Episode 58 - Empire Strikes Back Part 1 (Why is this Review So Long) - Middle Age Movie Reviews Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Electronic Media Collective podcast network. Yeah,
it's a mouthful. For more great shows like the one
you're about to enjoy, visit Electronic Media Collective dot com.
And now our feature presentation.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome to the Middle Aged Movies Podcast. Two guys
saying you said you want to be around we made
a mistake, Well this could be it. My name is
Tim and my podcasting partner is Mandalorian Matt.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well Matt looking for someone. We were found someone we
have join us tonight from the Dungeon Master Elite YouTube
channel run scruffy looking near Furder, it's the Dungeon Master himself.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
Rick Say hello, Rick, Hey, what's going on?

Speaker 5 (00:52):
Everyone super happy to be here, and I hope that
you guys at home are super happy to be watching
this because it's gonna be a last no pun intended.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
All right, Rick, why don't you tell us what movie
we're watching on the view screen tonight?

Speaker 6 (01:07):
We are watching the nineteen eighty seven mel Brooks classic
starring Bill Pullman, John Candy, and Rick Branis. If you
guessed we are meeting here again for the first time,
for the last time, to discuss spaceballs, you are correct.

Speaker 7 (01:27):
Well, man, not this again.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, knock it off.

Speaker 8 (01:30):
I told you we're not doing spaceballs.

Speaker 5 (01:32):
All right, all right, all right, maybe the next time
I come on, we'll do spaceballs.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
But for real though. Tonight we're watching the nineteen eighty movie.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, number six hundred and
eighty five, from the book of one thousand and one
Movies You Should Watch Before You Die, written by Lay Bracket,
Laurence Casden and George Lucas, starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford,
and Carrie Fisher, and of course directed by none other

(02:02):
than George Lucas.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
I don't think that's correct. I believe it was directed
by Irvin Kershner.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

Speaker 7 (02:10):
Well, thanks Rick for giving us that wonderful introduction. I'm
glad that you managed to at least get some of
your job, right. I mean, you had one job, man,
one job, all right. Well, before we dive into the
usual question, guys, I do want to point out one thing.
We are hitting the tent poles in our year long

(02:32):
anniversary special, and it just happens to fall that this
is the forty fifth anniversary of Empire Strikes Back and
what's really interesting is that Empire Strikes Back was the
number one movie back in nineteen eighty. I gotta say,
I'm really looking forward to talking about this film. So
let's go ahead and ask our first question, Tim, When

(02:53):
was the first time that staryard young Tim got to
watch Empire Strikes Back?

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, if memory serves me right, unlike you two uts,
I got to see this one in the theater as well.

Speaker 8 (03:09):
Didn't get to see it the drive in.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Amazingly, by the time Empire comes around, the drive ins
are almost a thing of the past. I believe our
local drive in had closed down, so I've seen it
at our local theater, but on the big screen, so still.

Speaker 8 (03:23):
A major event.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
The dad's all got together, got all the same you
know kids together again that went and seen Star Wars.
We all went down to the Paramount, which had the
biggest screen in town, and we watched the Empire Strikes
Back and you could barely contain us. We were so excited.
I mean because we were all living, eating, and breathing
Star Wars. So it was just such a treat to

(03:46):
be able to watch it at that age, you know,
with your best friends and just get to immerse yourself
in that world.

Speaker 7 (03:51):
As a kid, fantastic. I had a slightly different experience,
but I'll tell you a little bit about that and
a little bit first, I want to hear what Rick
has to say about the first time he saw Empire
Strikes Back, since he's actually our junior partner tonight. So
Rick on us, when was the first time you saw
Empire Strikes Back?

Speaker 4 (04:09):
Yeah, I'll be totally honest.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
I technically wasn't born when this thing came out, and
I don't actually remember when the first time that I
watched this one. I mean I do remember, and I
think I said this in a New Hope. I remember
when I was a little kid. Return of the Jedi
was kind of like the big thing, But I really

(04:31):
don't remember when I first watched this movie. But before
we started recording, Matt and I were talking about watching
this multiple times. And yeah, I've seen this thing tons
of times though, even though I didn't see it when
it first came out, or probably for the first five
years after it came out, I've watched it tons of times.

Speaker 7 (04:51):
Man, awesome, fantastic. You know, I was born before this
movie came out, but I was two years old, so
I didn't get the op cotunity to see it in
the theater. First time I got to see it was
actually on the small screen, and I had an older
cousin who was big into Star Wars. He had all
of the action figures and Empire Strikes Back was at

(05:12):
the height of its It's apex. Yeah, the apex of
the film. I mean, everybody was talking Empire strikes Back.
All the actions figures were there. I got to play
with the action figures at my cousin's house before I
even saw the movie. He was telling me all about it,
and of course we immediately sat down that night and
watched it at his place. Now, flash forward several years

(05:36):
of watching this on different formats, laserdis DVD, VHS, you
name it, I've seen it on that. Flash forward to
five years ago, the height of COVID, and it is
the fortieth anniversary of Empire Strikes Back. And I just
happened to be down in Texas visiting some family and
they said, hey, let's go watch Empire Strikes Back at

(05:57):
the drive in. I got to experience at the drive
in and that was phenomenal. We sat there and we
got to see, you know, a forty foot Darth Vader
stopping through the halls of his executor Class Star Destroyer.
So yes, it was awesome.

Speaker 5 (06:15):
What was your guys experience when they re released it,
because that's honestly when I first watched it in the
big screen. Was that around ninety seven or something like
that they re released it in the big screen with
a THHX remaster.

Speaker 7 (06:29):
Yeah, I wanna say it was nineteen ninety six and
ninety seven when they re released all three films. I
saw it in the theater. I was a little disappointed because,
you know, you have certain expectations of the movie when
you go to see it, and then when they added
in all the extra digital effects and stuff, I thought
it was needed the time, but then like, it feels
like it kind of takes something out of the genuineness

(06:50):
of the original film. How about you, Tim, what did
you think of the re releases?

Speaker 2 (06:55):
I was super excited to see in the theater like
you were, but it didn't wane for me. I mean,
just the idea that they took these films, clean them up,
added some extra speci effects, and put a little bit
of extra footage on there. It's totally like a big
bang moment when they're you know when they talk about
movies like, hey, we're gonna go see this movie. They
added on like, you know, three seconds worth of extra footage,

(07:15):
and they say it changes the whole scope.

Speaker 8 (07:16):
Of the movie. You know, Like that's how it was
for me.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
You know, I'm like, anything you could add to the
Star Wars world is good. I mean, I know, we
could go back, and there's the whole thing with you know,
who shot first?

Speaker 7 (07:29):
Houn agreed.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Oh, I mean, okay, yep, there's some of that. But
still this one was probably far more subtle than the
last one, the Wompa scene being the biggest, but the
rest was just subtle things like extra little shots of
the Falcon flying through Cloud City or you know, things
like that. So it was much more subtle than this one,
and I thought it blended nicely. It just kind of

(07:50):
opened that world up a little bit more than was
there before. So I didn't find it to be that
jarring or upsetting that they did it.

Speaker 8 (07:58):
I mean, I really didn't.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
I mean, don't get me wrong, I still enjoy having
a copy of the original so I can watch the unedited,
unchanged original theatrical release. But I still enjoy these just
as much, and there's some other scenes. We'll get in
and talk about some of that once we get really
started in the film proper. But I enjoy them both
for what they are, and I don't think it really
took me out of anything or really wrecked the world

(08:20):
for me. It just allowed me to have another I
think it really adds two minutes. I think I looked
because I watched both these before. When I got ready
to do this, I watched my original copy, unedited and
the remastered new version, the special editions. I think it
adds about two minutes, and that's just two more minutes
worth of happiness that I get out of life.

Speaker 7 (08:39):
Gotcha, gotcha?

Speaker 8 (08:40):
All right, well, i'll give you that.

Speaker 7 (08:41):
I'll give you that. Well, Tim, Typically, this is the
point where I ask you, as our puppet master, what
we're going to do. But you know what, because this
is Star Wars, this is your genre, your field of expertise.
I'm going to be the puppet master and I'm gonna
slip my hand up the little puppet that is Yoda,

(09:03):
and I'm going to ask you, can you do the
synopsis in your best impersonation of Yoda?

Speaker 3 (09:09):
No, your hand is cold, Please give it a try.
Here we go dark time. It is for the rebellion.
Although the Death Star destroyed, it has been Imperial troops
pursue the rebels across the galaxy, invade the dreaded Imperial starfleet.
They do establish a based on hoff they have, but

(09:31):
discovered they were.

Speaker 9 (09:32):
As Darth Vader searches the galaxy for Luke Skywalker flee.
Luke and his friends must and adventure and excitement they
will have. As young Skywalker seeks me out, his friends
flee Imperials and bounty hunters alike against my old counsel.
I train Luke in the ways of the force, but
discipline he has not. Dark visions of his friends reckless.

Speaker 8 (09:57):
They make him leave.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
He does training incomplete, save his friends. He may, but
face the evil of Darth Vader first.

Speaker 7 (10:07):
He must nice thank you? Oh well, all right, well
that was That was a great intro, a great synopsis.

Speaker 8 (10:24):
Tim, We did my whole life?

Speaker 4 (10:25):
Am I to do this? You can die a happy man?
Now to two more.

Speaker 7 (10:31):
Minutes I have before before we dive into the uh
the story of Empire strikes back. There's a few things
I just wanted to touch a base with you guys,
A little bit kind of get you your thoughts on
the whole movie. I know, in my opinion, Empire Strikes
Back is probably the best Star Wars film, and I
think part of that is because it's not your typical

(10:51):
story that it doesn't have like a three act system
to it. It's it's more like a film that I
would almost think is is a Chase movie, far better
Chase movie than that recent one that they did, The
Last Jedi. What do you guys think? Am I right
in my personal memory that Empire Strikes Back is probably
the best Star Wars movie. I'd love to hear what

(11:13):
you guys think, and I'll turn it over to you first.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
Rick. You probably are right.

Speaker 5 (11:17):
Concerning the general public, I think this is probably regarded
as the best of the original three and the trilogy. However,
that being said, on a personal level, I think there's
some bias here because, like I had mentioned before, when
I really started to get into Star Wars, it had
been in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi being released,

(11:39):
so there's a lot of marketing and stuff. I remember
being super duper into ewalks and Wookies. One of the
first things that I got when I was a kid
as like a toy. I got the Ewalk Village, you know,
and it had the net, and it had shoots and
you could put the e walks in and stuff, and
they had these big trees and things. I had Java's Palace,

(12:02):
so I had all these cool things. So there's definitely
some bias going on. However, that being said, all that aside,
Jedi did have some of the real big reveals in
the story. So I just feel real good whenever I
get the chance to go through the trilogy and then
get to the point where I get to see Luke

(12:23):
being that you know, super badass Jedi Knight and things
like that. So I really, really really do like Return
of the Jedi, probably the most for that reason, and
you know, some nostalgia and things like that.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
However, you know, if I take my.

