Why do we love "Star Wars"..? Because of its sequel.

A colleague whom I trust and admire, seasoned and well versed in the arts, asked me recently, why do people love Star Wars?

The short answer is, they don't. They love Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. 

They are an inseparable pair. Everything else that forms Star Wars - sequels, prequels, cartoons, spin offs, nerdish onanistic 'expanded universe' material, Lego cartoons, Holiday Specials and a lot more besides - falls short and gives Star Wars fans, genuine Star Wars fans (and here I am including myself) a bad name. The whole phenomena is bottled in the power of those two films combined. Nobody who loves Star Wars does so on the strength of the 1977 original alone. 'Empire' is the perfect sequel. It is the best sequel. Of all time. And I've had plenty time to think about exactly why.

I was born on 4 May, Star Wars day. My first memory of the cinema is seeing Star Wars, not in 1977, but '78 when it hit the UK. My generation waited an agonising 4 years to see it on VHS, and a further year before it was broadcast on TV. In that terrible interregnum, all we had was The Empire Strikes Back, with it scarring conclusion, and it touched us as deeply, painfully and formatively as any love affair or marriage could, at an age, when such impressions bear deeply on an innocent heart. This, this is why we love it. And love it so purely, powerfully and permanently. 

From a storytelling point of view, Empire is potent, efficient and brilliant, defying sequel convention in its own era and in ours. A sequel to anything was rare in the late 70s. In the current franchise-driven climate, movies are purposely constructed to deliver a "universe" that Star Wars created accidentally and naturally by the skillful simplicity and power of its storytelling.

Star Wars in 1977 was always a standalone story, entirely self contained from curtain raiser to literal curtain call. (in the final scene, they do everything except take a bow) George Lucas, forever rewriting his own and his "saga's" history, claims it was ever intended to be a multigenerational story, with inbuilt sequels and prequels, but producer Gary Kurtz and financier Alan Ladd tell it different. Following it's unprecedented and unexpected success, a sequel was called for, and Lucas had almost nothing to do with it. Rather than scale the story up, first draft screenwriter Leigh Brackett scaled it down, scaled it back, and kept it personal. Empire, for all its bombast and spectacle, is a side story. We don't follow the resistance, the Empire or any of its grand schemes, as we did in Star Wars. The big picture all happens unseen and offscreen. Empire follows its lead characters, but does not follow the main story of the titular star war, of secret plans, invasions, base attacks, generals and leaders: we as an audience do not rejoin the main game until the second half of Return of the Jedi. The story we follow is incidental to the one we began in Star Wars.

None of this is clear of course on first viewing. The Empire, led onscreen by Darth Vader, seeks out and then attacks the rebel base, much as the Death Star was attacked at the end of the prior film. More star wars. Or so it seems. The real genius of the screenplay is in its canards and reversals. The Empire isn't pursuing the rebels at all. Darth Vader is seeking Luke Skywalker. The battle we see serves only to further that goal. It's personal. Therein lies its storytelling and emotional power.

Halfway through Empire, Vader is summoned by the Emperor, a character whose existence was only implied previously and whom we meet here for the first time, to be informed of the existence of a "new enemy", Luke Skywalker, and his status as a threat. This, despite of course Vader's already stated obsession - as outlined in the opening crawl- with finding him, which has been driving the entire first half of the film. Vader plays dumb, fails to mention that he is already hunting hard for Skywalker, diverting the imperial fleet and all its resources to this aim, all behind his boss's back, and then pleads a mercy defence for Luke ("He's just a boy. Obi Wan can no longer help him...") before changing the Emperor's mind and suggesting trying to recruit the kid, rather than kill him.

Vader becomes a complex and nuanced character at this point, as it is only now that it begins to become clear that he is operating an agenda of his own, abusing his power on the way, hiring bounty hunters and murdering diligent professional military officers in his service, who are unaware of his renegade actions and greater betrayal of their mutual superior. Vader is highly motivated.

Elevating Darth Vader into a lead character and defacto leader of the Empire was also a surprising step. His status as a villain is so entrenched in our culture now it is easy to forget that he had a only marginal amount of screen time and story significance in Star Wars and had almost no role in advancing its plot. In Empire, his role is pivotal. He is the lead character. His actions drive the plot, the narrative and the reactions of "lead" characters Han, Luke and Leia. Everything they do is directly in response to Darth Vader, who in turn has gone rogue from the Empire, and is on a side mission of his own. 

None of this become apparent until the final act of the film, and the revelation that he is Luke Skywalker's father, a moment no ingrained so heavily into the collective cultural psyche that its narrative significance within this movie is almost forgotten. 

