You Have Your Moments, Lucas. Not Many of Them, But You Do Have Them

In honor of the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back I thought I’d post some thoughts on the movie. Since this is almost certainly my favorite movie of all time, I could go on for infinite pages about every single shot and how each one affected me personally. I won’t go quite as far as that, though nearly every frame of this movie has been hanging in the main gallery of the art museum of my mind since I was eight years old. The cold comfort of the Hoth base, learning the odds of dying in various ways, the thunderous reveal of Darth Vader and the massive Imperial Fleet, the epic scale of the Hoth battle, meeting Yoda, Han Solo and Princess Leia’s asteroid field inspired romance, Yoda schooling Luke in the ways of the force, the calm of Cloud City replaced by the excitement and terror of the heroes desperate escape, the final clash of the lightsabers in the hellish carbon freezing chamber, and, through it all, one of the most powerful and romantic music scores ever written—these are the things I will try my best to avoid gushing over.

There’s nothing new to write about this movie that hasn’t already been written. Everyone knows that this was the Star Wars movie that had the least Lucas involvement (though he deserves as much credit for the movie as anyone), everyone talks about how powerful the “I am your father” reveal was in 1980, everyone talks about how the more mature, “dark” tone made for a much more interesting movie, and how traumatic it was that the good guys lost. And look no further then Princess Leia's horrified reaction to the THUD frozen Han Solo makes when he clangs against floor to know that this movie cared about the little details in a way few have before or since. Empire was the first Star Wars that was really Star Wars—it took the simple story from the original movie and transformed it into an epic saga. Everything said about the movie is true, and when kids growing up in the 80s and 90s thought of Star Wars, it was this movie that laid the foundation for what Star Wars was.
It’s a shame they show it on TV so much nowadays, and that the prequels and subsequent media inundation have made Star Wars less magical and almost banal. I know the movie so well that I’ll never be able to experience like I used to ever again, and new generations will never experience the way we did. Kids today turn on their Xboxes and have a lightsaber fight without understand the awed silence in which we sat when Luke turned on his saber in the carbon freezing chamber. So much of what was wonderful about Star Wars has been sucked away, for me and for millions, by unceasing overexposure.

Just for today, though, I will try to forget what Star Wars has become and just remember what it was. Oddly enough, Empire was the last of the original Star Wars movies I saw. Therefore it was always somewhat mysterious and epic, even before I watched it. I knew what happened in Star Wars, and I knew what happened in Jedi, so I therefore knew that the events that joined those two very different movies had to be explosive indeed. How did Luke Skywalker go from naïve farmboy to calm and collected Jedi knight? Why was Han Solo frozen? How did Luke meet Yoda? Where did the Emperor come from? Darth Vader was Luke’s father? And who was Lando?

So I never got to experience Empire the way older people experienced it, as a cliffhanger, as a struggle that the heroes largely lose, as the anticipated sequel to the original Star Wars. I knew that everything turned out okay in the end, so I never thought of Empire as “dark.” (And I’ll be honest, I still think the term “dark” in conjunction with any Star Wars movie is a bit much. I think I once heard Empire called the saga’s “dark opus of ever building despair” on a forum once. Whoever said that must have been thinking of the scene where Yoda beats R2-D2 with a stick. I still get chills.) But even with all that baggage, I was still struck by just how different Empire was from the much more tonally similar Star Wars and Jedi.

My reasons for liking it back then were a bit more simplistic than they are today. Luke and Darth Vader finally had a proper fight (something I was expecting, but never got, throughout all of Star Wars), Yoda was a lot more fun to look at than old Obi-Wan, and Han Solo was the coolest man in the universe. Really. Empire Strikes Back Han Solo could walk into any room today, right at this moment, wearing that stupid 80s navy blue jacket, and get every woman there to go home with him. Young boys could only watch him in jealous awe. It might be hard to understand or even remember, but for young 80s kids raised on Spielberg and Lucas, Harrison Ford was the absolute last word on movie stars.
What resonates with me now, and why, despite all that the Star Wars saga has endured in the last decade or so, people still love Empire, is the story. The simplistic values of the original film might work when you’re a kid, but when you get older you realize life doesn’t quite work like that. Empire takes the traditional hero’s journey story of the first film and asks “what now?” So you’ve proven yourself and saved the galaxy. So what? To quote Princess Leia, despite everything that happened in Star Wars “The Empire is still out there!” Nothing our heroes accomplished mattered much in the end. Empire is a story about those times when dreams don’t come true, when we fail to rescue the princess, when no matter how hard we try nothing seems to go right. Yoda taught Luke the old Hollywood standby “Believe in yourself and you can achieve anything!” and so Luke, full of confidence, goes to Vader and gets his ass handed to him.
We didn’t realize it as kids of course, but The Empire Strikes Back essentially makes a mockery of the value system in the first film, the value system spat at us, cynically, by so many movies. “Believe in yourself” “Good wins out in the end” "That evil guy you're after isn't a corrupted cyborg version of your father" “Love conquers all” “The hero gets the girl” (Remember, pre-Return of the Jedi, Han Solo was stealing Luke’s girl right from under his nose) Empire says “nope” to all of these old Hollywood themes. (And despite my oft maligning it, Jedi, when it’s good, takes this thematic evolution a step further, but more on that another time)

