How did fans react to The Empire Strikes Back at the time? Was it hated like The Last Jedi?
It’s a fricking weird movie that “subverts expectations” at nearly every turn.
Like that psychedelic cave scene that comes out of nowhere, or the worm scene, or the scene when Lando leads Han and Leia into a room and it’s fricking Darth Vader waiting for them.
ETA Hoffman was right about Mozart. Fun fact, he was actually named “Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann,” or “ETW Hoffman.” The “A” in his initials comes from “Amadeus,” as he changed his name to pay tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who he regarded as the greatest composer to ever live.
ETA Hoffman was the guy who wrote the original Nutcracker story btw, for those who don’t know. He wrote a lot of fairy tales and loved the classical music of his day
I can’t listen to this and call him wrong.
Anon, I think you took the wrong turn
frick off gay
bot
>or the scene when Lando leads Han and Leia into a room and it’s fricking Darth Vader waiting for them.
People saw this one coming. We still knew not to relax back then.
None of those were that egregious. And people were just excited to have another star wars movie and this one upped the ante and far surpassed the original. Plus all anyone could talk about was the vader father reveal.
They loved it. None of the Star Wars films were shit on by the audience. If anything, there were minor grievances, but that's about it. People didn't really start to shit on Star Wars until the prequels and sequels, the original trilogy withstood the test of scrutiny and were considered well done.
There hasn't been a single trilogy that's come close to the original Star Wars trilogy except for the Lord of the Rings, which was very well done.
>None of the Star Wars films were shit on by the audience
this isn't exactly true. the reception of rotj was a lot more critical than the previous films. being directed by lucas, it was doomed to under perform its predecessors. audiences left the theater knowing they watched the worst star wars movie
t. fake newster
The ticket sales of the first trilogy are kind of skewed because when Star Wars came out, people went back to see it over and over again becuase nobody had ever seen any shit like that before in film. By the time Empire came out, people had already been exposed to what Lucas could put on film, and since he really couldn't top the novelty of Star Wars, everything that came after didn't have the same impact. The only big criticism people had of RotJ was that the Ewoks were too damn "cutesy", and an obvious ploy to sell toys. The trilogy, as a whole, was well recieved, and most people thought it had a great story arc with a satisfying conclusion.
>Return of the Jedi
>directed by Lucas
>except for the Lord of the Rings, which was very well done.
i can't rewatch it, it has too much cringe
>cringe
You gotta be 18 to post here
i saw all of them in the theater. critics were mostly snobby buttholes about the series but general audiences went apeshit. INCLUDING the ewoks, etc. Finale of ROTJ blew my 12 year old mind. frick yeah 😛
>Finale of ROTJ blew my 12 year old mind
so... you were born in 1971?
and you're... on Cinemaphile. anon, I...
ROTJ had a lot of people shitting on the Ewoks, but in general yeah
i don't hate it but it does feel plodding.
Everybody who saw that in the theaters is dead anon.
>Everybody who saw that in the theaters is dead anon.
Nope. I saw all three of the originals in the cinema.
>mfw I share a board with a boomer.
He's a gen xer saw star wars in the Coronet in San Francisco in 1977 when I was 11. Opening shot on the big screen was amazing.
>Opening shot on the big screen was amazing.
People shit themselves at that opening shot....
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lamp
Star Wars was shat on by the masses when episode 1 came out. Then fanbase and even normies never recovered from the anger, since it’s been shit after shit for years. Original Trilogy is the only beloved Star Wars by fans and normies.
why did they make two more movies if no one liked the first one?
I’m pretty sure Lucas funded them himself
the first film made lucas so much money that he could fund more movies with them, despite the fact that it was a very unpopular film? cmon anon, you're not even trying
Anon, episode 1 is the phantom menace.
>why did they make two more movies if no one liked the first one?
