Boy, did LaserDisc buffs have to wait a long time for Empire to come out in Letterbox! At the time, we thought the wait was worthwhile, but I think it could be (or has been) improved on. Sounds great.

The Empire Strikes Back has to be considered one of the most successful acts in the history of show business. 36-year-old Whiz-Kid George Lucas had a challenge that most of us will never have to face: What do you do for an encore?

After years and years of telling him to take his Star Wars script and flush it, the film was reluctantly financed by 20th Century-Fox, released in 1977, and then it became the biggest-grossing film in history, forever changing the way audiences look at "big films." Now the studio said to Lucas, "More Star Wars films, yes, yes!"

By this time, Lucas was able to call his own shots. The first thing to do was to pay for the whole thing yourself! Seemed like a good gamble. The budget was in the $50 million rage, which at the time, was considered completely insane. Then, you get somebody who was a good science fiction writer to work on the script (Lucas had written Star Wars himself). So he engaged the long-time science fiction writer Leigh Brackett (Brackett died after the first draft, so some young punk named Lawrence Kasdan finished the rest of them).

Next, set up Industrial Light and Magic up in Marin County (oh, is that all?). The effects for Star Wars were all done in little warehouses in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, but Lucas wanted this type of work performed closer to his home. He hung up the ILM shingle, so that other producers could have some of the effects work that was now the envy of the entire film-producing world. Caa-ching!

© & TM 1980 by LucasFilm Ltd., All Rights Reserved.

Then, he made the decision not to direct. He asked fellow USC alumni Irvin Kershner to do that. This sent shock waves throughout the land. The man who directed Streisand in Up the Sandbox and Dunaway in The Eyes of Laura Mars was going to direct the Star Wars sequel? Was Lucas nuts? There was a falling out with the Star Wars Chief of Visual Effects John Dykstra, so the fellow who had been the First Effects Camera Operator on Star Wars, Richard Edlund, was elevated to Effects Supervisor.

Production Designer John Barry was busy working on the Superman films, so his assistant, Norman Reynolds (they had both worked as art department people on Phase V for mega-designer Saul Bass), was promoted to Production Designer.

What all this added up to was that Lucas was insuring that Empire, while having many of the same elements of the earlier film, would have a completely different atmosphere and tone. In this he succeeded beyond his expectations. Many people consider Empire the best of the Star Wars films yet produced (To me, it is amusing to find that on the Internet Movie Database, they have already credited Lucas with producing Star Wars episodes 2 and 3. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?).

And this gets back to the initial problem: what do you do for an encore? Change everything. Mark Hamill, whose character of Luke Skywalker struck some as an irritant in the first film, gets the shit kicked out of him in the first reel here, and undertakes a journey of self-discovery which is both intensely interesting and quite profound. He talks to a puppet a lot.

Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia was actually given several scenes deepening the strange comic-book romantic dilemmas left unresolved at the end of the first Star Wars film. Everybody liked Harrison Ford’s turn as Han Solo, so he was pretty much left as-is. Besides, Lucas had other ideas for furthering the public’s admiration of Ford – something called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

You even got to see (sort of) what Darth Vader looked like under all that helmeting and caping. Vader was kind of a disembodied figure in the first film, but in order to enlarge on his character a bit, they have these scenes of him sitting in his "study" aboard the Imperial Flagship. I love these scenes. The action consists of somebody arriving to inform Vader of some development in things. They make their report and then, depending on what the news is, the messenger either leaves or is "forced" to death.

So they came up with the ickiest looking thing in the world for this setting. Vader sits, like a spider in a web, in this enormous, egg-like saw-toothed contraption where the top opens straight up revealing His Malignancy. With the action of the top lifting up, the low camera is always dollying in for a close-up of Vader. Sometimes, if the top comes back down at the end of the scene, the camera backs back out! The viewer is bowing and scraping.

