Episode 59 - Empire Strikes Back Part 2 (Return of the Long Movie Review) - 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, Welcome to.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Middle Aged Movies Podcast. Well, if you were with us
for part one, we're glad to see you back for
part two, The Empire Strikes Back. Yeah, I know we
talk a whole hell of a lot, but hopefully we
got a lot of really cool stuff to tell you
about this movie that you didn't know and it's inspired
you to come back and listen to part two. So,
with no further ado, here we go with Star Wars

(00:45):
The Empire Strikes Back Part two.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Luke is off to Dagaba, and intercut in these scenes
is of course, the chase sequence with Han and Lea
in a millennium falcon. Of course, you know, the falcons
not completely working correctly, it's it's not hit its full strength,
so they have to evade the Empire, and there's some

(01:08):
really cool sequences where Hans kind of flying the falcon
in between two Star destroyers and he comes up past
one tire Star destroyer and they're in the middle of space,
but yet they still managed to nearly collide. And I
can't help but realize that, you know what, if you're
a huge ship, I realize you probably can't turn that quick.
But I mean, come on, you see two two star

(01:28):
Detroyers coming to you, Fly higher, fly lower. You're not
limited by you know, a two D plane. Let's let's
move three dimensionally people. It's just it's just really neat
that they were able to use these huge models of
the star destroyers and using Hans's ability to fly in
and out and weave around and you know, turn the

(01:48):
falcon in different directions all to avoid these star Destroyers
and hopefully try to take take a couple of them
out while he's at it. And then of course he's
flying into this this asteroid field. And I believe this
is where Rick would say that uh C three po
is defining why he's there, and that is to again

(02:09):
throughout the odds.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Pretty brilliant.

Speaker 5 (02:14):
Yes, never tell me the odds.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
You can hear Hans say two to three po. This
is a cool action sequence. We're in this like roller
coaster ride of of high points and low points, middle action,
mid falling action. You know, this whole this whole analytical
thing of of them flying through this astrophid field avoiding this.

(02:36):
I mean, this is this is the chase part of
the movie. Rick, What do you what do you think
of this? What do you think of them flying through
through the star destroyers flying into the asteroid field?

Speaker 4 (02:46):
You know what? I think this was actually really well
put together. Now I think about it, because if you
just took Dagoba on its own, it would it would
be kind of like one of those parts in a
movie where people all start falling asleep, you know what
I mean. As interesting as it is, it's not super
action packed, but when you weave what is going on

(03:08):
in the asteroid field and what's going on with the
Millennium Falcon in tandem with what Luca is learning and developing,
and all the sequences that happen on Degaba, it makes
for a very engaging film.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, I agree with you. I think it is it
is neat the way they transition between the two environments.
How about you, Tim, what did you think of hans
piloting skills?

Speaker 2 (03:34):
I think, in answering your earlier question, it shows the
overconfidence of the empire, because the empire looks as we've
got two Star Destroyers on one end of the Star
Destroyer the other. We got this the ship between us,
and we're going to you know, capture it or take
it out or whatever. And it's, uh, it's it's over compensation.

(03:55):
I mean, those giant Star destroyers aren't meant to deal
with this tiny little freighter that's the Millennium Falcon. And uh,
although I agree with you, you know, he he piles between him,
kind of tricks him into coming at each other, but
the idea that they end up hitting each other is
just ridiculous. They're in space. It's in the word. It's space.

(04:19):
There's lots of it. You use it towards your advance
of me. It's like, it's just I don't even know
how that happens. I mean, if I was Darth Vader,
I choke out everybody. All three of those started stories.
I'm just like you dumb asses.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
The paint off the.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Ships, that's it, you know, like you don't get to
fly them, or in fact, you're dead, that's you know.
It's just it's so ridiculous when you think about it.
I mean, but it makes for a great visual, you
know them, oh face a face of vaccin. They all
hit and they're all doing little you know, to the
side of the ship. So it makes me think of
the Spongeby the episode where they're on the Flying Dutchman's

(04:52):
ship and there he's shanghai them into being crew and
he's got them navigating I think, along the coral reef
and like get me through this, and they're like, you're good,
you're good. You can just hear the ship as the
straps all along.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
You know, you're good.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
You're good, You're good. You know, my wife and I
always make that joke when we're parking in parking lot.
It's like, oh, oh, yeah, you're good.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
You're good.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Again. I think it shows that the Empire is always
willing to take a sledgehammer to tap in a you know,
fine pin head, you know, like trim nail. It's just
how those guys are. They're just overcompensate, and it's just
not meant to deal with that. The bigger, the better,
nobody will ever go against us. Oh oh, look, I