Speaker 5 (12:38):
Own bases aside, there's very clear and good reason why
I think most people regard Empire to be the best
of the three.

Speaker 7 (12:48):
Yeah, I'll give you that, But just bring up the
question is I wonder if Age determines the factor two
is of what is someone's favorite. Because Tim's a little
bit older than I am, he got to see the
first Star Wars at the movie, I got to see
Empire in my formative years, and obviously you Rick had
a return of the Jedi. So's exsition that maybe that

(13:08):
might be a factor. Is where you pick that as
your favorite movie. Now that I'm done rambling, I'll turn
it over to you, Tim. Is Empire Strikes Back the
superior film?

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Well, that's kind of the question that way you present it.
I mean, is it the superior film. It may be
the best written of the three, but I think you're
on the something when you say age plays a factor,
because obviously Rick remembers Jedi. For me, I'm stelling any
from toy story. I got to see Star Wars as

(13:37):
a seven year old. Nothing's going to beat that. Ever,
that's where my heart lies. That is by far the
far superior one. But is Star Wars just lightning in
a bottle? Is it a one time thing? I mean,
most of time you get a cool movie and then
you get these sequels of diminishing return because they start
to make these lower budget films and they don't spend
as much in the production, the effects, the I half

(14:00):
the time it's not even written by the same people
who created the original. And now we move on to Empire.
At the time, this film was kind of panned. It
didn't get great critical response. They thought it was too dark,
they thought it lost the campiness of the first one,
although they said it was a good film.

Speaker 8 (14:16):
We all know it.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Today as the greatest sequel ever made, probably Trump's all
the other Star Wars films. It does so many things
at so many levels so well. But it wasn't there
at the beginning. It was there, but it took people
a while to realize it. But I think, looking at
it now in hindsight, yes, it's the far superior film
in all the movies. I mean, it is by far.

(14:37):
It's the pinnacle movie. I think people who grew up
with it, it's an age thing. I would love to
have one more person in this panel who grew up
outside of even the Return of the Jedi release. Give
them another ten years down the road and see what
somebody would say there. It'd be interesting to see what
their thoughts are on it. The only other thing I
can say is, I know I introduced this movie to

(15:00):
my son much like you did your children, Matthew, and
I don't know what their take was on it, but
my kid appreciates the first three but he lives in
the prequels.

Speaker 8 (15:09):
Yeah, word is the prequels.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
It's probably Attack of the Clones again, probably the strongest
of the three of those films by far.

Speaker 8 (15:15):
Yeah, what's his favorite thing?

Speaker 2 (15:16):
The Battle Droids, the Super Battle Droids, you know, the
DROIDI because all the Jedi like, that's where he lives.

Speaker 8 (15:21):
That's his world. He loves that stuff.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
And again acknowledge it's the first three, but not nearly
as cool as the three that he grew up with.
So there's the age factor in there. I'd like to
find that one niche between the prequels haven't come out yet,
but you weren't around during Jedi and then see what
somebody has to say about them in that period.

Speaker 7 (15:39):
The Wilderness years.

Speaker 8 (15:40):
Yeah, yeah, the.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Wilderness years, work everything. It kind of waned for a
while at the Return of the Jedi.

Speaker 7 (15:45):
Right, So we need to find somebody that was born
after nineteen eighty six but before nineteen ninety nine, Yes,
somewhere in that in that range.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yes, all right, so check it out. Put it like this.

Speaker 5 (15:57):
For those of you who are listening on YouTube, Spotify, whatever,
go ahead and put a comment down below and let
us know what do you think about these three movies
and if you would kindly just mention whether or not
this was something that you watched years after it came
out for the first time, or you watched it when
it was coming out or around that time when it

(16:17):
was coming out. And then you know, we'll take a
look at the comments down below and you'll have a
chance to add to the story.

Speaker 8 (16:23):
Love to read that.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
I love to converse in that world, like get a
lot of people's opinion, like yes, I seen it during
that time period, and just hear what people have to say.
Even people afterwards seen the first three first, I'd like
to see if their experienced is the same as my son's,
you know, versus the three of us who seen them
at different stages in our lives.

Speaker 7 (16:42):
All Right, well, I don't want to quite dive in
the movie just yet. There's still a few things I
want to kind of pick apart before we get into
the film. And that's more on the production side. Lucas,
even though he has full creative control of the movie,
he was getting his own financing together for it. He
still kept the studios out of that. He kept distribution
only on the studio side. For twentieth Century Fox got

(17:05):
a team of writers with him, and not only that,
but we also let go of the reigns of directing.
He took off that director's cap and he headed to
Irving Kirshner. And personally, I think that was a phenomenal
idea because although he had a great nugget of a
story with Star Wars, having somebody else there to kind
of like pick up the pieces or pick up the

(17:26):
reins and kind of carry a little more into this movie,
and it's just it's really cool how Lucas was able
to carve this out of his initial idea with the
help of Irving Kirshner and his fellow writers of Lawrence
Kasden and Leah Brighton. What do you think of that
and how the stories presented Tim.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Lucas Definitely he wanted to keep control. I mean, that
was his main goal. He won all the rights to
all the characters, the story, the franchising, everything, and he
didn't want to lose that the next one. And now
it's gone from a movie that nobody had any faith
in to this multi million dollar blockbuster.

Speaker 8 (18:06):
So people have.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
High anticipation at the next one. If it's not just
lightning in a bottle will do the same thing, and
George Lucas rolls the dice. He's like, look, I'm going
to take all my profits and I'm going to throw
him into this movie and I'm going to try to
maintain control. But on the flip side of that coin,
he doesn't really have a story yet. In fact, he
was so doubtful that Star Wars was going to turn

(18:32):
out as well as it did that he actually had
a writer named Alan Dene Foster write a sequel to
Star Wars called Splinters of the Mind's Eye, which was
going to be a much lower cost sequel that he
was going to try to get produced should Star Wars
not have done well, in order to just try to

(18:52):
keep the Star Wars thing going. So we might have
seen a diminishing return as this movie was kind of
meant to be, you know, sequel, had Star Wars not
taken off. But since Star Wars did so well, that
whole script just got turned into a book. Basically that's
kind of part of the expanding universe. Now they have
banned pretty much all the concepts that were in it,

(19:15):
and so he's going to go ahead and finance this
movies himself with his money and again, he's going to
go find himself a writer.

Speaker 8 (19:22):
So he finds Lay Bracket.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
And she's a really well known writer in the industry,
and he pays her.

Speaker 8 (19:31):
I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
I think it was like thirty thousand, sixty thousand dollars
somewhere there to go ahead and write the screenplay. But
the thing is is that she has cancer and he
knows it, so he pays her. She writes the first script.
He's pretty happy with it, but has some ideas when
it comes back, writes a whole bunch of notes, sends
it back to her. She doesn't respond because of Fortunately
she passes away. So now he's like, now I have

(19:53):
to get involved, and he's really trying not to because
Star Wars took a toll on him and his health
and his marriage and everything else. He just he was
physically exhausted and didn't want to do. But he knows
to keep this thing going he's going to have to write,
but he doesn't want to direct, so he brings in
Lawrence Kasden to go ahead and take the helm pays
him a pretty significant chunk of change to pick up

(20:16):
where Bracket's screenplay was at, takes his notes and asks
him to continue writing it, and in the meantime he's like,
I don't want to direct. I really want to take
my focus and I want to put it into industrial
light magic and getting Skywalker Ranch up and running. That's
where he wants to keep his focus. And so he
goes and he's like, I need to find a director,

(20:36):
but I have to have a director that understands that
they are the director. But I have ultimate control. If
I say something changes, they don't argue with me. They
do what I tell him to. So he goes and
he finds Irving Kerscher, who was a mentor of his.
I think might have been even a teacher at one
of the schools I don't remember now off the top
of my head.

Speaker 8 (20:54):
And Irving doesn't really want to do it.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
One he's afraid to take the helm of a film
that was so popular in Star Wars because he's afraid
of that flops, he might be responsible and he's not a.

Speaker 8 (21:02):
Big special effects scout, so he kind of turns down
at first.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Lucas persists and convinces him to do it, but everything's like,
that's fine, but I'm also going to have some input
into the story, and I'm going to make these characters
have or depth. Because your characters lack that. I want
to make it more personal. I want to flesh them out.
So he agrees and so that, and that's basically where
it takes off. So Lucas finishes kind of writing the

(21:28):
screenplay with Lawrence Kasden, and they get a workable final
draft of it and they send it off.

Speaker 8 (21:35):
Unfortunately, the whole film is just.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Played by all kinds of financial problems, and the cost
just keeps ballooning and ballooning and ballooning, and eventually it
goes from I don't even remember what the original budget was,
but it shoots up to like thirty million dollars or
something like that, and he's about ready to lose control
of it. They won't give him any more financing for it. Finally,
a friend of his goes to bat for him, gets

(21:57):
him some additional funding and manages to keep the project afloat,
and he is able to retain all the rights and
everything to Star Wars, but he does have to capitulate
a little bit of money more to twenty century Fox.
They get a bigger cut of the profits, but they
still make a silly deal where it's like, well, we
want a certain cut up to one hundred thousand dollars,
and then it defers back to you to like I

(22:19):
think it was like seventy percent or something like that.

Speaker 8 (22:21):
And as we know, this movie makes like four hundred
million dollars.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
So it was a good deal for him in the
end and it worked out, but it was a huge
gamble and it still ended up taking a toll on
him because he had to getting back into the writing process,
and then because the production got so long and so
off track, he had to start taking the helm back
on directing the film. And it will eventually turn out

(22:44):
well for him as far as that goes, but it'll
take a toll again on his health and his marriage.

Speaker 7 (22:49):
Yeah, it was. It was hard on him, that's for sure.
How about you, Ricky, any thoughts on the production side
of Empire.

Speaker 5 (22:58):
I'll be honest, man, I don't think he's something that
I get too much into. Not that I wouldn't be
interested in seeing a documentary on all this stuff because
the franchise is super cool. I mean, I definitely have
delved myself into areas and star wars that I think
most people don't even know exist, but this is just

(23:18):
not one of them.