The bad guys are supposedly the focus of the film – striking back and all – and life aboard the Imperial ships is amplified some. They get a terrific "march" provided by John Williams, there is the usual compliment of "King’s English" types at the controls, along with the ever present low-frequency hum of evil . . . In addition, we find out that Vader has a boss (the oft-referred-to Emperor). We get to see the guy.

© & TM 1980 by LucasFilm Ltd., All Rights Reserved.

Vader kneels down on this weird little "com-link" dais, the light comes on, and he speaks with a big, huge hologram of the Emperor (who was the genius who picked Clive Revill of all people, for this?). I think Vader’s behavior is entirely understandable. I would kneel down in front of Clive Revill, who had a small, but memorable role in Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes as the Russian ballet manager. He also played the hotel manager Carlucci in Wilder’s Avanti!, so kneel I must!

Another actor I like is in Empire. Michael Culver plays one of the numerous people on the Bad Guy Bridge. He plays Captain Needa. He’s the one who, after things go badly yet again, says that he will simply go into Lord Vader, tell him what happened, and apologize. He’s choking to death in the next scene, and Vader says to him, "Apology accepted!" Michael Culver doesn’t reach our screens very often. He was wonderful in David Lean’s A Passage to India as the Police Captain McBride.

But enough of the bad guys. The good guys are pretty incredible here too. I mean, despite the fact that they had a lot of money to spend on this picture, and the physical scale of it is stupefying even, it’s the characters and what happens to them that continues to be the focus. You could go on and on about the settings and effects (and many fans of the film do), but still, it’s the characters that drive the whole thing.

Han Solo’s concern for Skywalker when the latter fails to return before nightfall on the frozen planet of Hoth in the first reel, is a marked departure from the earlier film. The tension they all feel in this situation is transferred to the audience in all sorts of ways. I find the scene where they announce to one and all that the doors to the rebel base have to be closed for the night (meaning Skywalker will be left out there to freeze to death), Princess Leia’s reluctant assent to this inevitable decision, the ominous closing of the doors, is driven home with an understated shot of Chewbacca moaning. There is nothing like this in the earlier picture.

Similarly, the battle that follows as the Empire attacks the Rebel base, and their flight, is like visiting a real war zone. These sequences are fascinating, quick, confusing – brilliant orchestrations of opposing forces in combat. You are pinned to your seat because the outcome (at this point) is completely unknown. The sequence where the Rebel’s bring down the Imperial Walkers with the tow cables is just incredible. It’s all so hypnotic, that I find myself completely forgetting who I am, where I am, and what I am going to have to do tomorrow! This is perhaps the highest compliment I can give this film, and perhaps is one of the reasons Empire has set the pace for "big film" for a generation. It is escapism. Most decidedly. But the story is compelling as hell, and the setting of the piece is completely believable, pretty much no matter who you are.

Believable escapism. Space Odyssey mixed with Jason and the Argonauts. Star Wars began it, but Empire, with its more serious tone, deeper characters, situations and dangling conclusion, strikes one as a finer accomplishment somehow. And I think it is. And everyone has been forced to deal with this new benchmark in filmmaking: believable escapism. And make it BIG!

It also occurs to me watching the film now, that it probably was a good idea to get the Kershner of Up the Sandbox to come in on the picture, to fight for better scenes and dialogue for Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia. I must say that I truly admire her performance in this film. Her seriousness and devotion to duty, her desire to cut out all the schoolyard crap with Han, and most especially her "You don’t have to do this to impress me" line as they are going through the asteroid field in the Millennium Falcon . . . This was perhaps the payoff for Lucas. By bringing in new blood to the enterprise, the film was able to benefit from this transfusion.

Lucas was brave enough to follow his own "force" philosophy posited in the first picture. Let it flow from you. By allowing trusted others to continue with Empire, Lucas was able to concentrate on other things and become more productive himself, and this is one of the great things about the whole picture making process: giving people the opportunity for creative endeavor. And this shows in a big, huge way in Empire. And that’s what you do for an encore.

4.19.01