This is the opposite of the hero’s journey. The story where all your training and preparation amount to nothing. The story that forces you to face up to the fact that no matter how good you are and how hard you try, there are going to be times when you’re left without a hand dangling from the bottom of Cloud City. Empire shows that when everything else has left you, faced with terrible options, you still have the chance to be brave and good. What makes a hero in Empire is not traditional heroics, but the simple choice to do good. Leia’s choice to go back for Luke, Lando’s choice to help save Leia and Chewie, and of course, Han Solo’s choice to face the certain death of carbon freezing with a brave face and an immortal line. Luke’s sacrifice in choosing to jump to his death at the end of Empire is far braver than anything he accomplished in Star Wars.
Life is more complicated, so much more complicated, than staring out at the setting suns wishing for your dreams to come true until, one day, they do. A lot of times, dreams don’t come true, or when they do they prove to be nothing like we imagined. That’s why the ending to the movie is still so beautiful and powerful, because in suffering the characters have found a goodness that transcends fate: compassion and friendship and loyalty—these are the things that save our heroes in the end, not their skill, not their courage, not their hard work. As Luke and Leia stare out at the impossible vastness of space as the Millennium Falcon turns into a spec in the distance and the powerful Han and Leia love them builds to a crescendo, we’re left not sad but hopeful, knowing that these characters have stared the devil in the face, as it were, and they’re still standing arm in arm.
The enduring theme of The Empire Strikes Back, then, is a very brave one for such a mainstream movie. Genuine goodness, far from being rewarded, is often punished with increased suffering and hardship; it is worth pursuing not because it’s beneficial, but because it’s right. Beyond all the nostalgia and special effects, it’s this idea that makes Empire Strikes Back legendary.
I don’t expect there will be another movie quite like Empire in our lifetimes. Sure, “better” movies might come along, but with the amount of media out there today there will never be a movie that defines fantasy for an entire generation again. There will never be another sequel that lives up and surpasses its predecessor with quite the same energy. Empire wasn’t “Star Wars 2”, it was Star Wars times 1000. Perhaps, many years from now, when the Star Wars marketing blitz finally dies down, these movies will be discovered again and seen the way they were to our generation, the way the Wizard of Oz continues to speak to people generation after generation. Maybe, when I write my Psycho-Cosmo-Blog on the 60th anniversary of Empire, such a magical film will no longer be held prisoner by merchandising gluttony: Lightsabers will be a rarity, Darth Vader will be scary, the battle of Hoth will be epic, Yoda will be wise, and Han Solo will, once again, be the coolest man in the universe.

We Are All Skeksis; We Are All Mystics

There was a trend towards high-concept fantasy films in the 1980s. If you ask me, they’re all great. The Dark Crystal, though, might just be the greatest of all. Every single project Jim Henson touched, from The Muppet Movie to The Storyteller, was overflowing with love and passion and craft. I can think of few artists today who infuse everything they work on with that kind of joy and magic. The man was a genius, and when I was a kid, just seeing his name in the credits of a movie let me know I was in the best possible hands.

But no matter how much I loved Jim Henson, it was a long time before I could bring myself to watch The Dark Crystal. Let’s face it: It looked scary. This was back in the early days of VHS, when the only information I could get on a movie was the cover art at the local video store. The Dark Crystal VHS was in one of those large, plastic snap cases, the kind Disney movies came in. It must have been the theory that these giant cases were somehow more kid friendly because of their size, despite the fact that they didn’t fit with your other VHS tapes on the shelf. What’s more the plastic was often poorly sanded off, and you could literally (and quite easily) cut yourself on the case. But kids were tough back then.

