize it in the story. I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the script, that whole thing with him getting attacked by the Eddy. It wasn't in the script until he got in the car accident, and then they wrote that scene in, or something like that. And it just goes to show how smart this set really is about utilizing and solving problems and getting over, you know, interesting scenarios and all sorts of stuff, and yeah, and how this movie all of the movies are written, I'm pretty sure, by George Lucas. They're at least all done by treatments from him. I think they were rewritten a few times for the screen by a few people, at least the first uh at least Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. But the the story is all George Lucas. And I will say forever, George Lucas is an incredible storyteller, world builder, plot writer. He's not the best at making characters not characters. He's a character director, meaning he makes bad guys and he makes good guys, and they're not really that crazy deep most of the time. They're pretty one-dimensional, or they're pretty, you know, kind of skewed, with the exception of like Darth Vader and you know, like um Obi-Wan Kenobi or something. But he he likes to make clear lines between good and evil, and he's very black and white, and that's just the kind of um storyteller he is. And we get to see more of a gray area when he doesn't direct his movies, because you get to see you get to see more of that side of it when Irvin, uh Irvin Kirshner and all these other people take over his stories. Um just goes to show that obviously not every artist is perfect. George Lucas isn't perfect, in my opinion, and he's gonna he's gonna have a certain way of telling stories that I disagree with in some avenues, but there's no doubt that he's like you can't invent like the greatest plot twist of all time and not be considered like a great writer. I mean the Luke I am your father bit is like it's the perfect plot twist because it's the kind of plot twist that everyone once they hear it, it clicks in all of their minds because it makes a hundred percent sense because we've had so much groundwork laid that has been so vague so far that that window of opportunity, while no one really thought would happen, just like instantly clicks. It's like it's such a surreal experience. I can't equate it to any other uh storytelling decision I've ever seen. Um, and it's amazing that it was able to be done like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah, it was really impressive. Um I didn't have I literally don't have a single bad thing to say about this movie. I was just thinking about it. I was like literally thinking, is there even one bad thing I can attribute to it? And no. I was my suspension of disbelief was completely there the entire time. It wasn't broken once the ships are all awesome, like Darth Vader's ex uh Exeter's ski ship, the dread the super dreadnought. It's just so fucking cool. It's like the size of like I don't even know, like ten Star Destroyers or something like that. I don't even fucking know, dude. It's giant. It and it has like it literally has, I think, a Star Destroyer as its like command post or something. It's like what the fuck? But it's really uh everything about the movie was the characters were all perfect, uh the scenes were great.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Yeah, I I there's not a single bad thing about Yeah, and I mean there's so much I love about this movie. Like the mu like I think you really hit the nail on the head of it being an upgrade. Like every single thing about it, it doesn't mean mean that a new hope is bad. It just means that every single aspect of this movie adds something just as good, if not better, to A New Hope. I think some of the new scores they added, I'm pretty sure the Imperial March is unique to this movie. I don't think it was in A New Hope, but the Imperial March, Yoda's theme, Han and Leia's theme, like there's so the music was incredible. Um the cinematography, I think, I'm from what I remember, it doesn't get better than this movie in terms of lighting and composition, where the characters are in a frame, kind of like the cool dolly movements of the camera moving up and down, and you know, the kind of swaying across a cavern to reveal um X-Wings and all that kind of stuff. It's like it's so the move that's why I said like this movie looks like Rob Rob McQuarrie's paintings, which if you didn't know the reason Star Wars one of the reasons Star Wars was even made originally was um obviously when you pitch a movie or when you make a movie you need money. You can't make a movie for free. So where are you gonna get the money from? You're gonna pitch your story to whoever has money to ask for money. And you can't pitch a story about aliens and you know, aliens and spaceships and lightsabers and blasters and everything. You you can't pitching something like that is much harder than pitching, like, you