Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back Is Classic Science Fiction
Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back is, perhaps, one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. The movie has something for everyone. Love, revenge, drama, and mystique. For people that need somewhere safe to retreat to when the world gets too hard to deal with, don’t forget about episode five.
The reason that it is one of the best science fiction movies made is because it takes the viewer on such a great journey. It starts out on the ice planet of Hoth, were the rebels, after blowing up the first Death Star, have had to run to hide for a while. The planet is barely inhabitable. Yet the rebels have taken refuge there thinking that the evil Empire will not be able to track them out there.
Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a movie if they just hung out on some random planet the whole time, so they are found pretty quickly. The battle that ensures is a spectacular battle. The rebels are so over powered that there whole strategy is simply to try to keep the Empire out of the base long enough to evacuate it. The rebellion is still pretty small at this point, so running away is really the only answer. When the viewer sees how much of a ragtag group the rebels are and how hard they have to fight just to try to stay a step ahead of the Empire, it is easy to see that the rebellion is still just a pipe dream. At this point it seems like there is no way these people can win against such an overwhelming force.
Once they have finished the epic battle, the main characters split off. Luke goes and works with Yoda on becoming a Jedi. The training with Yoda proves just how far off Luke is from really being a Jedi, and shows us that, although he is a hero now, he still isn’t the man that he was meant to be.
While Luke struggles with his destiny, the rest of the characters are on the run from the Empire more directly. They are stuck in an asteroid field, trying to evade a fleet of ships that has nothing better to do than spend however long it takes trying to take out Han and Leia and Chewie.
Eventually everyone makes it to Bespin. In this Cloud City Luke learns, in one of the most epic moments in movie history, that Darth Vader is his father. And even after that, even after all the fighting everyone has had to do in the movie, the only victory that the rebels really get is that most of them get away. Han doesn’t make it out with them, after having been frozen and taken away by Boba Fett, but the rest of the characters do manage to make a break for it by the end.
The whole movie is about one small group that is so relentlessly pursued it is nearly ridiculous. The only way for them to win is to not die, or get captured. And not all of them win, as Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett.
There are some allegories to the real world in this story. So often small groups fighting for what they believe in are chased by an overwhelmingly large force. It doesn’t always end up the way it ends up in Star Wars, and we see in the end of this movie that it might not end well for this group either.
Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back ends in a dark place. No one really knows that everything is going to be okay. There is an assumption, perhaps, that the last movie will resolve all those issues, but at the time of the last movie the only bright spot is that they seem to have regrouped with the rest of the rebel fleet. From there it seems like it is going to be a long way off to actually defeat the Empire and its seemingly endless resources.
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