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Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back

By Scott Tibbs, January 19, 2016

With the release of The Force Awakens, I have decided to go back and watch the first six Star Wars movies in the order they were released. I have made it through Episode IV and Episode V thus far. I am going to be posting some observations as I go through the movies. Here are my thoughts on the first two:

Star Wars

The first thing I noticed is that the Stormtroopers are actually formidable, described by Ben Kenobi as good shots and very precise - their shots were much too precise for Sandpeople. They were put over strong, not like the jokes they became later on. They overwhelmed the rebels in the opening scene.

I also found it interesting that the first two characters with speaking lines we see are droids. We spend a lot of time with R2-D2 and C-3PO before the story moves along to the main characters. If I had never seen this before and knew nothing about the story I would think the droids were going to be our main characters.

The Empire Strikes Back

Just like the first one, the Stormtroopers are put over strong. They were not hapless losers, and Lando had to resort to deception to beat them. Lando only stopped the Stormtroopers when he "betrayed" and ambushed them.

The Imperial Walkers are still awesome, though I am not sure why blasters that could not dent the armor when they were standing could destroy an AT-AT with one shot after it fell down. Maybe the fall opened a crack in the armor?

What is the big deal about Han Solo leaving the rebels? Who is to say Han will not come back to the Rebellion after he pays off Jabba the Hut? He seems to be committed to the cause, but having bounty hunters chase him is a pretty big distraction to doing his job. This is not him taking his money and running like he did in the first movie, this is him trying to get a death mark off his head.

Luke's fight with Darth Vader starts off with the two fairly evenly matched even, but only because Vader is toying with Luke. Vader only has one hand on his lightsaber, easily fending off Luke, who uses both hands. When Vader puts both hands on his lightsaber, the fight is over pretty quickly. It is also interesting that it is Luke (not Vader) who strikes first, just like in the first movie when Ben Kenobi strikes first.