Forty Years Ago - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Look, let’s face it, it was the fact that this one (and The Blues Brothers) popped up as being forty years old that sent me down this path in the first place so it was always going to wrap up with this, wasn’t it? (Rhetorical question - the answer is, of course, yes).

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1981 - nah, only joking, it was 1980, that’s the whole point)
Dir. Irvin Kershner / Dur. 124 mins

What’s It About? Something about a former farmboy who snogs his sister and finds out his dad is basically an intergalactic Donald Trump.

Why’s It Any Good? It’s The Empire Strikes Back.

Well, that concludes this little run on the films of forty years ago. Come back, next time when…

Eh? You were expecting a bit more than that?

OK, fine. Look, there isn’t a single aspect of Star Wars that hasn’t been discussed, dissected and generally picked apart on every corner of the internet ever since the internet became a thing so what can I add to it (and, let’s face it, I’ve already wittered on about Star Wars before)? Not a lot really but what I can tell you is my history with the film.

The Empire Strikes Back was the film in the original trilogy that I watched last. Huh? Yep, true. Way back in the early days of the 80s, I was too young for Empire when it came out at the cinema and Star Wars was on telly prior to Return Of The Jedi coming out so I’d seen Star Wars* and was old enough for Jedi but Empire passed me by. You see, back then, stuff wasn’t really readily available. If you didn't see it at the cinema and it hadn’t been on telly yet, well, you just didn’t get to see it. So I was always a little bit confused by the set up at the start of Jedi but it was Star Wars so that was good enough for me. Apparently I’d missed something about Darth Vader being his dad and, when I did watch Empire, the Yoda reveal was also less of a surprise than it would have been but overall, I got the gist of what was going on. (Plus I was the key demographic for the Ewoks so I’ve always had a fondness for them.)

So Empire had a bit of a mysterious air for me until I finally got to see it on telly a few years after Jedi. As such, it’s the one that I felt I knew the least when I was a kid (that has since been rectified by many, many viewings) so it always stood out slightly from the other two.

So there you have it - some random ramblings on how I came to view Empire. Hopefully something a bit different.

Thus concludes your view of the Films Of 1980. Yeah, I've probably left out a couple of other classics but that’ll do you for now.

* Yes, A New Hope if you’re going to be pedantic and normally I would be but we all know what I mean when I refer to a singular film as Star Wars.