Empire also, from its opening crawl, explicitly references offscreen events and a series of adventures that inform how our lead characters behave in the film. In Star Wars, Luke and Vader never meet. Neither do Vader and Han Solo, yet when they do meet face to face in Empire, Solo's first reaction (as is so important to fans...) is to shoot first, ask questions later. It is clear they are acquainted, but we never saw how. Luke's first encounter with Vader similarly implies prior encounters. Somewhere between the end of Star Wars ("The force is strong in this one...") and the beginning of Empire, Vader has gone from complete ignorance of the existence of the anonymous pilot we know as Luke Skywalker to "obsessed with finding" him. When they meet at Cloud City (and sort of before, in the Dagobah cave) neither is confused about the identity of the other. No introductions are required. They seem to already know each other, and all prior dialogue infers it. Yet we never saw them meet and don't know what transpired when they did. The audience accepts and absorbs this, and is given credit for doing so. It is rare if not unheard of for modern mainstream movies to apply such deftness it their screenplays, and to move so effortlessly in their narrative without explanatory exposition. Empire's brilliance is in its efficiency and in its conviction. It moves with the confidence of a champion, the skill of a professional, the flow of an artist.

Much has been written about Empire's "dark" tone, which has been widely and correctly lauded. But few consider what a bold and risky move it was to take the film in this direction. The film expands the Star Wars universe by narrowing its focus. It deepens the drama by scaling it down. It develops the characters by giving them less to do. It raises the storytelling stakes by lowering its scale. There is no Princess to rescue, no ultimate weapon to destroy, no great escapes and nothing to do to advance the rebellion or defeat the Empire. Luke does not regroup with the others; he abandons the rebellion for a period of personal development. Leia, Han, Chewbacca and C-3PO spend the movie doing nothing but running for their lives. They do nothing to advance the plot. They are reacting do it. Vader makes all the moves, and everything that happens to them is in service to his pursuit of Skywalker. That the audience is unaware of this whilst it is happening is an act of considerable filmmaking finesse and brio, and of screenwriting skill above and beyond the clumsy crayons of Lucas.

All story points converge at Cloud City and the "I am your father" moment, and all of us who saw the film at that wonderfully correct age (I myself was eight and a half, the supposed perfect age to be captivated, according to Mark Cousins and Tilda Swinton*) perhaps never recovered from the gut punch of the loss of Han Solo and the denial of upbeat closure that we expected upon first viewing. Empire took away our heroes. It made them suffer. It cut their hands off. It separated lovers. It put a murderer in the role of father. It split up our core characters. We, and they are bereaved. And then it left us hanging. That ache for closure hit us as powerfully and effectively as Gone With the Wind or Casablanca did to a prior generation. And that is why Star Wars and Empire combined are loved so powerfully. "I am your father" cut us as deeply as kids as "Play it, Sam" or "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" did to our parents and grandparents as adults. It hit us in the heart, in our underdeveloped emotions. And nothing that has had Star Wars attached to it since 1980 has even come close.

Star Wars is a nearly perfect adventure film, but it is so only by the magical margin that coalesces around the very best of good luck. It should have been awful. The script is clunky, the acting is wooden, the plot is a hodge podge of cribbed, borrowed and outright plagiarised ephemera from established cinema and influences as diverse as Kurosawa, Ford and the writings of Joseph Campbell. But George Lucas got epically lucky on several critical areas that less lucky films fall down on.

The visual effects were a titanic gamble that paid off spectacularly. John Williams' glorious score is simply superlative. The cinematography by veteran Gil Taylor made shonky sets look epic and gave the film a magical lustre. A clever second edit gave the film a pace and urgency lacking in the first rough cut by Lucas, and a tax incentive offered by the U.K. Government put what was globally acknowledged to be the best set of technicians, set builders and soundstage workers in the world at Lucas's disposal. The film was as much fun as any James Bond film, as arresting as Planet of the Apes, as thrilling as any buckle Errol Flynn could swash, as well crafted as Kubrick and as dynamic as a roller coaster. Plenty films had each of these elements. Until 1977, nothing else had them all. 

By selecting to go off on a minor key for the follow up, the production team wrong-footed the audience and pulled off a cinematic parlour trick that was in equal measure risky, inventive and breathtakingly effective. The series has never soared as high since. 'Return of the Jedi' was a functional further sequel, but it retread old ground that has been recycled once again for its belated sequel 'The Force Awakens'. 'Rogue One', which I loved, also relied on reviewing the old material from a different angle. Movie sequels have become entrenched as the norm these days, but are routinely so pedestrian and predictable as to be rendered meaningless. The shadow cast by the unique one-two of 'Star Wars' and 'The Empire Strikes Back' is long indeed. Nothing else has come close. It's imprint is deeply ingrained in my generation that were the first to get into the habit of repeat viewing on VHS, and in these media-diffuse times, it seems unlikely anything could leave such a profound impact on any generation again.

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*The 8? Foundation is a Scottish-based not-for-profit organisation dedicated to introducing world cinema to children. Its aim is to create a new birthday: a film birthday, at the age of 8?, that celebrates the power of cinema to expand children’s horizons and welcomes children into the wider world of movies, beyond what is normally available to them at the multiplex or on their TV screens.