Cinephobia Reviews

The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition (Irvin Kirshner), 1980

I won't give you my views on the Special Edition butchery here: see my comments on Star Wars. Here it's enough to note the quality of the changes.

GOOD:

Many scenes on Bespin have been improved a good deal. There are some wonderful new shots of Cloud City that open it up visually, including the very subtle placing of buildings in the windows behind the main action.

BAD:

The Wampa scene. The Wampa is now in the cave with Luke as he tries to get his lightsaber. The creature itself looks fine, but the lighting of the scene is very unconvincing: you can tell the shots of Luke and those of the Wampa weren't filmed together.
Darth Vader returns to his Star Destroyer. The only obvious reason for these shots is to eliminate an apparent continuity gaffe (which I'd never noticed) in that Vader suddenly appears on his bridge in the final seconds of the film. It would have been better not to have bothered. The cross-cutting between Vader departing and the escape of the rebels ruins the flow of the sequence.

Related Items

For my Phantom Menace review click here.

For my Attack of the Clones review click here.

For my Revenge of the Sith review click here.

For my essay on the politics of Star Wars, Only a Conservative Deals in Absolutes, click here.

For my views on the Star Wars special edition click here, and for special editions in general click here.