People LOVED the first movie. It blew away anything we had ever seen before on film, and the soundtrack contributed as much to the success as did the special effects. Motherfrickers lined up to see that shit like 50 times and it was in some theaters for more than a year straight.
episode 6 was pretty shit
a very weak ending really
ESB was made because of how much of a popular hit ANH was. it was consumed by the masses for the same reason. it had yoda talking weird and "luke I am your father". that's all the general public needed to love the movie.
every kid wanted those Hoth toys.
ESB was a huge hit.
Hoth is the best star wars battle ever portrayed on screen. The rest of the movie could have been hot dogshit and it would still be the best movie.
>Rewatched ESB last week
>Realizing nothing about the Hoth battle or lead-up makes any sense and is ultimately pointless filler
Just more evidence that George was a special effects guy that should have never been put behind the camera, let alone allowed in the writer's room.
Michael Bay equivalent of the 70s/80s.
i want to watch a war movie. a sci-fi war movie. ESB does not disappoint
So you wanted to watch a war movie, I get that, I loved Hacksaw Ridge.
ESB has like six minutes of war footage, ignoring the fantasy technical ramblings of Leia and whatever that Commander's name was. Somehow that didn't disappoint? or the fact that both the Rebels and the Empire act like morons during the aforementioned six minutes?
Pretty sure Star Wars is Science-Fantasy, not Science-Fiction. Hence the reliance on unexplainable filler dialogue to pretend like there's more going on than what is really happening.
Not to mention ESB starts The Emperor's plotline of recruiting Luke. More than half the film's runtime isn't even dedicated to what could've potentially been dialogue/footage of, you know, The Empire Striking Back. Instead it focuses on Luke becoming a space wizard and what is the Empire doing? Trying to get the space wizard.
And of course, the Rebels are...uh... building another base or something offscreen.
hey i liked it
I liked the footage too, just didn't care for how it tied into what the movie actually was.
Thanks for the assessment, Doc. What's my copay?
Yeah, George can say anything and sell it. In reality he had almost full creative control over the project and its story, which is ultimately what I was complaining about. Like I mentioned in my response at the start of this post, I liked the footage, how it was directed.
Not great, but definitely a decent action sequence with a great story of how it was filmed. Credit where it's due, I respect Kershner and the entire crew for the Hell they went through, primarily in filming the Hoth sequence.
Ironic to my original statement, it's actually kinda funny cause it sounds like George wasn't even on set most of the time and ignored production to focus on budget costs. I guess when the writer you hire to fix your inane first draft frickin' dies during pre-production, you just forget the whole concept of spending money to hire professionals and finish the rewrites yourself.
>Armageddon: The Asteroid Strikes Back
I think you might be moronic.
you should see Rogue One, way better
lucas didn't direct ESB and has said kershner made "the worst star wars movie". in your attempt to lambast lucas, you agreed with him.
in reality, ESB is a great movie specifically because lucas didn't direct it
>Realizing nothing about the Hoth battle or lead-up makes any sense and is ultimately pointless filler
The purpose of the Hoth battle, and put in the beginning of the movie, was to establish that despite blowing up the Death Star, the empire was still a massive and powerful force to be feared, and the rebels were still small and scrappy, having to obviously abandon their no longer hidden base at Yavin, now hiding on another planet. And when the empire does show up, the battle is mostly a delaying tactic for the rebel forces to evacuate. While the snow speeders are able to use some clever tactics to take out some walkers, they are ultimately overwhelmed.
It also allows to show off new locations and animals, new ships, and ultimately setup Luke and Han/Leia going off on separate adventures until they converge at Cloud City.
What's stopping the film from starting at Cloud City? Introduce/re-establish your characters. Keep the sequences of Han/Chewie repairing the Falcon. Lando gets more screentime and maybe even some development that isn't rushed faster than shit out of my butthole. Lando is visited by Admiral Badguy, establishing that the Empire knows of the Rebel Alliance hiding away in his city/colony.
