Obi-Wan Never Told You

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Reviewed by Matt Brown
May 15 2005

The Empire Strikes Back is about the Lie. It's a kick in your face; it's a joke. It's the most ludicrous sequel ever made, a film that is almost violent in its unwillingness to be what you want it to be. It remains gut-wrenchingly astonishing that The Empire Strikes Back ever prospered at all. It's so unlike its predecessor (save for the basest trappings of continued characters) that you would have been entirely justified in finding it to be some kind of a practical joke, played on you by the Star Wars reperatory company. (You remember the Holiday Special. ) Empire isn't Star Wars... and yet you know that somehow makes it more Star Wars than Star Wars. Empire is a complete and utter refusal of the original text; it undoes everything the first film created. It tells you that this is what Star Wars really is; it was never that other thing you thought it was. Empire is about the Lie. And you love it because it's so fucking good at it.

Kershner was a mean old bastard, and Kasdan was a cocky little shit; Lucas never liked you at all, and has made that plain, on numerous occasions. Together, they made the least sequelish sequel in history. This flick hates you. It doesn't want you to be happy. It wants to trick you, deceive you, lure you into the dark places. What of snow lizards on frozen plains? What of dark dealings in a mist-bound iron metropolis? What of bogs, and fogs, and talking frogs? What does any of this have to do with Death Stars, and Star Destroyers, and Mos Eisley spaceport? Rebellions and Empires are nowhere to be found; this is a love story. This is a fairy tale. This is a dark spectacle of magic, and magic gone wrong. This is a tale of the human subconscious, and all the way it moves faithlessly backwards when we think we are moving forwards. You thought you'd grown up already. It was the Lie.

Deep in your unconscious mind lies everything you need to know in order to understand The Empire Strikes Back. You know it best when you're not thinking, just feeling; Yoda would have something to say about that. The film was never about narrative - how could it be? There isn't one. There's no point or goal or driving thrust; there's only a slow dissolution, a scattering into chaos, like a nightmare slowly building, or a dream disintegrating upon waking. There's Dagobah. There's the Cave.

Yeah, you know where the film begins. It's not with a crawl or a battle: the film begins in the Cave. You know this because when you get to the Cave, everything before, and everything after, seem to be pulling towards you at the same time. Everything from the beginning of Star Wars until this moment; everything from this moment until the end of Return of the Jedi. They're all in the Cave. The monster comes out of the dark; the monster is your father; you are your father. "I am your father," he says, later, or maybe now, without saying. You've known all along.

"Only what you take with you."

Why didn't Ben tell you? Did he need to? Would it have helped? Would it have stopped you charging off to Cloud City to save friends no longer in danger, giving up the one thing that can truly help, truly change things? You left the elixer of life behind when you jumped into that starfighter; you made the mistake that Anakin made, a generation before. You tried to control things beyond your control. You made the grab for power you couldn't wield. When you fumble it, it burns your hand off.

Dissolution. Chaos.

Empire expands outwards from the Cave. Out into the swamp - stinking, fetid. Life run amuck. In the swamp, you find the mind, the soul, the spirit. You're in the deep zen now, the understanding behind the consciousness. There's a gnome here, a wizened old man, half Buddha, half demented teddy bear. Artoo won't understand it, but then Artoo won't need to; bless his droid heart for being willing to just go along for the ride, and not natter away at everything like Threepio. Threepio who goes on the ride into and out of hell, wailing the whole time, until someone - mercifully! - realizes that all machines have an off switch.

People have off switches too. Drop them in a vat, cook them till they're ready, and you won't see that cocky grin any more, when the star captain becomes the man of stone. His face is a mask of anguish, and suddenly, this ain't Space Invaders no more. It changes everyone. Leia, Chewie... bound together. Lando can go no further. Even Threepio stops his caterwauling long enough to notice that nothing's ever going to be the same again. Only one person seems unaffected, and you know who it'll be before that grim death mask rises out of the steam. Vader. Vader doesn't mind this inferno. He lives here.

And how horrible that at the end, it's not Obi-Wan, it's not Yoda, it's not Leia or Han or any of your friends. It's Vader. Vader's the only one who's got the true magic, the true truth, that one bit of gold puzzle-piece that will make all of this even somewhat worthwhile. Vader's pimping out the only secret worth knowing. Vader is the master. Vader is the father. A horrible, despicable, world-raping father, but at the end, the only one who ever told you the truth. Fathers do that.

By the time he tells you, you've already known it for an hour. You'll always be in the Cave, from here on out. Fighting the metal monster again and again, and always lured into thinking you're winning, until a shower of sparks and a flash of fire makes the meaning become plain: you've been on the wrong side all along. You've been betraying yourself from the get-go. And you won't be able to stop.

"I am your father." Stinking. Fetid. Life run amuck.

Pandora's Box is open - no more space battles, no more derring-do and swashbuckling. Betrayals, castrations, mighty falls from grace. And that one, despicable bit of truth, one piece of humanity rising through all that metal and wheels, spat through a vocoder, deep in the windy gully of Bespin's citadel. The connection. The stain of blood. The meaning of all of this, the reason everything up until this moment has happened, and the challenge for what you have to do next.

"Ben... why didn't you tell me?" You scream with him as he hangs above his certain doom; you fall with him as he gives up and is reborn.

You've found what you're looking for, kid. You've found him. Now what?