Originally posted by: TiptupThe original Star Wars (which I often feel dirty calling “Episode 4” or “ANH”) is and always was my favorite movie of all time, but I do believe, as standalone films, that Empire managed to improve upon the Star Wars narrative to a notable degree. Despite not being as meaningful a film on it’s own as Star Wars was and continues to be, I believe that Empire is still a better film considering everything overall (the “saga” perspective).
As part of the saga, I've come to appreciate Empire a bit, but I find it totally unworkable as its own single film. It's episodic rather than linear, it's dark in tone and monochromatic visually, and it's self-referencial to its own story rather than universally referencial to classic myth and retro-moviedom. I highly doubt the style of The Empire Strikes Back would have struck nearly the universal chord of belovedness that greeted Star Wars had the stylistic order of the two films been reversed.
With the tone and color pallette returned to brightness for the final installment, I came to somewhat appreciate the middle-episode darkness and somberness of Empire ... but my initial poor reaction to the film has never quite left me (and I have many other, more specific, problems with it still).
Say what you will about the "Luke I am your father" reveal and major plot turning-point ... it never got the respect of, say, M. Night's The Sixth Sense. While there seemed to an unspoken and universally obeyed compact not to reveal the truth about Bruce Willis in that film, the word that Darth Vader was Luke's father was gushed by everyone, everywhere within moments of the film's release.
And despite the obvious linguistic clue in the name Darth Vader, I never liked making sweet old Obi-Wan Kenobi out to be liar. It just never sat well with me. And once Lucas threw in the kitchen sink of making Leia part of the family, too ... well the whole thing just got too Dickensianly juevenile for me to swallow. (You can imagine how well I took to C3PO being created by Anakin Skywalker. I retch as I type the words.)
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