netjeff.com Humor collection The Empire Strikes Back reveiw

This is a very funny reveiew of Empire Strikes Back.

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Empire Strikes Back
	-- by James Lileks

[ James Lileks is a nationally syndicated columnist for Newhouse ]
[ News Service.  He's in the Washington Post now and then.  His  ]
[ latest collection is "Fresh Lies," published by Pocket Books.  ]

I think "The Empire Strikes Back" would have been more interesting
if Darth Vader had turned out to be Luke's mother.  Someone brash and
commanding, such as Madge the Manicurist from the old Palmolive
ads.  The Dark side of the Force? Why, you're soaking in it.

Unless I missed something in the course of watching these movies
60 times, we never heard much about Mrs.  Skywalker.  Luke never asks
Obi-Wan about Mom.

Maybe she left Luke's dad because he spent every night down at the
Jedi Legion hall and left her with two telekinetic brats.  Perhaps
she left Luke's dad for Obi-Wan, and that's why Vader turned to the
Dark Side.  (If so, it makes the scene where the two men fight each
other with glowing wands a little too Freudian for my taste.) Given
Princess Leia's hairstyle, it is possible Mrs.  Skywalker died giving
birth.

"The Empire Strikes Back" is my favorite of the Star Wars movies,
simply because it contains absolutely no Ewoks.  Those nattering
teddy bears ruined "Return of the Jedi," turning the grand epic
scale of the saga into the Muppet Babies vs.  the Red Army.

"Empire" is solid.  Ewok-free.  Darth Vader is evil throughout,
unlike the third movie, where he takes off his helmet and smiles.  I
can't quite see Darth as evil anymore, because I know his head
looks like your big toe after you've been in the bathtub for an
hour.  "Empire" has the defining plot twist of my generation, the
no-Luke-I'm-yer-pappy line that absolutely stunned me.  (I'd kept
my fingers in my ears for a week before I saw the movie, just so no
one could spoil it.)

Compared to this, the revelation in "Return" that Luke and Leia are
brother and sister seemed contrived, and made all the PG-sexual
tension between them downright creepy.  What was next? Boba Fett is
your second-cousin, Luke.  Jabba is your uncle, the one who always
smelled of beer and cigars.  He developed a skin condition.  Don't
mention it, he's sensitive.  Oh, and the Wookie is your mother;
after your father left, she stopped shaving.

Not everything in "Empire" is perfect.  Consider the battle on the
Ice Planet Hoth.  The Empire sends down a squadron of Imperial
Walkers -- incredibly cool machines, but probably the worst piece
of military hardware ever designed.  Top-heavy, slow, prone to
crashing: the Windows 3.0 of tanks.  Dropping the Walkers on an Ice
Planet is like sending in a dozen Statues of Liberty to fight on a
skating rink.  They probably sent fifteen Walkers to do the job, but
ten slipped and busted a tailbone.

And how did the Walkers get to the planet's surface? Parachutes?
Unlikely.  There's nothing more ugly than two Imperial Walkers with
tangled chutes, kicking at each other.  No, a ship delivered them to
the surface.  If that's the case, the ship had to be very large.
Huge.  Instead of depositing the Walkers, the ship could have sat on
the rebel base like a sumo wrestler squatting on an anthill.  The
Rebellion is crushed, Lord Vader.  Really, really crushed.

More faults: Billy Dee Williams confuses grinning with acting.  The
Yoda scenes tend to drag the tenth time you've seen them.  ("Stall
we must.  Second act this is.  Talk odd would you if puppet with hand
up rear were you.")

For all its charms and foibles, though, "Empire" and the whole
Star Wars universe is sadly out of date with modern society.  When
Han Solo slices open the belly of his Hoth-horse to provide warmth,
he is not immediately picketed by Animal-rights activists, with
signs saying "I'd rather go naked than wear guts." Was there a
seven-day waiting period before Luke got his light saber? When the
Death Star destroyed that planet, didn't they have to file an
environmental impact statement? Most telling moment: when Luke
slams his X-wing into Yoda's backyard, I realized something very
odd about the Star Wars civilization.

All that high technology, and they never managed to invent the air
bag.

netjeff.com Humor collection The Empire Strikes Back reveiw