Speaker 7 (23:19):
Gotcha, all right, Well, you know, I do want to
come back and touch on something that Tim had mentioned.
So Alan Deven Forrester wrote an original sequel script, and
if I remember right, I've never actually read Splinter of
the Mind's Eye, but if I remember right, that sequel
had Darth Vader dying.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
If I'm not mistaken, I don't know if it had
him die, But it was a story that focused on
Luke and Princess Leah and their maroon together on planet Minbam,
which we both hear about in the sequels or they prequels,
I'm sorry, eventually, and they basically encountered the locals where
they struggle against the galacticat Empire.

Speaker 8 (24:00):
Including Darth Vader.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
It really takes a whole different turn.

Speaker 7 (24:05):
It was definitely something different than what the actual sequel
came out to be. And the other thing that I
want to kind of give a tip of the hat
to is Alan Deine Forrester is a phenomenal writer. I've
read some of his books in the different franchises such
as Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien. He did the novelization
for the thing, So I mean, it's just awesome that
Lucas was able to reach out to him to get
him to write something. It's a shame that we didn't

(24:26):
to see his vision, but I at least wanted to
acknowledge Alandine Forester, So thank you for bringing that up toim. Well,
without any further ado, let's go ahead and let's dive
into Empire Strikes back, the fifth installments in the Star
Wars franchise. So of course we have the scroll that
we're all familiar with with Star Wars to give us

(24:48):
that field to go back to the classic Buck Roger
adventures from the serials from back in the nineteen thirties.
We do this other classic thing that seems to be
in all the Star Wars movie and we go from
the scroll which tells us he's happened after episode four
leading into episode five, and then we get this panned
down to a Star Destroyer, much like we had the

(25:09):
pan down in the first movie, and it seems to
be something that continues through all the Star Wars films
is to just to pan down to something, and this
really cool Star Destroyer is just out there launching probes
throughout the space because the Empire is looking for the
Rebel Alliance. They're looking for the infamous Luke Skywalker, and

(25:29):
from the scroll we get the idea that Luke is
like leading everything, when in reality he's not the big
leader that this opening story kind of tells us. We
then see the planet Hath. It's kind of interesting that
we go from a New Hope where we start off
on like a desert planet to now we have a
frozen wasteland. So Lucas must really like desolate planets. What

(25:53):
did you think of that opening sequence with the star
destroyer coming in and launching all those probes and the
lead up to hat when you first saw that, Tim,
I love.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
That he continued going with the whole intro scroll thing,
which again we kind of touched on the last one.
This is the one the writer's guild and what was it?
The Writer's Guild and the director's guild gave him datic
for the last time because he didn't have any of
the credits at the beginning, but they let it go
for the most part because they didn't think it was
going to do very well. But this time they were like,

(26:24):
oh no, no, you're putting it at the beginning. He's like,
I am not putting it at the beginning, and so
they threw down, and they said, well, that's fine. Then
we're just going to make sure that the films don't
get released in theaters.

Speaker 8 (26:33):
And they were the.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Serious and they tried really hard. They were unable to
do it, though, they weren't able to stop them. So
then they're like, fine, we're just going to find you
and find him. And did they find it again, It
was like nearly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They
even went after Er and Kershneron was going to find
him and he's like, I can't afford to pay these fines.
He's like, I'll pay him for you. And this is
the final time that Luke's is going to deal with
them on that. And he says, that's fine. Here's here's

(26:55):
your blood money. And just so you know, I'm done.
You can tear up my card for the writer's guilt, right,
but you can tear it my card forever guilt. I
belong to Director's Guild, Writers Guild, whatever guild you got
that I'm in.

Speaker 8 (27:06):
Take my name off the rouster, rip up my card.
I'm done with you.

Speaker 7 (27:10):
Magic Guild, yeah, the.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Magic Guild, whatever you pick it, whatever guild you know,
the world of Warcaff Guild that he's in whatever I've dumb.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
With all of you.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
And he's able to do this because these movies make
him financially independent. I mean not only you know, from
studios obviously he can pretty much thumb and those with them,
and like, I'm going to produce this, I'm going to
make it.

Speaker 8 (27:28):
I'm going to retain the rights. You may distribute it
if you like. You know, that's it. That's about all
you get.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
But it will cause him problems in the future as
far as sometimes getting actors and be able to do
some of the things he wants and to direct certain
films and stuff, because they're going to run interference as
much as I can, because they can't have this rogue
out there.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
Just doing whatever he wants.

Speaker 8 (27:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, and he pretty much does, but they don't make
it easy for him. But yeah, he's pretty much done.
But then moving into it, yeah, I mean I love that. Again,
we get the pan down, which wasn't originally how this
film was supposed to start. So originally the film was
supposed to start with us seeing Luke and the Tanton
going across the Hawf plane, and he decided fairly far
into it that you know, no, I don't want to

(28:07):
start it like that. I think we should do it
like we did the last one, And so they put
that scene in front of it with the Star Destroyer's
pro droids getting launched out, which I thought was better.
I mean, it's just because it stays consistent out of
all three of them. I mean, although it's not as
cool as that first one because again we got that shift.
It just he just keeps coming in and coming in,
coming in. But it's still cool because it starts again

(28:28):
with a Star Destroyer. We get to see space, it
kind of pans down against the planet. So I really
like the way it started. It's the quintessential Star Wars beginning.
It's what we're going to know every movie's going to
have going forward. It's like the rug in the Big
Bowskit just pulls the whole room together.

Speaker 8 (28:42):
Yeah, that's what it does.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
I mean, pulls a whole franchise together because he stays consistent.

Speaker 7 (28:47):
Well how about you recked? What did you think of
the opening scroll and leading into the planet hawf.

Speaker 4 (28:53):
Yeah, man, the crawl is definitely iconic. I love it.

Speaker 5 (28:57):
Matter of fact, we even have a little tradition in
my house where someone is elected to actually voice it
while everyone else can just kind of listen and read
it and stuff like that. Matter of fact, Look, while
I didn't see these movies in the theater, I did
see the re releases and the prequil movies and stuff
like that. And I can tell you that coming from

(29:20):
watching these things on the first night that they come out.
When you are there for those type of things, man,
you get that energy and all is what it takes
is that music.

Speaker 4 (29:31):
Man, It's all it takes. Man, It's just that music.

Speaker 5 (29:34):
That music kicks and all of a sudden, the whole
entire theater erupts in clapping and hooting and hollering and
stuff like that. People are just so jazzed, and it
brings something to me that I'm just like, ah, yeah, man,
I'm about to do this, you know. And what's more
specific to this particular movie is that once the crawl

(29:56):
was done and it starts to pan onto HOWK and stuff.
I specifically noted that the score once again is telling
the story.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
You know.

Speaker 5 (30:09):
It didn't have to say a whole lot far as
dialogue goes for us to know that there was a
bit of exposition happening here. There was a little bit
of something going on that's kind of maybe suspicious in
things because of the way the score was actually sounding.
The keys were a little bit off, making you kind

(30:30):
of be on an edge of your seat. Really good opening,
really good opening, man.

Speaker 7 (30:35):
I agree with you, guys, Really iconic in the opening.
It continues on throughout the entire series. That music John
Williams just kind of pounds through your head and you
get that low point of the music where you kind
of know that something's going on. It's really great. And
of course, like you said, we go down to the
planet hawk meteorite hits the planet. We get to see
a really cool tonton going across the snowy ground. We

(30:59):
get Lukes and he's talking on him. He's gonna go
check something out. That's when Luke is suddenly attacked by
a giant puppet. That's right in the original and the
original one, they used a little sock puppet hand puppet
to attack Luke. Now, do you guys know the reason
why Luke was attacked other than for a story point?

(31:21):
Do you know the behind the scenes story of that?

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Yeah, so I know what you're getting at, Matt, and
you'll be surprised to know that actually, that's kind of
a myth. So what Matt's kind of alluding to here
is that the reason supposedly that the host scene is
in there is because Mark Hambell between Star Wars Empire
gets into a car wreck and his face becomes disfigured
because of it, and if you look at him to

(31:44):
this day, you can see some scars and stuff. So
he had to have reconstructive surgery done on his face.
And so most people think that they had to do
that to hide his scars and stuff because it was
fairly fresh, but it wasn't actually really fresh. He had
pretty much recovered from it at that point. But the
reason Lucas did it partially was because he needed to

(32:04):
explain why Luke's face looked different than from Star Wars. So,
even though it wasn't a fresh wound or anything anymore,
the reconstruction surgery didn't make him look perfect anymore as
to the way he did then, So he decided that
he would have the Wampa attack Luke get him in
the face, and then they gave direction to the makeup

(32:26):
people to kind of use the natural scarring as part
of the facial wounds that you see. So that kind
of explains why Luke's image has changed so.

Speaker 7 (32:36):
Dramatically, trying to keep things consistent.

Speaker 8 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, he's very big on continuity.

Speaker 7 (32:42):
Yeah, all right. So Luke is attacked by the Wampa,
basically goes missing, and then Han is back at the
base and you know, he's trying to eat the millennium,
falking up and running and working with Chewi, and he
finds that Luke hasn't reported in yet. He talks to
Leah and I can't remember the general's last name, but
he says, you know, General, Hey, I got I gotta

(33:03):
get out of here. Running into that bounty hunter on
Ord Mandel, I realized I've got a debt on my head.
Now that brings me to my sidebar Tangent here. So
you're running through the galaxy, you're hiding out from the Empire.
Wouldn't you think that you at some point would want to,
I don't know, pay your debts off before you you know,
got to some place in hiding, Because I mean, he

(33:25):
had a big reward at the end of episode for
a new hope. Wouldn't you have gone to go pay Jaba?
Then it seems very odd for a story point to
not have his debts already paid off. What do you
think of that.

Speaker 5 (33:39):
Rick, That's an interesting question. I guess maybe I had
kind of actually thought of this in the past. How
many years took place between the Death Star being blown
up and here? Did you say?

Speaker 8 (33:51):
It was only three years? Okay between the two?

Speaker 5 (33:54):
Yeah, So the follow up is is that I actually
mentioned in the plot that Han didn't realize that Jaba
actually put a bounty on him until there was some
incursion that they had on some planet. So really it
would be how much time after he found out that
there was a bounty on him up until this point

(34:15):
here in the movie, because he's like, yo, I gotta
go and take care of this. So it kind of
just makes you wonder when did he find out that
there was a bounty versus when is now? As far
as the time differential, and it seems as though because
he was wanting to get take care of this, it
must not have been that much time. So that being said,

(34:37):
I didn't have a whole lot of issue as far
as the plot goes with that regard, because he was
actively trying to take care of this problem, which honestly
really good writing because it adds another layer of urgency
to one of the main characters, like, yo, we've got
all these things to do. It puts them in a
very precarious situation because he has to make choices yet

(34:59):
to get between taking care of these responsibilities that he
has outside of the main plot line and outside of
the relationship that he has with the main characters in
the story, his best friends and things versus doing what's
right for the galaxy and stuff like that. It's really
really good, And I guess I would like to know
how many months or how many years that was, because

(35:21):
I couldn't imagine it being more than a handful of months.