know, a story about a breakup or a romance breakup or something. So you can't pitch that without some visualization of what you're gonna do. So George Lucas uh contracted a guy named Robert Macquarie to make drawings of what he was describing in his script, and that's where we get the first designs for the spaceships and the planets and the droids and all that kind of stuff. And George Lucas would use those drawings to pitch to all these movie studios, eventually 20th Century Fox picked it up, to pitch to all these studios about what his story could actually be. And more than any of them, The Empire Strikes Back looks like Robert Macquarie's drawings. It looks like a painting, it's like so finely crafted, and it plays beautifully well with the story and the fog and the mist and how the light interacts with it. You know, I'm a camera guy, so I pay a lot of attention to that kind of stuff. And it's just it's like eye candy the entire time in terms of cinematography, and then it's ear candy because of the music and the sound effects, and the one big problem that you and I had with it, with um uh audio capture on set uh has been mostly resolved. I feel like they were able to get a lot more takes where they were able to solve those kind of sound problems that they weren't able to get away with with the first one having a more limited budget. And this is a great example of throwing more money at something and having it be a solution. Like we always talk about this idea that throwing more money at a problem doesn't solve the problem. This movie is like the opposite of that. If you throw $40 million at a Star Wars movie as opposed to $7 million, it's gonna be a much better filmic experience. That the performances are gonna have more time to develop, there's gonna be less room for error with mistakes. Um, and it it's just it's a great movie. I love how it ends negatively. That's so that's such an antithesis of all story modern-day storytelling where everything has to have a happy ending and all of the characters have to be happy. I love seeing my main character. I'm a borderline masochist when it comes to the characters that I like watching in stories. I like to see my main characters get their arms chopped off and thrown in swamps and just, you know, absolutely obliterated because to me that makes them more human. It makes them more real if they have real consequences for their actions. That's why I don't really like, you know, Ray Skywalker and the new trilogy is because she doesn't really go through anything super traumatic that she has to overcome. It's more of like a haphazard sort of thing where she kind of learns everything all at once and then progresses through the story that way. Versus there's much more of a character arc, a noticeable character arc, where in the first movie Luke Skywalker is kind of a brat, you know, I don't go to Tashi's to pick up some power converters. And then in Empire Strikes Back, he's like in the shit the entire time, tormented with fear and emotion, the whole point with Yoda saying, you know, don't give in to your emotions, don't give in to your fear, and all that is because that's uh what contributed to Darth Vader going down, uh Anakin going down the dark side being Darth Vader, and then you see that kind of like pub almost pubescent-esque transition into being a total badass in Return of the Jedi, which we won't see until we watch the first three prequels, so or all the prequels. So it'll be very fun to see if that movie holds up. I know I really like Return of the Jedi. It's a kind of a cult classic. I would like refer to the first one as being like a great movie that you know everyone everyone's seen and everyone likes, and then Empire Strikes Back being like the fan favorite, and then Return of the Jedi being kind of like a cult classic, because it's it's not it's not as like jaw-dropping inspiring as Empire Strikes Back or dramatic as Empire Empire Strikes Back, but it's got a few new elements into it. It's kind of like more of a rehashing because it they take place in a second Death Star, and it's kind of just like kind of doing a lot of the same, same old, same old, but it does have a lot of those unique elements, and it's an it's a nice final blow, and I think it'll be so much more meaningful after we watch the first three.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yeah, I'm really excited for this uh this watching sequence we're doing. Um I like I love the idea that we just watch these two, and then we get to see like the whole flashback and the build-up of Darth Vader and the importance of his character for that mega finale for going to six. I I'm real excited for it.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Okay, let me look up this real quick. Umpire Strikes Back. Okay. So Empire Strikes Back has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes for the critic score and a 97% Rotten Tomatoes for audience score. Where would you put this in your ethos?

