A Tribute to The Empire Strikes Back -
A Piece for FilmTV Italia Magazine
A long time ago in a galaxy far far way I was an impressionable only child living with my mother in a basement flat in Notting Hill and as with most only children, my imagination was a constant source of companionship. Inspired by comics, science fiction and fantasy, I found myself as the perfect demographic to have my seven year old mind blown away by the release of Star Wars in 1977. Almost a cliché now, the film’s global impact on young fans and the Hollywood ‘event movie’ business has been more than chronicled. I bought the action figures, the trading cards and immersed myself into the Star Wars universe pretty sure from that moment on that I wanted to make films and have the chance to affect an audience in the same way that George Lucas did. But as the trilogy progressed, what became more interesting to me was the sequel, an epic ‘rights of passage’ that subconsciously had more of an effect on me than the first instalment. The Empire Strikes Back exploded across screens in 1980, bigger and better than its predecessor, a character driven assault on the senses that chronicled our familiar heroes from the first film in their ongoing battle against the Empire.
The Empire Strikes Back is essentially a chase movie, the rebels are systematically driven from their new base on the ice planet of Hoth and hunted down by the Imperial fleet all the way to the tragic denouement on Cloud City. But beneath the visually stunning sequences and the introduction of a whole new cast of characters, Empire was a far deeper film than Star Wars (when Star Wars was released, critics lambasted the two dimensional characters and reliance on visual effects over story). The overriding theme was treachery - Han and Leia’s romance that was originally signposted as Luke’s eventual destiny from the first film, Lando Calrisian’s betrayal of Han in Cloud City and most importantly Ben Kenobi’s betrayal of misinformation resulting in Luke’s discovery of the true identity of his father.
Deciding not to direct the sequel himself, Lucas turned to a rather pertinent pair of hands. Irvin ‘Kersh’ Kershner had been a tutor at UCLA (where Lucas studied) and like life imitating art, the older, wiser ‘master’ was simply the only person Lucas could trust to bring his vision to life. Kersh started his life as a documentary film maker during World War 2 and went on to direct a number of seminal movies (The Hoodlum Priest, The Eyes of Laura Mars, A Fine Madness and more recently Robocop 2). Kersh brought a humanity to the characters, shaped them, gave them feelings and purpose and indirectly laid the foundations for the ongoing Star Wars mythology. I was extremely lucky that when I was fifteen years old, I found that Kersh was an indirect friend of the family and for a few years while Kersh was in London he became my very own mentor and oracle. It was pretty obvious why Lucas trusted this brilliant and sensitive man with such a delicate project.
I remember sitting in the cinema watching the final act of Empire unfolding and experiencing an increasing sense of dread. I realised there simply wasn’t time for the plots unfolding on screen to be resolved in any kind of positive way. As Han Solo is frozen in carbonite, stolen away by Boba Fett and Luke is deftly despatched by Vader - I started panicking – this can’t be it? They can’t leave the heroes of the piece damaged, disabled, on the run and possibly dead? It simply couldn’t be happening. But happen it did and what Irvin Kershner and Lawrence Kasdan (the screenwriter who gave us Raiders of the Lost Ark) left us with was the ultimate cliff hanger, a tantalising but strangely satisfying sense of being left stranded in the middle of an epic story that had yet to be completed.
Empire is a perfect example of where a great deal of modern mainstream cinema seems to fall short these days. In a rare irony, the original Star Wars trilogy does nothing but point out the weaknesses of Episodes 1,2 & 3. Empire was crafted in a more innocent age where story ruled and merchandising came more or less second. The current business-led attitude is that a movie has to be a rollercoaster ride of set pieces that easily translate to their video game spin offs and the cast of characters’ only purpose is to be modelled into figurines as two dimensional as their on screen personas. At a relative fraction of today’s budgets, Empire thrilled and entertained (put on the DVD, turn up the sound and watch the Asteroid Chase sequence and tell me that you’ve seen anything better or more exciting in our free and easy CGI world) and had an entire cinema-going planet on tenter hooks, converting a great number of its young audience, myself included, into the film makers of today.