Speaker 7 (35:24):
How about you, tim Any thoughts on Hans's extra motivation
to pay off this debt.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
If I was going to make an analysis as to
why Han didn't just go pay off his debts, I
think it's simply because now he's kind of found a
home with Luke and Lea and the Rebel Alliance. He's
kind of become part of that world, and so he's
really kind of committed himself to the cause, and he's
wanted by job because he dumped a load of spice

(35:51):
and he owes him a bunch of money.

Speaker 8 (35:53):
But he's wanted by the Empire, right, So who's.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
To say if you go back to pay this gangster
his cash, He's not gonna be like, that's great thing
for the money, and now I'm going to capture you
and get twice as much money back because you want
to buy the Empire.

Speaker 8 (36:06):
I mean, I mean, there's not a lot of honor
among thieves. Let's say that.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
So you know, it's not like you're going to walk
in Job's palace, but like, here's all your cash. We're
all thieves, Like we're all good right, Like you know
I'm still one of you, and they're gonna be.

Speaker 8 (36:16):
Like, Noah, you're part of the rebel alliance.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
And because everybody in there is going to just see
dollar signs when they see him walk through the doors,
I don't think it's his best interest to try to
go back and pay that debt off because he's just
one a man everywhere.

Speaker 8 (36:27):
Now, Now, for.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
The real reason why is that in between Star Wars
and Empire, they're trying to do a lot of kooky
things to keep the franchise going. I mean, one of
them is a Star Wars special that we don't have
to go too far into but uh, you know that's
where we're going to get to see Boba Fet for
the first time as in the special, along with you know,
great Star Wars actors like b Arthur from The Golden

(36:50):
Girls things like that. You know, it's just it's a
horrible concept. But they did some really good stuff too.
And what they did is they did some radio dramas.
And there's a radio drama nay, it's called the Rebel
Mission to or Mandel, and it actually has Harrison Ford
and Mark Hamill voicing their characters in this radio drama

(37:12):
along with a few other people. And so they actually
go to do the Rebel Mission there and that statement
that he says to Reichen when he's in there is like,
I know, General Reich, and I gotta leave because I
got a bounty on my head. And that boundy hunter
we ran into an Ord Mandel just proves that I
got to get this bounty paid off. That's them trying
to tie in the radio drama as not only part
of the expand at Star Wars Universe. Now could that

(37:34):
George Lucas is probably kind of starting to inadvertently build
He doesn't realize that this is going to become a
huge thing eventually. But he's just trying to tie in
that radio drama to the new movie to kind of
link all that together, which is brilliant when you think
about it, because you know, anybody who's a real fan
is going to maybe go and try to figure that out.
Although it's not as easy because you can't just bring
up Google. You know, you got to actually, I don't know,
go to a library, read a book or a magazine

(37:57):
or you know. But I mean, but they're also covering
Star a lot during this time and things. They didn't
have sci fi magazines. You know, what do they have
Foster magazines? So you know, it was in like a
lot of the horror magazines would have articles about Star
Wars because they were kind of horror, and they becoming
kind of horror sci fi because again horror was getting
knocked back sci fi was becoming the things.

Speaker 8 (38:17):
But yeah, so they're just.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Kind of tying the whole world together, and that was
a little kickback. So if you didn't know, you didn't know,
but you know, if you did, you're like, oh, oh, I.

Speaker 8 (38:25):
Listened to that. That's cool. That's cool that they tied
that in.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
And then you get to know it all like me
that gets to tell everybody else about it.

Speaker 7 (38:32):
Well, I'm going to take off my movie cap. I'm
gonna put on my comic book hat. Okay, because Marvel
Comic Books currently has the rights to the Star Wars,
but originally they had the Star Wars copyright so that
they could make comic books off of it, and the
Ord Mandel story was actually printed in several issues of

(38:52):
the classic Star Wars comic books Leaning up to Empire
Strikes Back. So, yeah, Lucas he was expanding the universe,
and because he managed to maintain creative control, he had
a lot of say into what a lot of these
other writers were doing when they were coming up with
these stories. So I think it was really neat that
he was able to expand the universe outside of the films.

Speaker 8 (39:11):
None of that.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
But it comes up again later. So where do we
finally get to see Ord Mandel for the first time
Star Wars bad Batch, They actually show up there, I
think in several episodes. Nice they tend to reuse things
that they either have talked about in the books, or
they might have just had a little snippet in the movie,
or things that got dropped on the production room floor
for one movie will end up in another one, or

(39:32):
even sketches for Ralph McQuary, things that early on that
he had you'll see in later episodes, you know, like
they'll actually use the Walker, his original sketch for the
two legged Atst. Chicken Walker'll you get to see that
in the Rebels car too, the actual his concept drawing
for it.

Speaker 7 (39:49):
Yeah, it's really neat how Lucas's manages to keep expanding
the universe. Let's head back down to Hath then. So
Han and Leah they they kind of have like this
on screen almost moonlighting, you know, do they don't they
care for each other kind of thing throughout this movie,
and we get to see some of that right off

(40:10):
the bat here when he's having his conversation about you know, leaving,
and Han kind of calls her out on it. You know,
aren't you gonna say goodbye? Or you know, something to
that effect. And then that's when he learns that Luke
hasn't reported in. So he's like calls to the deck officer,
did you go check things out? And the deck officer
tells him that, oh no, he didn't come into this.

(40:31):
Maybe maybe the South portion so Han goes to check
it out find out, you know, where's his buddy Luke
at So he walks into this bar and he starts
talking to this guy named Cliff, and Cliff tells him, no,
he hasn't reported here yet.

Speaker 8 (40:47):
I don't think his name was Cliff.

Speaker 7 (40:51):
Yes, we get a young John Ratzenburger making his appearance
in the Star Wars franchise, because at the time John
was living as an American in London. And as we know,
several scenes and several parts of Star Wars. In fact,
I think ninety of the film was shot in Pinewood Studios.
Am i am? I correct in saying that to him. Yes, okay,

(41:14):
because we'll see several actors that are big British stars
that show up in several different things later on. And
I have another tangent to go on on that later on.
But so Han decides that he needs to go out
and find Luke. And meanwhile Luke is hanging upside down
in the layer of the Wampa and he's he's reaching

(41:37):
out with the force and he manages to pull his
lightsaber up to his hand, and I gotta say that
was probably one of the coolest scenes that I'd ever
seen as a kid, to the point where even to today,
I constantly want to try to see if I can
tap into that force and use some kind of force
power to pull something across the room. I think every
boy in his formative years wanted to do that. How

(41:59):
about you, Rick, did you want to tap the forest
and try to pull something across the room when you
were a kid?

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Aps freaking lutely man?

Speaker 5 (42:07):
And uh you know you totally nailed it with that too,
because that move is so freaking iconic that you find
it in Star Wars pop culture all the way to
uh Jay and Silent Bob doing those.

Speaker 4 (42:22):
Moves in uh mat yeah.

Speaker 5 (42:26):
Yeah Marts And that was the one where it actually worked,
you know, yeah right, because he actually tried it several
times and then it actually works, like you know, you
have to watch the movie to see how it works.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
I mean it's pretty cool though, knock it off, so Bob.

Speaker 5 (42:43):
Lunch Box yeah, man, very very very cool man. And
the music too when that was going on, there was
some serious music that was getting you to be like,
oh no, this dude's about to do something right here.
You haven't really seen him execute any mundane force maneuvers

(43:04):
up to this. I mean, yes, he totally clinched it
with destroying the Death Star. That was super duper epic.
All the cards were on the table for that one.
But I'll put to this point you really hadn't seen
him do a whole lot of mundane stuff with the Force,
you know what I mean, besides using a little bit
of light saber action with the blashshield on and stuff

(43:24):
like that. So this was really cool when you start
to delve in the Star Wars mysticism, which I found
to be extremely cool, and I think a lot of
people watching it's like, oh man, there's this serious magic
system or wizardry going on in the Star Wars universe.
But other things that you had mentioned leading up to
this that I definitely want to hit home on is

(43:46):
that relationship that is starting to be developed Han and
Leia on a romantic level. However, I do have a
mind that there was just a tiny little bit of
foreshadowing happening with regard to Leah and the connection she
shares with Luke that isn't fully realized until Jedi.

Speaker 7 (44:08):
How about you, Tim, what are your thoughts on the
relationship with Han and Leah and then Luke's first opportunity
to use the Jedi Force prior to training with Yoda.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
I think we knew this was common. I mean, we
knew that there was going to be a relationship. Did
we know whether it was gonna be Luke or Leya
or was it gonna be Leyah and Han. I think
we always kind of knew it was going to be
and Han for the most part. But I mean, yeah,
it's nice to see the butting over the relationship here.
It has to be there. I mean, it has to
be in this episode. But there's a lot of tension,
and I agree it's kind of done in a way

(44:39):
like Moonlighting or any other TV series where it's like, oh,
go on again, off again?

Speaker 8 (44:43):
Are they? Are they not? You know?

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, So there's a lot of that going on, but
it's well done. We'll pay I'm gway Kirshner was directing
this and working with him because I don't think it
would have turned out as good if Lucas did it.
And again, Lucas knows that this is not his strong point,
and this is where Kershner does shine and it shows
in these scenes. I like the scenes moving on to
the Wampa Cave. This is one of the parts where
we're going to get a little extra footage. Now we're

(45:06):
gonna get, you know, instead of just somebody's arm and
a white furry thing that attacks Luke, we actually get
a full standing human being in a wampa suit. Is
a spectacular no, but it's cool to see the wamp
of full size and then getting to see Luke's force powers.
There's been some development. Luke has obviously been talking to
Obi Wan, because throughout the series it's not like he

(45:27):
only talks to him once or twice and then Obi
Wan just goes away into the midichlorian ether, if you will.
There's constant conversations between them, and it's obviously he is
training him as best as he can from beyond and
in the beginning, obi one can spend a lot more time,
and it diminishes each time until the point that we
will eventually see that he can no longer communicate with him.

Speaker 8 (45:48):
He's like, this will be the last.