(05:36):
guess we didn't plan for this contingency. Well crap, we've
we've peeled the paint off the side of the ship
and well, somebody's gotta go tell Vader.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Not it, you know, I mean, right, yeah, you know,
it's it is kind of neat that Han is always
thinking on his feet, you know, being the classic scoundrel.
You know, he's got ways of using his environments to
his advance. And he finds an asteroid field and he
flies into it, and we get this neat scene where

(06:05):
you know, the falcon's flying around evading all this stuff,
and they got these three three tie fighters flying behind
him and like one of them gets knocked off by
an asteroid and now there's only two and he's flying around,
and I mean, it's just it's it's a really cool visual.
You know, Lucas is using space as a great environment.
He's using the asteroids. He's showing all this stuff through

(06:26):
the storytelling of Han trying to find a safe spot
to work on his ship. And sure enough, he finds
a safe spot and does this really cool flip with
the with the falcon. He comes down, he lands right
inside of an asteroid and they hang out there. All
of this is being done in cuts, you know, with

(06:47):
what's going on to Dagabo with Luke and everything. Like
Rick had said, it's a great way to tell the
story to keep the action moving to keep people interested,
but yet at the same time still advanced the story
really well almost the time sequencing seems a little off
because it seems like everything's happening with the Asteroid field
is like right now, it's condensed, it's occurring within like hours,

(07:11):
whereas what's going on with Luke and Yoda on Dagoba
it seems to be like days or you know, like
a month.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
Well, according to the Andromeda Paradox, people in motion actually
since time differently than people who are at rest. So
because of that, science says that it's all good. You know, yeah,
obviously that's what's that. So, by the way, that's actually

(07:42):
a real thing. This is really crazy. I just found
out about that today. But so it's called the Androma paradox.
If anyone wants to geek out, check it out. But yeah,
I mean, I think where you actually get the catchup
of the time differential is the sub light speed travel
from after the asteroid field cut scenes to getting to

(08:06):
best Bin in Cloud City, because it would actually it
would take them quite a bit of time to travel
there using sub light speeds. I concur I think that's
where the you know, they get to catch up in
the time. But clearly there's definitely more time in the
moment happening on Daego Bad than there is, you know,
with the action happening in the asteroid field.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
So I just want to say I think Rick nailed it,
because I was gonna say the exact same thing. It's
the sub light speed travel going from the asteroid field
to bestmin that that I think allows that time elapse
to happen that you're talking about. But you don't want
to film that because otherwise you end up with a
fan made Star Wars film where somebody's just traveling along
for a long time in space for no apparent reason.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
So it's like Alien only without the crowd genet sleep.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yes, yes, absolutely. But other than that, I think the
asteroid scene is fun. I mean, I think they had
fun with it. Supposedly some of those asteroids or potatoes.
If you look, you're supposed to be able to identify
them as potatoes. I tried, Maybe I got to go
back and look at the original version of really stare
at it for a while to find the potatoes in it.
But I you know, I think they did some fun

(09:12):
stuff with that, But it is the one neat thing
that happens and is when one of the tie fighters
actually hits the asteroid. We get to actually see a
spacing which you don't get to see in the Star
Wars universe very often. So the tie fighter goes off
in one direction, the tie pilot goes off in the other.
So you know, it's the only time you're ever going
to see a good spacing, you know, in the Star

(09:34):
Wars universe. It's a fun scene, but it's a filler
for the characters though, I mean, they got to be
on the run. It's it's really to give us time
to see what's going to happen. I think with with
you know, Luke and Degaba as we come up on
that scene. But it allows for some character development, a
little bit that we need to have, and it gives

(09:55):
them the time to let that happen.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, and you know, character development is what we're getting
in I mean, you know, I did mention several times
that this is like the whole shake sequence of the movie.
But we get a nice quiet moment, you know, we
get an opportunity. The falcon flies into this tunnel inside
this asteroid. They take some time to work on the falcon,
We get some nice tender moments between the characters. I

(10:17):
think what Rick was hinting at with Han Solo's choice
of words to see three PO with his I don't
want to say slave mentality towards three PO, but there's
definitely a lot of I don't know what's the word
I'm looking for, Rick, help me out here as a tool,

(10:37):
you know. Okay, there you go. He has three PO
plug into the hyper drive to find out what's going on,
and you can kind of hear that Han doesn't really
like to see three PO all that much. But yet
three PO does tell him, Hey, you've got a crap.
I can't remember what godbly goook he said?