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Man. This was just This is exactly why I thought that that would be the at 90 or at 88, because this movie feels like it's a I'm gonna say 96. Like that's how much better I felt about this movie than I did about the first one. Not that it was bad, still a great movie overall. But this one was just it was better in every aspect. Not a single thing ever broke my immersion. Um like you said, the acting was better, well the scripts and the takes were better. Um so the actors were able to have way more to work with. The scenes and sets were better, like you said, they were based off those paintings, which I found really cool. That I mean, like I can't said I can't I'm thinking I was thinking about it one doing one of those times you were thinking, and I could not think single thing I had bad to say about this. So I yeah, I think I'm gonna give it a ninety-six out of potential hope that the pre equals as good as I think they and that there's might be even a couple that go above this. But if that's not true, uh still ninety six is super high, and I'm not even oh wait, no. I gave Rocky remit Creed two. I think a 100. Or not a 100, a ninety-eight?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

What what what did I give that? Do you remember? I don't remember. It's probably it was up there. Creed two is a it was real high.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Yeah, but either way, the the like this is up there is either s uh the first or the second highest uh movie of what I've seen. And that's really surprising because I didn't even really think I liked Star Wars that much. I thought they were kind of whatever. So I really love re-watching them with you because it's really opening my eyes to things that I never used to appreciate.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Yeah, and I'm I'm always down to re-watch these movies because I mean it's just like you can't you can't appreciate an automobile without appreciating the inventor of the you know, the air conditioning, or the inventor of the wheel, or the inventor of the leather seats, or the inventor of the visor, or whatever. And that's what I think of when I think of this franchise is that Steven Spi uh not Steven Spielberg, uh George Lucas invented like the wheel of the film industry, or he invented like the steering wheel, or he he pioneered so many elements of filmmaking as we know it. And you know, they're just incredible works of art that are gonna last forever. They're not perfect. They have, you know, I'd say that this one is probably gonna be as perfect as you can as objectively perfect as you can get. Obviously, the thing that brings this movie down for me is probably just the dated special effects. It obviously doesn't hold up as well as Revenge of the Sith or you know Pirates of the You know, Pirates of the Caribbean III or whatever. Um, but that was just, you know, for the time. It's it's the same thing we were talking about with the last one of a suspension of disbelief. Does it really need to be a perfect special effect if it if I'm willing to go along with it if I'm interested in the movie? Not necessarily, but I I'm gonna give it a 98% on my Andrew Rontomato score. It's a pretty perfect movie. Um, the only one I like more is Revenge of the Sith, because I'm a drama guy. I like character, I like emotion. As much as I like spaceships and you know, lightsabers and all that kind of stuff, I like to really see like just raw emotion come out of characters and see how they handle things. And we have, in my opinion, we have yet to see the best performance um from a Star Wars character in this franchise. I think Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith is the best performance of this entire franchise. And I look forward to um getting there eventually. That and Hayden Christensen in Revenge of the Sith. Both of them, I think, are like peak George Lucas's directorial filmmaking career. People can say what they want about Revenge of the Sith's story and character design or whatever, but as a storytelling filmmaker, as a director, Revenge of the Sith is his best movie, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

I I yeah, I was gonna say that's why I'm giving mine like a nine, because I have a and I I have a idea in my head that the prequel there might be two prequels that go above where I think this movie is. And what like Revenge of the Sith might get a hundred. I don't know, because like these are so much better than I thought they were, and I know I think I remember liking prequels people seeing other people did because I always thought they were really good and everyone complained about them all the time. So there's a chance like I had to leave some space. You're giving yours a 98. I I'm afraid that you if maybe you don't like the another one, but if I get two prequel 100s from you, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Well, I'm like we'll we'll talk about it when it comes to it. I'm a defender of the Phantom Menace. People hate the Phantom Menace. If any of them, that's probably the most divisive, probably because it was the most different at the time. The jump from Return of the Jedi to the Phantom Menace is obviously a bit jarring, but I've always loved the Phantom Menace. Like most people give Phantom Menace like five out of tens, but I've always given it like a seven or eight. I I like the direction, I like the uniqueness of the prequels, and I like the direction that they took it. Um so it'll be interesting to re-watch that with you probably on Sunday, maybe, if you're up for it Sunday night.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yeah, I I definitely will be.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Alright. Bye. Cutting the recording. Bye. Thank you for listening to both sides. What movie do you want us to review next? Let me know, and I'll credit you and your username. Like and follow if you enjoy this podcast, and to stay notified of future reviews. Remember, your right to your opinion matters.