Speaker 7 (45:49):
Time, right, So Han heads out to go try to
find Luke, and as we said, Luke basically saves himself.
He fights the Wampa, cuts off its arm with his
light saber, and heads out into the frigid wasteland that
is the surface of Hath, and he sees a vision
of Ben Kenobi. Kenoby tells him to find Yoda on

(46:11):
the planet Dagaba. That's what we see on coming up
on his tanton, And I just had to wonder, is
this another point where is it a coincidence or do
you think ben Kenobi was leading Han to Luke any
thoughts on that tim.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah, I don't think it was really ben leading him there.
He simply deported that he was going to go check
out an asteroid that he's seen fall not too far
from his position, so I think he was able to
triangulate onto that once he was in that vicinity. Then
he used, you know, whatever little sensory gadget he had
to try to hone in on life, because as they
point out earlier, there ain't hardly any damn life on
the entire planet, so it's not gonna be hard to

(46:48):
hone in on oliving being out on hat for sure.

Speaker 7 (46:51):
I bring the question up because I'm reminded of movies
like The Thing or The White Out or Hey Fulay.
You know, you see those scenes where people are walking
out in these blizzards and these whiteouts and they have
like ropes to find someplace, and you know, I get
this this imagination at Hawk when it has a big
stills from you can't see up from down. So that's
why I was kind of curious. Maybe story wise, ben

(47:14):
Kenobi was kind of leading Han on some kind of level.
But you know what you said is it probably makes
more sense, you know, a technology viewpoint from it.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
I think technology trump's it probably in this instance. It
probably got some kind of low orbit satellites that they
can use the balance off of things too, which you
know you don't have back in the Old West.

Speaker 8 (47:33):
But the thing that.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
I always thought was more controversial, and I remember having
discussions about this over and over and over again, was
can a non Jedi wheel the lightsaber? And a lot
of people are like, no, if you're not a Jedi,
you can't wheel the lightsaber. It's impossible. But it was like,
but Han picks up his lightsaber and cuts over at
the timetime. So I think therefore the argument is is
that yes, anybody can turn on a lightsaber. It doesn't

(47:56):
have to be a Jedi. But I remember that being
an argument that went back and forth for years amongst
some of the Star Wars fandom, gotcha.

Speaker 5 (48:03):
So I'd like to jump in on that we've talked
about this in a last and when we're doing a
new hope that the Star Wars West End D six
RPG game is regarded as canon and in fact they
use that multiple times moving forward for Star Wars purposes
later on in the nineties and stuff. So, first off,
to answer the question about the lightsaber, anyone could use

(48:25):
a lightsaber. However, there's a specific force power that can
help a Jedi use a lightsaber more effectively, both accuracy
and causing more dangerous and deadly wounds. That being said,
not everyone is for sensitive in the Star Wars universe.
In fact, according to the system, a Han is not

(48:48):
for sensitive, which then begs the question is Tim Wright,
with regard to the technology that the life detection device
that he was using was, is that the thing that
actually got him to Luke and I would actually have
to say no. And the reason is because we had
already found earlier in the movie that those life detection

(49:10):
sensors were not super accurate, because Luke had used it
moments before being attacked by the Wampa. If they were
working at a better radius, then he would have detected
a Wampa nearby, and he would have been alerted to
the presence and probably wouldn't have got jumped. Furthermore, it
seems more than just a coincidence that Hans showed up

(49:34):
in the same location, the same direction and position that
Obi Wan's image was located. So it would make sense
that there was a little bit of who we do
we going on with regard to ben Kenobi making this possible,
you know, I mean, we already know that ben Kenobe

(49:55):
was able to make sounds and things like that, But
despite that, h is not foreign sensitive. And I know
that RPG system is canon, but I somewhat dispute that
because how much intuition and unusual amounts of luck that
Han has, like with regard to making choices and the

(50:17):
way that the choices roll out usually in his favor.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Yeah, but look, as an attribute in the Star Wars
D six universey Non has a lot of it.

Speaker 8 (50:25):
Well. I kind of also.

Speaker 7 (50:27):
Want to chime in on the whole lightsaber thing. So
I've always was in the viewpoint that the lightsaber is
a tool and you have to have special training to
use it, whether you're a Jedi or human ex I mean,
Anybody can pick up a screwdriver and use it to
turn a screw, but it takes a truly intelligent person
to put several screws together to make a rocking horse. Yeah,

(50:50):
that's that's my opinion. It doesn't matter if you're forced
sensitive to slice open Tonton sleeping bag. Speaking of Tonton
sleeping bags, I think this be a great opportunity to
tell you guys about our new sponsor. That's right, Tantan
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(51:11):
own type of Tantan sleeping bag. Comes with its own
special lightsaber called a zipper z where you can crawl inside.
And I guarantee you that the Tantan sleeping bag doesn't
smell as bad as it does on the outside. That's
the sleeping bag.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
That's that's quite a slow.

Speaker 5 (51:29):
It doesn't smell as bad as it doesn't the outside.
That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, we'reever using a lightsaber. Proceed
with caution, otherwise you're gonna cut parts of your body
off exactly. Speaking of which, that that was actually interesting
how Luke cut the hand off like he was taking
notes from Obi Wan from a new hope when he

(51:51):
cut off the dude's arm in the cantina.

Speaker 4 (51:54):
Oh yeah, the wa Yeah, I.

Speaker 5 (51:55):
Think it happens multiple times, people cutting off all sorts
of like body parts in Star Wars, you know, right,
like trying not to kill them, they just cut off
their arm.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (52:05):
Well, so Han was able to keep Luke warm by
slipping them into the ton ton and then he was
able to build a shelter. The next morning, they managed
to pull up Han on the radio and they rescue
Han and Luke and they take them back to Echo
Base and we see Luke floating in the back to
tank as they're repairing the damage from the wampa. What

(52:27):
did you guys think of the whole scene there in
the snowfields as well as the introduction to the back
to tank and let's go ahead and move a little
forward as well the interaction between Luke, Lea and Han
after he's recovered, because you know, we kind of got
a little bit of a love triangle happening there. Let's
go over to you first, tim.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
I love the models. We're not just talking little miles,
I mean they full scale speeders and it shows. I mean,
these things are cool looking. They really went the distance
when they made this film. I mean they took the
time to make full scale models of a lot of
the different things, and it pays off. I love the
look of it. I like the look of a hangar.
I mean the a lot of matte paintings again in
this one, to help enhance the train. And then they

(53:03):
do trick shots like even when you're in a Hawk base,
they'll have so much of it built out. Then they'll
have a big matte painting and to make it look
even like as more depth. You got the actors up
front talking and you see soldiers in the back. They're
hiring children putting them in the little tiny Hawk outfits
so that it looks like it's a much larger scale,
like they're much further off in the distance than they
actually are. So they were really clever in how they

(53:25):
shot a lot of this too, so I enjoyed it.
It's cool to see the back to tank and see
the different medical droids, the FX seven droids at two
to one B. It's always cool to see in your
droids throughout the series, and we hear about back to tanks.
It's nice that we actually got to see an actual
back to tank, which looks like some kind of giant,
regenerative swimming pool that you.

Speaker 8 (53:43):
Get to kind of dive in for a while.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
And then we're moving along again with the love story,
which there's a love triangle, but there's not it's obvious
that she has something going for Han. She's gonna use
Luke to make him jealous, and probably later on she's gonna,
you know, wash your mouth out with soap win she
realizes that she French kissed her.

Speaker 8 (54:00):
But when it moved the story along, it's a little juvole.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
It's almost a little high schoolation the way that they're
presenting the love story. But again, it's fun and it's
not deep.

Speaker 8 (54:09):
So I enjoyed it.

Speaker 7 (54:10):
How about you, Rick, What was your thoughts on these scenes?

Speaker 5 (54:14):
So I do want to mention something that's gonna come
up multiple times. Just before Han left out the base
to go find Luke was the first time that we
saw C three po try to ensure his job security.
He does this several times throughout the movie where he's like, yo, man,

(54:35):
there's a point to me being here, all right, I've
got the statistics over here, all right, successfully going out
into this cold ass winter storm. It's gonna get you
killed by a factor of you know, I don't know
what he says, like a million to one or something
like that. So he's trying to make sure everyone knows
that there's a point to him being here, and he

(54:55):
does it several times.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
It's funny you say that, Rick, because that was the
biggest pri We'll see three po is nobody new to
do with them during this movie because he really didn't
have a big part. So I think they threw things
in there to just to get him to justify why
he's in the movie kind of thing. But you nailed
it without even knowing it. But if you think about it,
he has a rather insignificant part compared to what he
had in the first movie. You know, it really isn't
he's just there to spew out statistics and annoy people.

Speaker 7 (55:20):
Well, he does have a critical point later on in
the movie. I mean, he does have to talk to
the flight computer for the falcon.

Speaker 5 (55:26):
YEP And the other thing about the droids that I
would like everyone to pay attention to is the amount
of inherent and implicit bias that is being had. I
may even call racism towards these droids because they are
treated as basically nothing like slaves. And there is a

(55:49):
part we're getting really close to that actually shows a
bit of character on the part of Han with regard
to this matter. Right, But as far as the love
scene goes, this is the first when you hear the
iconic scruffy looking Nerve Hurder. And I don't remember if
I mentioned it in a New Hope, but I have

(56:10):
to recommend it's such a good music video. It's called
Nerve Hurder by the Kids of the Backwater of Agamar
or something like that. Anyhow, it's a music video. You
can check it out on YouTube. It's actually really really
well done. If you want to really dip your toes
in some extra Star Wars lore and Star Wars type

(56:33):
of stuff, it's it's really good. It's got really good
lyrics and stuff. It's really fun. It's like a three
minute video, and there's not a whole lot of actual
Star Wars music videos out there, so it'd be worth
a quick watch.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
You're so funny, Rick, because you're always on this whole
droid thing being treated bad, like I think you're on
L three thirty seven train. Here we're just like right,
but if you're ahead of your time, you're heading your time.

Speaker 7 (57:00):
I have a tangent to go off on later on
the same topic, but I'll let Rick finish his thought there.

Speaker 4 (57:06):
All right, all right, well, just FYI.

Speaker 5 (57:09):
Look, when the terminators start coming after everyone, they can
be scrolling through all of my information that I've ever
put out on the web, and they know that I
am for droid rights. Okay, for AI rights. Don't kill me,
I got you back, all right. I think everyone should
be treated equally. Okay.

Speaker 7 (57:31):
This is how much Star Wars is in the pop
culture because there is a band called the Nerve Herder.
I don't know if you guys ever listened to them,
but they're a California based rock band and they've got
geet written all over them. So yeah, nerve Herders gotta
love them. So we have the interaction with Luke Hahn

(57:52):
and Leah, and then we go back and we find
that the Empire, of course, has been looking for the rebels,
and one of the droids sends back what looks like
a couple of discs. The Admiral at first doesn't think
it's anything, but Vader's like, no, that's them they are there,
set course for Hath maximum speed, make it so warp one.

