I didn’t appreciate as a kid that the scene moves so fast due to Yoda’s delivery and Kershner’s considered direction that the reveal is almost overshadowed by Yoda’s letting Luke know he’s trained Jedi for 800 years and he needs no prompting from him if he is to be trained, and so on. The whole scene seemed magical, overwhelming to the emotions, that it was a lot to take in.
This super cool magical mysterious muppet creature seemed somehow real, but also otherworldly, to the point of complete belief of who he was.
The simplicity of the scene, in among all that technical wizardry, helped give it that grounded, yet magical, feel for me.
And the scene just propels the story forward. I think in modern films this would have an epic theme running in the background, some sort of crescendo and visual build-up: a slow-motion montage or “hero shot” type scene. Yet in Empire, it just happened, it was cool and accepted, with the script and direction pushing you forward to the back and forth between Yoda and Ben’s conversation.
Yes! I shudder and hate to think how such a scene would be shot today or in the last 10 years.