Lando struggles with what to do and the scene cuts, leaving his decision ambiguous. Oh no, he actually betrayed his friends who we saw over the opening runtime instead of some inane, pointless battle sequence in snowland. But he was betrayed too, now the Empire is invading Cloud City and we can have an action sequence with the poorly equipped Rebels. Maybe they will escape, maybe they won't? Maybe they'll take off on security transports and fly directly at the biggest fricking Star Destroyer ever built? Who knows.
>It also allows to show off new locations and animals, new ships
This sounds like Prequel logic. Writing to show off new things that can be turned into merchandise/toys. Creativity doesn't work without reason. I suppose the reason can be just to look at cool effects and shit, but I already mentioned that and Lucas' equivalence to a Michael Bay of his generation.
Insanity.
What a load of shit taste, just missing out on a Filoni drone and then the shit band will be complete.
What the frick is a Filoni? is that some prequel species or something?
Darth Filoni.
The man who struck Lord George down and took his legacy, modifying it as he saw fit.
The monster who's more interested in Star Ahsoka than Star Wars.
>Realizing nothing about the Hoth battle or lead-up makes any sense
The Hoth battle was fine except for two things....the g'damn speeders, and the lack of close air support from the Imperial forces. The rear-guard trench line to delay the enemy moving towards the base made sense. The Imperial infiltration and movement to the target in armored vehicles filled with assaulters made sense. The speeder fight, however, was fricking dumb due to the fact they flew straight at the walkers instead of flying around and hitting them in the ass repeatedly. The lack of Imperial close air support in the form of TiE fighters was stupid too, as they could have kept the speeders off the walkers and provided support to the ground assaulters during their assault.
Lucas failed pretty hard on most of the "war" aspects of Star Wars, but then again, so does most of ~~*Hollywood*~~.
boomer here (1961)
Everyone was saying "Oh, it's a sequel to Star Wars. Of course! Darth Vader was still alive at the end, they did it that way so that they could have a sequel. It's gonna be like Beneath the Planet of the Apes, not as good as the original but maybe fun."
When "EPISODE V" came on the screen, everyone was like "WTF, this is the second movie, not the fifth."
Then there was the Big Secret at the end of the movie that no one was supposed to talk about with anyone who hadn't seen the movie.
Then when there was a group of people who had all seen the movie, they would say "What do you think, is he really Luke's father? But that contradicts what Obi-wan Kenobi said in Star Wars, it's so cheesy. So what's going to happen in the third movie, is Luke going to turn to the Dark Side?" Because it was crystal clear at the end of Empire that there was gonna be a third movie.
But then it was just over the 10 years following ESB that people started reassessing it, saying that it was the best of the trilogy, talking about the Imperial March and the "I love you / I know" line and the love triangle, and turning "I am your father" into a catchphrase. It took a while.
And they've misassessed the OT by doing so.
What was it like to live in 1980’s America in the prime of your life, anon?
t. 1998
I was an incel so it sucked.
You must be absurdly subhuman to be incel then, no offense
yeah, don't glorify the 80s. if you rewatch back to the future, you're gonna have to note that this was before the acceptance of subcultures. when society was on some normie "be nice, have a gf, do your homework, become a wageslave" shit. society was just more conformist.
1966, the 70s were a really rough decade on a lot of fronts in the US. There was a palpable sense of recovery and forward progress in the 80s that led to the bubbly optimism of the 1990s.
>What was it like to live in 1980’s America
Fricking awesome. Nobody gave a shit about all the identity politics you hear tossed about today. Kids weren't fat lardasses, nor were they fricked up on psych drugs, which is why school shootings were rare as frick and not a concern. The crack epidemic was bad in the black ghettoes, though, and they were murdering each other at record rates back then. Then there was the whole "...we could all die from nuclear war with the Soviets..." thing that fricking sucked.
Shit was better than today for sure, though.