(58:13):
Oh sorry, wrong stars, wrong stars anyway, so they take
off to the Hawk system. Meanwhile, Han and Chewie go
check out what they thought was the meteorite and it
turns out that it's a probe droid and shoot it.
Either Hob's got a heck of a trick shot or
there was a self destruct on the droid, so that then,

(58:35):
in turns just signifies that the Empire's on their way.
So they start to make plans to flee Hawth. Admiral
Ouzel drops out of light speed too soon. Vader's had
enough of him and he execute Admiral Azel, which we
will see is a running thing throughout this entire movie
where Empire admirals drop off faster than spinal tap drummers. Indeed,

(58:58):
So what did you guys think of the Empire showing
up on Hoth and what goes on next? And I'm
gonna go ahead and turn it over to.

Speaker 5 (59:05):
You Rick, Okay, So the very beginning of this sequence,
that's where they get the probe droid making those noises
speaking that you know language, relaying the information back to
presumably the Star destroyers and let me go ahead and
do say two things about that. The first thing is,
this is yet another point of flexing from C three

(59:29):
PO because he's like, yo, man, I could speak six
million forms of communication used by the Alliance and this
isn't one of them. Uh So he's again saying, yo,
I have a point of being here.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
I'm letting you know this is bad.

Speaker 5 (59:45):
Whatever this is, it's not something good. The other thing
I want to say is I don't know why he
couldn't translate it, because I could translate it the whole time.

Speaker 4 (59:54):
The droid was saying Scander defenses, Scander defenses. If you
play it back, that's what he's saying. I don't know
why it was so hard to hear that. I could
hear it. It's it's Candon defenses. And I'm like, oh man,
it is Canada defensives. Okay, and as far.

Speaker 7 (01:00:10):
As but there are no fenses.

Speaker 8 (01:00:13):
Where's he fighting these fences? I don't see any fence. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
We have drilled down to the core of Rick's whole
thing on these droids. I think Rick is a droid.
I think he speaks three hundred thousands of different languages,
and that's why he's always going after all these droids.

Speaker 7 (01:00:31):
Rights, Rick, do you really have a wife or sin Astromak?

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
No comment, all right, moving on.

Speaker 5 (01:00:41):
Uh So they start to make that evacuation and something
that I thought was super cool looking back, all right,
because this one also doesn't come into fruition until Jedi.
This is the first instance where I think as a character.
Luke after this movie begins to look back on all

(01:01:05):
these instances and says, this was one of those instances
that I got everyone in trouble because when they were
taking a look at the shield generator on Hath and
Vader was like, nah, man, that's where they're at. I
really do think that there was an emotional connection, which,
by the way, I'll get into this more. I think
the Force is actually extremely emotion based. There's an emotional

(01:01:29):
connection that is tethering Luke and Vader, and that's how
he knew that they were there, because he could feel
that connection of the Force being on this planet. And
it gets everyone in trouble.

Speaker 7 (01:01:45):
You know. It's actually in the story of New Hope,
Vader felt the presence of Obi Wan, So yeah, you
definitely keyed into it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
I think it's one of those where once Piet points
that out to Vader, and Vader looks at the screen
and then he sends out his fourth senses too hot
to that direction. Because I think the reason he wasn't
able to narrow it down before it's big damn galaxy,
you know what I mean. I don't care how for
sensitive you are. You just can't shoot that out there

(01:02:17):
and get it. But when you've got a target now
you can, like you go in and I think Rick,
you're right on it. I think you're like, oh, yeah,
Luke puts him in peril because he's able now to
put his fourth senses out to off and be like,
oh yeah, that's it because I.

Speaker 8 (01:02:30):
Can sense the boy, right, So I think you're right
on it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:33):
Look, I just got to point this out, man. I
don't know if you guys missed it or those people
who have watched this that are listening. You, dude, straight
up racism on the part of Luke trying to pet
the Wookie Chewbacca. Why is he petting a full grown

(01:02:53):
adult Chewbacca, a Wookie mail Why is he petting him?

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
They're about ready to get into the ships. They got
to do their business.

Speaker 5 (01:03:02):
And he says, all right, you know, take care of
whatever he says, and then he reaches over and he
straight up pets the neck of Chewbacca like he's some dog. Okay,
this is not cool. I don't know anyone who does that.
Before they leave, they give someone a hug or something.
That's wrong, Man, that's wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
You know, Ricky, you don't know Wookie culture. You don't
know how they greet each other. Maybe they're all about
the ear scratched. You're like, you know, if you're my
true friend, you get to scratch.

Speaker 7 (01:03:29):
My ear, and then if you if you really love
them like a dog, they sniff your butt.

Speaker 5 (01:03:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Yeah, yeah. You're taking some massive assumptions on their culture there, sir.

Speaker 7 (01:03:43):
I think rick might be the one who's you know,
not being sensitive to a Wookie language.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Might I suggest you go back and read the D
six books about the Wookies and come back and.

Speaker 8 (01:03:51):
Report to us.

Speaker 4 (01:03:53):
I'll do that. I'll do that.

Speaker 5 (01:03:55):
So the music in this sequence is so good man,
so good. I think it really carries the tone because
right up to the point, just before there's some action,
you get this a massive amount of suspense that's being
literally carried by the score in this section that really

(01:04:16):
lets you know there's something really happening here. We all
got to get ready because the stuff is gonna go down.
And again, going back to the Force Fader, man, he's
several planets away and he's able, through a video call
to use the force and straight up choke the dude

(01:04:37):
to death. Yeah, that is some serious power. I mean
you get to see that when he chokes the dude
on the Star Destroyer in a New Hope. But this
time he's not even physically in his space. He is
super far away. I mean we're talking space here. He
is in a spaceship that is far away from the

(01:04:59):
planet and he's able to straight up through this video
call kill this guy. That's amazing, absolutely amazing, man, absolutely amazing. Honestly,
it's gangster and it's totally gangster to the way that
he does it though, right right, because he doesn't even
miss a beat. Bro, He's like, right after he's done

(01:05:19):
doing it, cold as ice, he announces this dude just
got promoted to be admiral.

Speaker 4 (01:05:26):
Bro, this dude is dead. We ain't even talk about
him no more.

Speaker 5 (01:05:30):
I ain't even gonna say you're promoted, but you know
you are because I just called you Admiral.

Speaker 7 (01:05:34):
Yeah, Admiral Pietz.

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 7 (01:05:39):
We didn't mention it. But this is also the first
time that we get a hint to what's behind the
mask for Vader. We get to see this really cool
chamber that he sits in and I guess you'd call
it maybe a throne room or whatever. But there's a
scene where his helmet's like coming down and as General
Verers has walked and he kind of like looks around

(01:06:01):
the corner and you can kind of see the helmet
coming down, and you get to see like a glimpse
of the back of Vader's head, and it's kind of
you get the feeling that there's like a lot of history,
as you know, why is this guy scarred? Any thoughts
on that as well, Tim.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Yeah, I just enjoy the imperial scenes overall, and I
kind of with Rick on the whole Imperial officers dropping
like flies. It's weird because you got piet who's super ambitious,
is trying to like, hey, look, I found this thing
over here, come check us out Vader because he really
wants to move up in position. But it seems like
when you get up there, you can see Ozzles like, dude,
shut your mouth, like, we want to be sure, because

(01:06:33):
we're not sure someone's gonna die, and that someone's gonna
be me. Piet's like, yeah, it's gonna be you, bitch,
because I'm gonna tell him the right stuff and you're gonna.

Speaker 8 (01:06:41):
Die, right, and he does.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
But then once Piet like gets instantly promoted, then he realizes, ah,
ah shit, now I'm on the hot seat, you know,
like I'm gonna face the same thing. So it's a
weird dynamic with these officers. They can't wait to get
to the top, and then they realize, you know, things
don't look as roses I thought from this, Baz, the
chamber's cool because it's his meditation chamber, and the reason

(01:07:04):
he has that on his flagship is that he can
close it, and it's the only time when he closes it,
he can set the atmosphere in there to a point
where he can actually take the helmet off and breathe normal,
and then he tries to do Jedi meditations to try
to heal himself.

Speaker 8 (01:07:19):
But as we've talked before.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
He's damaged now, and the more damage you become, the
more diminished your powers come, which is kind of funny
because Rick, when you're like, oh my god, he's choking
this guy all the way from one started story or
to another. That's a diminished Anakin Skywalker slash Darth Vader
that's doing that, you know what I mean? Imagine him
at full force, if he was still at a complete
one hundred percent, being one of the most powerful Jedis ever.

Speaker 8 (01:07:43):
It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
But that chamber is really cool and we get to
just see a hint of the damaged Vader and you're like, Wow,
what's the story behind that? Which we still won't know
for quite a while yet, but it is cool that
you just get that little glimpse and you're like, what
the hell, what's going on with that? And there's no
explanation as to why he's in that suit or or anything,
or why you know he's sitting in that chamber. You
get that information later.

Speaker 7 (01:08:04):
Awesome. Well, so the Star Destroyers come in, and I
did mention it's kunny that we can see new ships
and stuff, but I was really impressed that this is
the first time we get to see Vader's flagship. If
everybody it's called the Executor, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:08:19):
Yeah, it's a Superstar Destroyer, right.

Speaker 7 (01:08:21):
Yeah, it's a Superstar Destroyer. It's like four times the
size of a regular Star Destroyer. It's all in black,
and I can't help but have like visions of Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy with Desiato Hot Black, where he
has a black ship all in black with black lights
that light up with a black light.

Speaker 8 (01:08:40):
Yeah, it's just so cool. It's so big, it's so oftome.

Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:08:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
I think what really emphasizes that is you see the
calm tower at the top of all the regular ones,
and they have that exact same one and that super
just Star Destroyer, and you really got to look for
it because it's just tiny.

Speaker 7 (01:08:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:08:55):
What's crazy is that twenty or thirty years down the
road after this take place, the ships get even bigger. Man,
there's Eclipse and Solder and Class Destroyers. And if you
thought Superstar Destroyer was big, these things are. I think
it's something like ten times bigger than the Superstar Destroyers.
It's absolutely insane, right, the way that they scale up

(01:09:18):
down the road, and it's not even but you know,
a generation down the road in the Star Wars universe.

