Movie Details
| Title: | Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back | |
| Director: | Irvin Kershner | |
| Year: | 1980 | |
| Genre: | Fantasy | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.01.17 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.01.17 | Internet | Another despecialized edition. This one not quite as impactful since I last saw this movie from a friend's original 35mm print at the Alamo. It wasn't quite as cool an experience sitting at home eating Torchy's in my underwear but I'm not complaining by any means. It's very cool to have a digital copy that's watchable and original. You can really tell the budget difference between the first and second film. I also noticed a lot of the Ralph McQuarrie matte work this time around. It's so fantastic... maybe not in a hyper-real way but in a 1980 fantasy way. One of my big problems with this movie in previous viewings was the Yoda stuff. I never really loved the Dagobah setting and found Yoda's performance to be too comedic. This time around, I really liked the performance - his voice, the puppetry, all the physical emotions and gestures they got out of the wall-eyed puppet - but the dischord between his performance here and in the prequels bothered me a bit. Again, this is not a problem with this movie... if anything, they should've exposed more of Yoda's playful spirit in the prequels since they were trying to hard to retcon every little detail. So yeah, I liked Yoda this time... but the temporal shift in the intercutting kind of bothered me. I guess this is the first time that I noticed that either Han's escape from the Imperial Star Destroyers took like 2 months or Luke's training with Yoda took about a half an hour. I mean, I guess you could say that they spent a day or two in the asteroid creature (but not really, those Mynocks probably zeroed in pretty quickly after they landed, especially if the Start Destroyers were still hanging out when they took off), or that it would've taken the Falcon a while to get to Bespin without their hyperdrive (they did say it was pretty far), but you'd also think that it takes Luke some time to clean off his X-Wing and whatnot. Eh, I bet there's some plausible middle ground somewhere in there, like 2 weeks or something. But I guess if I'm geeking out this hard about a tiny detail, it means I enjoyed the film. This is true, I really liked this. I think one of the good things about the prequels is making you realize how good the original trilogy was. Speaking of, I can't wait to see the last one! |
| 04.24.07 | Secret | so... an undisclosed place awards their employee of the month with a screening of their choice and he picked this movie which an undisclosed person happened to have an old pre-special edition print of. So don't tell George Lucas but this undisclosed venue had a private screening for employees and friends of the print's owner so I got to see the original Empire Strikes Back on the big screen! And what's more, the same undisclosed person has a collection of vintage Star Wars trailers in 35 so we got to see like 7 (plus a Howard the Duck teaser) in a row before the movie! It's amazing how the original trilogy still has a hold on people of my generation. Something about that "Long time ago in a galaxy far far away/STAR WARS" opening that makes you clap. it's just so ingrained... everybody there (and there were a lot of people. pretty much a full house) clapped and cheered, then yelled "ewww" when Leia kisses Luke. I really hate that this version is all but extinct. Yeah matte lines are more pronounced and some of the compositing makes for semi-transparent overlays and you can see flashes of black boxes from the different plates and the full-body taun taun is clearly stop-motion, but those aren't necessarily bad things. It's a product of the hard work that all those people put into the movie back then and it's what millions of people saw and fell in love with. No special effects movie looks perfect forever. I think the differences between Episode 1, 2, and 3 Yodas and R2s are even more distracting than any of the original trilogy stuff. I guess I haven't been saying anything new here... but getting a (rare) chance to see the original work just brings all this stuff up for me... and since this is my site and i can write what i want, tough. take that, lucas! |