>Crack Epidemic
>Aid Epidemic
>President Ronald "Frick you" Regan
Yeah, better times indeed.
Epidemic
>>Aid Epidemic
Ronald "Frick you" Regan
>Fentanyl/Opioid Epidemic
>Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic
>President Joe "Who Am I?... Where Am I?" Biden
Again, it's like poetry, so that they rhyme. Every stanza kind of rhymes with the last one.
Thanks for your insights, Anon. That's really cool.
Fun bit of trivia, when the original movie was rereleased in 1978, it was now titled episode IV, a new hope
how the frick do you end up here
you're like what 61?
I've been on Cinemaphile since 2007.
It's virtually my only source of knowledge about current pop culture
Obscenely based, Wise Anon. I wish you good health
Did people like Yoda?
I think Yoda is a shit character. Lukes training was basically over, he didn't need another fricking mentor. We've already seen him train in the first movie.
Yoda is an annoying puppet. A clear caricature of an old asian kung fu master who can't speak proper english. The jar jar of the OT.
Oh, yeah I forgot about Yoda.
Yes, people were talking about how he was a Muppet and voiced by a Muppet actor (The Muppet Show was very popular in the late 70s), and how he was wise and put his words in the wrong order and all that. ISTR people thought he was cute.
Low IQ
I can't tell if I'm being baited.
Regardless, I enjoyed Yoda. He worked for the sake of Luke's unnecessarily extended arc. It was a clearer presentation of what he already went through in ANH. I prefer his contributions to Obi-Wan's.
Still, you're mostly right. Star Wars isn't really its own thing, it is and always was trying to emulate old, classic storylines and tropes in a science-fantasy setting. Yoda doesn't really have much if any character and basically just serves as a plot device for Luke's arc, which as I already mentioned could have been done in thirty minutes.
People liked Yoda because the Muppets existed and were very popular back during that time, so their appreciation for Henson and his muppets extended to Yoda. People also like Frank Oz at the time, and recognized and appreciated hearing him voice Yoda.
gr8 b8 m8 i'm str8 ir8!
Bro that Vader scene is the best shit in the entire series tho on some ‘ayoooo nigguhhhhsssss’ shit
How did fans react in the theatre when Palpatine showed up in Return of the Jedi and wasn't a space chimpanzee anymore?
A good plot twist that raises the stakes is not the same as subverting expectations for its own sake. TLJ did worse than this, it shit on what came before it just because it could.
>that psychedelic cave scene that comes out of nowhere
showing instead of telling. luke's fears and doubts and the persistent danger that he may embrace the dark side expressed in a concise way.
the other two are just drama, the worm is inconsequential filler, but lando selling out han is a plot twist.
People equating ESB with TLJ should be placed on a "shadow" board, where they continue to post as normal (to their knowledge) but all the other posts they see and interact with are actually only bots.
>shadow board
>Russian bots
Does this actually exist?
All I remember about seeing ESB at the drive in was my dad b***hing me out for spilling candy on the floor. At least he bought my brother and I some cool tshirts.
My mom saw it 7 times and one of the earliest memories I have is watching Empire at a Drive Inn while in her lap.
What did they mean by this?
You don't have to put spaces in your text that way when you post here.
You're even worse than a bot. Frick off and have a nice day.
no one here is older than 24, anon.
first post in this thread but i am 47 years old.
Fricking newbies,
Everything was so different back then
Normally anyone over the age of 16 would have been embarrassed to watch anything as silly as Star Wars in the '70s. It became a social phenomenon where everyone was seeing it and having a good time and you didn't have to go to the movies to watch some gritty '70s social commentary movie and you could just have fun. The context was that it was a guilty pleasure.
Empire didn't sell as well theatrically because actual adults kind of had a "party's over" mentality about it. That kind of marginally more adult and complex movie is absolute crack for teenagers though.
Looking hard into your eyes
There was nobody I'd ever known