The effect of the oversized packaging was that The Dark Crystal stood out at the video store. The shelves were still taller than I was in those days, so the tapes on the higher shelves literally towered above me. The Dark Crystal was one of these, and it made the already terrifying image of the looming Skesie practically unbearable. I would have nightmares just thinking about the cover, so it was a long, long time before I finally gathered up the courage to watch the thing.

Actually, I’d be lying to say I got up the courage. I finally watched it at a friend’s house during a sleepover, and in the world of grade school boys, admitting that you are scared of something is simply not an option. Despite my fears, the film held a kind of fascination for me that I couldn’t avoid. Terrified as I was, I wanted to see it. It had worked its way up to near legendary status in my mind, and I had to see what was behind the cover.

First of all, I was relieved that the movie wasn’t that scary. Sure, crazy giant bird creatures yelled and swung giant swords around, but thanks to the Muppet performers even these creatures, particularly the Chamberlain, had a kind of cloying sympathy—they were still frightening, but I could watch them without going into shock. Every scene brought with it some kind of new creature or set to gawk at, and the fact that I had almost no idea what was going on didn’t hurt a bit. I was in another world.

I’ve watched the movie dozens of times since then, and I’ll admit to still not being totally sure what’s going on much of the time. And that’s just fine. The story follows Jen, a Gelfling (like an elf but with a G and an –ing) on his quest to restore a broken shard of the Dark Crystal. Jen has been raised by a group of peace loving troll like creatures called the Mystics, but when his master dies in a very Yoda-like fashion, he is forced out on his own to undertake his quest. Along the way he is helped by Aughra, likely the ugliest Muppet ever constructed, and Kira, a female Gelfling. In their way stand the fiendish Skeksis, aristocratic bird-type creatures who currently own the crystal, and use its power to turn peaceful, human-like creatures called podlings into mindless slaves. That’s the long and short of it—it goes deeper than that, but it’s all very run of the mill, uber-geek D&D fantasy type stuff, which is great in its own right. But it’s not what makes the movie memorable.

This is considered to be the only movie made entirely with puppets (though conceptual designer and super nerd Brian Froud points out on the DVD commentary that plenty of people in costumes and other tricks were also used to create the effects.) Whatever the extent of the movie being “all puppets” there’s no question that from beginning to end The Dark Crystal is a movie that was lovingly and painstakingly crafted from scratch. There was no CGI to help the production out, and very few effects that weren’t done in camera. Everything you see when you watch the movie was really there, and the attention to detail is just staggering.

One of my favorite scenes is a moment when the Skeksis sit down together to an elaborate meal. It’s an impressive scene, but when you stop to think that every piece of food, every single Skeksie, and their dour castle itself, was painstakingly handcrafted by a talented artist, the sheer scope of the movie comes into full focus. To bring a single Skeksie to life took a team of unbelievably talented artists and puppeteers, and there’s never a moment when it seems like you’re watching a puppet show. The creatures eat, talk, burp, and show all the signs of life. They’re real in a way that CGI still hasn’t touched (though I’m confident that someday it will), and it’s all thanks to the tireless efforts of Jim Henson and his crew.

Movies like this were expensive and difficult to make, but I have to think that we would have seen more of them had Jim Henson lived. Like his equally impressive Storyteller series, The Dark Crystal proved that the man was a serious artist with almost unlimited talent and potential. He wasn’t afraid to respect the fantasy genre, with all its glorious geekiness and fairy tale nonsense. Unlike Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, which approached the high fantasy elements of Tolkien with something like scorn and favored as realistic a world as possible, Jim Henson embraced the magic and whimsy (and darkness) inherent in so many fairy tales and fables. He rightly believed that these stories spoke to the deepest parts of us, and were and would continue to be relevant for as long as people told stories.

Just like The Wicker Man, there has been endless talk of a potential sequel to The Dark Crystal. Supposedly such a thing has long been in development, but there doesn’t seem to be signs of anything really happening in the immediate future. It’s kind of a shame—for the time being this kind of genuine fantasy seems to have died with Jim Henson. Filmmakers are a crazy breed though, and it won’t be forever before someone comes along with enough courage to attempt this kind of movie again. Guillermo del Toro has already shown tons of promise in this area, and I'm eagerly awaiting his take on The Hobbit. In the meantime, there are plenty of DVD releases of Labyrinth, The Storyteller, and above all The Dark Crystal to keep fantasy nerds entertained for years to come.