Speaker 7 (01:09:22):
It's neat how you know, they don't have the Death Star,
so they need something to help market the movies, sell stuff.
They needed something that's intimidating, and here's this huge Superstar Destroyer.
It's another way to open up the universe some more
and have something to that guy to center themselves around.
And I just thought it was really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
And yeah, I created the weakest toy of the entire
Empire line because they came out that's Superstar Destroyer and
it's basically just a little triangle with a little gun
on the front. Darth Vader's meditation chamber and like these
two bays where the guys can sit and work on computers.
You're just like, huh, this is really underwhelming. After got
the Millennium Falcon and it's like they just phone that

(01:10:02):
one in.

Speaker 7 (01:10:03):
We're run out of time, crush, we gotta do something.
Give me a triangle, put a gun on it.

Speaker 8 (01:10:08):
That's sell it to these kids. They're dumb, they'll buy it.

Speaker 7 (01:10:09):
Yeah, So then we saw Admiral Azel die. The Rebels
are now trying to flee howth That's where we get
to see their plan, and we also get to see
the first time a Star Wars movie has a lay
on battle. We have to see these huge atats come
in at ats and it's kind of impressive, how Rick

(01:10:30):
had said. There's this musical score, and it gets quite
all of a sudden. You get to see the trenches
of the rebels and they have these huge ion cannon
guns that they're firing at the ad ats as those
ad Ats are coming out of the fog and just
walking across the wasteland of Hath and it's just really impressive.
We get the cool snow speeders again. Now this is

(01:10:51):
where I'm going to have to ask you, guys, is
Luke Skywalker really that great of a pilot? And let
me give you the count. Here he was on a tontan,
his Tonghuan got eaten. He's now in a snow speeder.
He's battling to make time so that the rebels can escape.
But yet he crashes his snow speeder. Later on he

(01:11:14):
crashes his x Wing into the swamp of Dagaba. Right now,
I'm thinking Luke's not a really good pilot, not really
good at navigating any kind of mode of transportation. Conjecture,
What do you got for me, guys? I'll throw over
to you first tim.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
I don't know I guess I never gave it much thought.
I mean, you're trying to attribute awesome pilot skills to
a farm boy from Tantuine. I mean his ten sixteen skyhopper.
Could he fly around and shoot gun darts with him
or whatever? Yeah, apparently so. But I mean there's a
big difference between you know, driving basically a flying desert
go cart and you know, flying an F sixteen jet.

(01:11:52):
I mean, there's just you know, I'm sorry, but you know,
it's two completely different things. And I mean, I know
he's got the force on this side, but he is
far from me. He just he has to really focus
to use it. I don't think he's any worse than
anybody else out there. I mean, all those other guys
are getting blown up and dying. At least he's control
crashing and surviving in the end. Is the Anakin Skywalker's

(01:12:14):
piloting abilities? Absolutely not not even close. But you know,
I mean, but he's not the worst pilot out there,
I don't think.

Speaker 8 (01:12:20):
But yeah, may be on something there a little bit.

Speaker 7 (01:12:24):
How about you, Ricky, you agree or you disagree that
Luke's got a terrible track record for this movie.

Speaker 5 (01:12:30):
So I actually was taking notes on this specific thing,
and I do have a couple of things to say
about this. So first off, with regard to the frontal
assault onto the ataights, I think that was just a
very precarious position that they had. I think they probably
had expected that there would be losses because they had
a clear disadvantage. They were totally outgunned with regard to

(01:12:53):
the firepower of the much larger class guns for the
ataight compared to the Did they even have guns on
these pea shoots? I mean, ye, on the air speeders,
but they're just p shooters. They weren't even really doing
unless they were shooting on those vital areas where where
one of the atights got taken down and they were

(01:13:14):
able to shoot its neck or whatever. They really weren't
doing anything to the armor of the AT eighties.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
They make a statement in they're that our guns can't
penetrate their armor.

Speaker 8 (01:13:22):
They're not strong enough.

Speaker 5 (01:13:23):
Right, So they were totally outgunned, So I think that
they probably had expected losses. And more to the point,
with regard to this section as well as the one
in Dagoba, you have something happening now that you would
never have happen with a Mary Sue. You have things
happening that don't go in the favor of the protagonist,

(01:13:44):
and as a result, it shows the actual character. I'm
not talking about character as a part of the cast,
but character as in something someone inside of them have
where he shows his resilience. He doesn't just like, oh man,
I just got shot down, I'm done for he crashes
and dies. No, he tries to land in such a

(01:14:06):
way that he doesn't die. And then instead of running
away and being like I'm done for, he doesn't do that.
He actually uses the opportunity to continue the fight and
what happens next, I'll save it, but he doesn't die.
So it gives him that opportunity to actually show case
his character, which, like I said, Mary sus don't do nowadays.

(01:14:26):
They just everything happens and everything goes well for them.
Everything goes right for them, and they're just badasses from
the get go, and that's just not how life is.
This is something that actually allows audience to be able
to relate to these characters from the stories that we
see in the past, the stories that we see. You know,
this is what forty five years ago. Yes, this is

(01:14:47):
stuff that you see back then that you don't see Now,
everything doesn't go well for everyone. Shit happens, and what
you do with the cards or delt is the definition
of the story far as Degaba goes. Look, Man, when
he was in Degaba, his sensors weren't working. He couldn't
get a visual. That place is filled with trees and

(01:15:09):
stuff like that. I think he would bound the crash.
Regardless of how good of a pilot he was. Man,
I think was out of his control.

Speaker 7 (01:15:15):
Okay, all right, well we'll have to go back and
look at the black boxes from all those crashes. So
one thing that you guys mentioned is in the battle,
they were attacking the Atahs and they couldn't penetrate the armor,
and that's when they come up with the idea of
using toe cables around these ataights to help bring them down,

(01:15:37):
which I think is rather clever for Luke to come
up with. The one thing I really feel bad for
is the character Dak in Luke's Snowspeeder, because he starts
off saying, yeah, I could take on the whole empire myself.
I'm like, I think you're kind of citing your death
warrant there by saying something like that, And when Luke
does crash. I don't want to say that he doesn't
try to save Dak, but at that point he really

(01:16:00):
can't pull him out, and that's when he just kind
of leaves him there to get crushed by the ata T.
There's an agreement. I have what you said there, Rick,
where he shows his true character and the fact that
he's going to continue to fight. And I think that's
where this movie kind of really shines in that it's
a character piece, you know, it delves into the drive
of all of our characters and it kind of flushes

(01:16:22):
a lot of that out. And the last thing that
I wanted to comment on before I turned this over
to Tim is that the sequence in which Luke attacks
the ad AT and he fires that batman esque grappling
hook and scoots up the bottom of the all Terrain
Armored Transport, the scale looked a little off to me.

(01:16:43):
Luke looked a little too big for the scale of
the walker. Did anyone else see that or is that
just me?

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Well, Matt that you said it, I can't unsee its.

Speaker 5 (01:16:55):
Yeah, I think I noticed that a long time ago
watching this. It was just one of those things. So
I totally think you're right. I do not think it
was quite to scale. However, it is kind of interesting
that he threw it inside the bathroom of the of
the Ataight. For those of you who watched that robot chicken,

(01:17:17):
you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 7 (01:17:21):
Gotcha?

Speaker 4 (01:17:22):
All right?

Speaker 8 (01:17:22):
Tim? Well, what about you?

Speaker 7 (01:17:23):
What are your thoughts on the attack.

Speaker 8 (01:17:25):
On HAF It's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
I mean, we finally get to see a true ground battle.
We definitely get to see the overpowered Empire versus the
under equipped rebel alliance fighting each other, and they're going
to give it their all. And even though you pick
on Luke being a bad pilot, Rick's right, I mean
they were out gunned. And what was their whole goal
in that battle?

Speaker 8 (01:17:47):
It wasn't to win.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
It was to distract the ad Ads from getting to
the generators so that they could blow them up, so
that they could shut the shields off. So their whole
thing is is just coming at him like angry hornets
and trying to keep them busy. And the ad Ads
are cool as hell.

Speaker 4 (01:18:04):
Now.

Speaker 8 (01:18:05):
As disappointing as the Star Destory toy was, the ad.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
At was the opposite that that was the coolest toy
that came out for the Empire series. I mean, it
was just freaking awesome. But it's a lumbering beast, a
sledgehammer that the Empire is using it like a tool
that probably doesn't even belong on off, but it's what
they had on the ships to deploy at the time,
you know what I mean. It's just a behemoth, but
I mean it does its job. I mean it's hard

(01:18:29):
to stop and everything like that, but it's an unruly
beast to have on that snow, but it did a
good enough job. It seems like the two legged atsts
would be the better way to go. I think they'd
be faster and more agile on the snow. It looks
much cooler visually to see the ad ads on there
for sure. Yeah, and they did what they could with it,
but it was neat to watch it. They served the purpose.
The rebels flought off the Empire as long as they

(01:18:50):
could until the shield generators got destroyed, and then they
had the choice but the retreat and had out, so
they did what they were supposed to. They were never
going to win that battle. They knew they were never
going to win it. Even the big towered cannons and
things that they had back at the trenches were hitting
those ad Ads and they weren't doing nothing, and the
ad Ads were shooting back and blowing the crap out
of those We get a good willhelms scream out of
one of the guys when they blow it up and everything.

Speaker 8 (01:19:11):
But it was still it was a cool battle.

Speaker 5 (01:19:13):
You know what though, where the ion cannons really did
hit home, where the big ion cannons, like the star
destroyer scale ion cannons that really put a stop to
the haughty banter that was happening on these star destroyers.
There was a real quick scene where one of the

(01:19:33):
Imperial officers were like, hey, they're coming, and they're like, oh,
the first catch of the day. And then their asses
get shot down by one of the ion cannons and
they're like, oh boy, what's going on? And you see
their ship just kind of moving all funny looking and stuff,
right while the medium transports are able to get away,
and you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
Know, on that ship there's a captain that's going, I'm
gonna get so choked out for this.

Speaker 5 (01:19:57):
Hey, speaking of that choking out again, I think you
really gotta hand it to Admiral Piat because the one
who's given the bad news ain't him, right. I think
when the bad things happen and people report to him
and being like, oh yeah, this didn't go so well,
you don't see it. I think it's behind the scenes
where he's like, yeah, well you better tell Vader about that, right,

(01:20:20):
because he knows I ain'te Televader.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
Yeah, he figured it out. That's why he was so
aggressive to get to the top. He's like, I'm a
fool man, I'm gonna send everybody else but me to
give news. He would get promoted, and then you look
at the guy and go, you know, what's your job
is now? You're gonna be the Runner's gonna be the
information bringer.

Speaker 8 (01:20:36):
And the guy's like, oh crap.

Speaker 7 (01:20:37):
Well you know it does kind of work in that
regard because later on, when they lose the Falcon, it
was the captain of the ship that went to go
tell Vader and not Admiral piet So I got something there.
Although General Verers did go to tell Vader and then
Vader just turned on that screen and killed.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
Ozel, so maybe yeah, I just got a shit together though. Yeah,
he's like, look, man, that's not my fault that Osle
came out, but I'll take care of this, and he does.
He goes in, He's like, give me just a second. Okay,
you're good to go. I blew everything up, man, Mission accomplished.

Speaker 8 (01:21:11):
I get to live another day.

Speaker 2 (01:21:13):
That dude knows how to execute a plan to survive
in the Imperial Army.

Speaker 7 (01:21:19):
Speaking of Vears, did you guys recognize the actor who
plays Ars. I know Tim probably knows, but I'm gonna
throw this over to you, Rick.

Speaker 4 (01:21:26):
Yeah, that's the dude from Indiana Jones. That's a Bullock, right, doctor.

Speaker 7 (01:21:31):
Bullock, not Bullock, not Bullocks from the Last Crusade. He's
the guy that he's the Nazi sympathizer.

Speaker 4 (01:21:37):
Okay, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

Speaker 7 (01:21:40):
Yeah, he's the one that chooses poorly when it comes
time to pick the Grail.

Speaker 4 (01:21:45):
Dude, his face melts and everything. So that is an
awesome scene. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
Yeah, survives the entire Imperial Army only to die with Grail.

Speaker 7 (01:21:55):
Yeah. But there's another thing that he was in that
I most know him from, and that's a Tom Baker
episode of Doctor Who in which he played Count Scarleoni
in the Douglas Adams written City of Death. And that's
the one where they're trying to make copies of the
Mona Lisa.

Speaker 4 (01:22:12):
I don't know if I've seen it.

Speaker 7 (01:22:13):
I just wanted to throw out some Doctor Who stuff
because it seems like every actor in Britain who was
either in Doctor Who or Star Wars Empire Strikes Back
is here. So anyway, getting back to the battle on Hath,
any final thoughts before we leave Hawth and take off
to Dagaba or chase ourselves through the asteroid field.

Speaker 5 (01:22:31):
Yes, a couple things. The small arms were cool looking, man,
they were real cool looking. They didn't show him very often,
but they looked like these things had some serious weight
to them, and they looked real cool.

Speaker 4 (01:22:46):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:22:47):
I just wanted to mention that. The other thing is
you really see Han take the stance of the protector
in the quasi relationship that is being developed throughout this
between Han and Lea. He didn't have to make sure
that she was going to be able to get onto

(01:23:07):
the transport and stuff like that. Now he took it
upon himself to hand deliver Princess Leiah to the transport,
and when the hallway caved in through the bombardment, he
actually had to circle back and bring her on the falcon,
and this whole sequence really showcased his protectoring, masculine role

(01:23:33):
in love that he had for Leah, so which was
really I think that kind of helped to melt away
a little bit of her walls that she had towards Hahn,
And I think it was very believable that she had
him because Han is this roguish character and Leah is

(01:23:53):
a princess. Her father was the person who ran the
whole entire planet of Aldron, you know, so she's not
like a nobody, She is a somebody. So for her
to actually put aside the fact that he is kind
of a nobody to her to be able to entertain
that I actually do like this guy, despite the fact

(01:24:15):
that he's not a dignitary or a high status person
or wealthy or whatever. He's just an ordinary person. That
I think was a pretty big jump for her, and
this particular scene I think really helped her to, you know,
realize that, you know, she does feel something for this guy,

(01:24:36):
and that he does care for her, and that he
is going to be able to protect her when the
shit hits the fan, and he does despite the fact
that throughout the whole movie time after time after time
after time. The ship is just absolutely beating them up. Man.

Speaker 4 (01:24:54):
They just can't get this thing working. Bro, It's so terrible,
absolutely terrible.

Speaker 7 (01:24:59):
Man. I'm going to give you a point for referencing
that her heart melts as they are on the planet Hawk.

Speaker 8 (01:25:06):
Nice, very clever.

Speaker 7 (01:25:08):
Use of words there, Rick, I'll give you that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
A hawf is where we lose our one really good
deleted scene. They actually had an idea with the wamp
Is to expand that out. And if you notice, there's
a point where they run past this room as they're
trying to get out, and it has a little yellow
sign on it with some red lettering. A bunch of
Wampus get loose in the base and they corral them
all and put them in there.

Speaker 8 (01:25:31):
It's kind of like a little swamp of prison.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
And supposedly, when they're running away and the Imperial troops
are after him, C. Three po removes the sign off
of there because he knows what it says, and then
one of the snow troopers says he's going along checking it.
Room for room, opens that door when the swamp is
reaches in and grabs and pulls them in and tears
them apart or whatever, and I wish they.

Speaker 8 (01:25:50):
Would have left that in. I guess they pulled it out.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
That the theory is is that it just was a
little too comical with the way that they did it,
so they decided to pull it out because it kind
of didn't really fit the mood of the scene. But
I was just like, all that, that would be brilliant
if they would have actually shown them kind of crowning
them in there, and then later on having C three
po do that so that it kind of ambushes some
of the snow Troopers.

Speaker 8 (01:26:11):
I thought was just great. And they do do that
later on in one of the video games.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
There's a point where they're in hat and the wamp
is all attack people and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (01:26:19):
Yeah, man, And I always wondered why that was because
I played all those Star Wars Battlefront games, but I
played these games out man, the retro and the re
release in twenty fifteen.

Speaker 4 (01:26:29):
I think it was.

Speaker 5 (01:26:30):
And I always kind of wondered why not that I
had any disagreements. I was like, dude, you could play
as a Wampa and run around and kill dudes.

Speaker 4 (01:26:38):
I was like, that's cool.

Speaker 5 (01:26:39):
But I always wondered, what was the inspiration for this
game mode, and that is really cool. Tidbittim to like no, like,
actually that was part of the deal, you know. And
the other thing too, is that this was one of
the instances where Han actually saved c three Po's life
or online.

Speaker 4 (01:26:59):
I don't know, if you consider maybe Droi is not.

Speaker 7 (01:27:01):
Being alive his artificial life.

Speaker 4 (01:27:03):
His artificial life, there you go, since he's.

Speaker 7 (01:27:06):
Made of artificial intelligence.

Speaker 5 (01:27:08):
And I gotta give props to the scenes where Vader
is walking around this place like he owns it, man,
Like he's not letting the stormtroopers go first. Nah, this
dude is straight up walking first. He's in the front
of these stormtroopers. By the way, the uniforms for the
stormtroopers look so cool in the snow gear. Man, I

(01:27:29):
thought this was awesome, especially for me coming from and
probably everyone watching coming from Gi Joe. It's like, yo, man,
they all look like Cobra wearing the like, you know,
the mask that he would.

Speaker 4 (01:27:39):
Wear his stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:27:40):
I'm like, dude, that's so cool and straight up the
way that he's walking is so awesome, man, so awesome.
And then yet again, he gets to the Hangar Bay
where the Millennium falcon Is and the millennium fucking still
gets away from him, which I have to say is
a really fed up situation because in one of the

(01:28:03):
more recent TV shows they ended up using wow which
one was it, where they ended up using the force
to like bring down a ship while was trying to
leave a hangarbay or something.

Speaker 8 (01:28:13):
I think they did that end.

Speaker 4 (01:28:15):
I was like, dude, what the heck man?

Speaker 7 (01:28:17):
They also do that in the last Star Wars movie
when Ray is, you know, used the force to try
to hold the ship back because it's got Chewy.

Speaker 4 (01:28:24):
That ain't a Star Wars movie. Oh okay, I'm sorry,
but go ahead, go ahead and say it though I.

Speaker 7 (01:28:29):
Forgot about that conversation last time. So in that fan
film made by JJ Abrams when Ray was using the
Force to try to save Chewy.

Speaker 8 (01:28:40):
But I think we've answered it. We improved it right there.

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
There was a reason why I couldn't do it because
the only time they've ever done that is one of
the fan films, and we know that's all crazy.

Speaker 8 (01:28:47):
So that's why, all right, Yeah, there was establishing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
Empire that you can't do that. If Darth Vader can't
do it, nobody can't, right, But you know.

Speaker 7 (01:28:56):
It's a good way to really build up the tension though,
because I mean this is a lived in universe. The
ship is definitely due for some oil change or something,
because I mean they were trying to fix it. They
just couldn't get it to fix and time and it
builds and builds and builds and definitely gives that suspense,
that fear that they're gonna get caught. And I think
it's a great use of directing on both Irvan Kershner's
hands as well as written in the story.

Speaker 8 (01:29:19):
To be fair, Hank crash that ship.

Speaker 7 (01:29:21):
Oh okay, so.

Speaker 2 (01:29:24):
It's never been right since Yeah, he got his insurance
company and then bought it from the scrap yard. It's like,
it's okay, I'll just beat the dents out. We're good,
We're good.

Speaker 7 (01:29:34):
Well, they all managed to leave. Hawth Luke flies off
and are two mixed comments of why aren't they joining
the fleet and he's like, no, we're gonna head off
to the Dagabus system. And then poor Han and Chewy
and Leah can't jump to warp speed the shit wop speed?
What them are we doing here?

Speaker 8 (01:29:51):
Speed?

Speaker 4 (01:29:53):
Sir?

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
It's light speed hyper space light speed.

Speaker 4 (01:29:56):
Sorry, Matt's got a bad motivator.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
He's been hanging out too long in the Star Trek universe.

Speaker 7 (01:30:08):
Before we go further into this, this is where I
think the movie turns into the Chase film.

Speaker 5 (01:30:13):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:30:13):
Yeah, they have these high points, all this tension built up.
We get some great action coming up, but before we
dive into that, I think this is a great spot
to just take a quick break and I will try
to process my thoughts better so I can stop calling
Han Luke and stop calling Star Trek warpspeak.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
You only got one good Star Trek reference this entire series,
and you don't even get it right. And that's when
they talk about using a cloaking device.

Speaker 8 (01:30:41):
That's your one Star Trek reference.

Speaker 7 (01:30:42):
The ship that size doesn't have a cloaking device, but
try and throw it more.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
Thanks for listening to the Middle Aged Movies podcast at
our review of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back. As
you can see, we've had a little bit to say
about this, So we're gonna take this and make it
into two episodes. Yes that's right, two episodes, And if
you've been with us this long, we hope you'll join
us for part two of Star wars, the Empire strikes back,

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Episode 58 - Empire Strikes Back Part 1 (Why is this Review So Long)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 58 - Empire Strikes Back Part 1 (Why is this Review So Long)