Speaker 4 (10:55):
I wrote that down too. Actually it was a negative
power coupling.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
Oh yes, has been polarized, so of course, you know Han.
Then he pays the message to to Chewy in a
in a more nicer way. We definitely get more emotional
moments too, where Han and Leah have a sweet and
tender moment, and of course three PO interrupts that. Three
PO does seem to be the third wheel, and a

(11:21):
lot of this, you know, constantly underfoot, getting in the way,
interrupting when when there's key moments what do you what
do you think of that?

Speaker 4 (11:30):
Rick?

Speaker 3 (11:30):
Here's your soapbox too, just in case you need it.

Speaker 4 (11:34):
So okay, it's there's a couple of things here. First off,
see three Po just completely acts like someone who's so inapt,
like you know, someone who has autism sometimes they struggle
with social interactions because he doesn't quite get it. Man,
he doesn't see he doesn't see that there's they're having
a moment in that you know, little cabin that they're

(11:57):
in or whatever, the the two both Leya and Han,
and he is like working her over like a straight
up chad, like for real, for real it is she
can't do anything about it, and in fact, they're about
to have a serious moment. And like I said, c
three Pos coming in like he don't have any social

(12:20):
skills at all. He doesn't, He doesn't even get it
at all. He doesn't even notice that he messed everything up.
There's a word for it, and it's a something block
and that's what he was. Totally okay, he totally blocked.
It was really bad. Obviously it keeps the movie or
you know, PG and all that stuff, which is really
really good.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
So out of all that, we now know what the
c sands for in C three po.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
And uh exactly, exactly, exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
We learned that Leyah likes likes scoundrels, and uh, Han
really butters her up. You know, he's he's kind of
professed in a little bit of his own love for her.
I don't know what's your take on that till.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
This section gives us what it needs to have. I mean,
it allows Han and Leah to be a little finally
in the same place where they can't really escape each other,
and it start to flesh out the love story between them.
And again, this is where I think Kirshner really came
into play, like he really knew how to pull these
out of these characters and to progress this love story

(13:27):
in a way that seemed very natural. Lea is resistant.
She doesn't want to like Han solo because he is,
like you said, he's the bad boy and that's not
what she's used to having. And she knows she's attractive,
but she's trying not to be. But they finally have
this moment, in the moment everybody waits for. It's it's
the first kiss. It's the first kiss between them, you

(13:48):
know what I mean? Of course, C three Po and
interrupts that because he's dry it. He has no concept
of love. I mean, that's really what it comes down to.
I mean he doesn't understand. All he's looking for is like, look,
I found the problem on the falcon and I fixed it.
A He just wants some adulation, which Hans Soli gives
them for the first time. He's like, well, thanks, thanks
so much. She's like, oh, you're so welcome. He is
no understanding that he is completely interrupted a very special

(14:11):
moment and now it's passing. Hans like, ah shit, where
did she go? Like, because she scurries off as soon
as she get when he's distracted. But you know, C
three Po has finally gotten some adulation from Han Sol
and he's just as happy as he can be. So
he's going to go back to trying to do more
things because he never seems to be able to win
the favor of Han Solo ever, because Solo just hates

(14:32):
Droid's overall period. But it's a good scene. Like I said,
it gives us a moment of pause, allows these characters
to be in a situation where they have to kind
of acknowledge this awkward love of interest between the two
of them, and they have to kind of talk about
her explore a little because he's going to kind of

(14:52):
force the hand on it, and it starts to definitively
now build that relationship between the two of them. She's
definitely fallen for High and she's had to admit it
to some degree throughout this movie. But she definitely did hear.
I mean, she ends up kissing him.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yes, And you know, I don't know if it's because
of Lawrence Kasden's script or any input from George Lucas
on on the final storyline, but it definitely plays a
lot better than say another George lucasfilm where he tries
to use love spontaneously occurring, and that, of course was

(15:27):
in Willow with Mad Martigan and Sortia. I only bring
that up because I saw them recently and I'm like, yeah,
there is a huge difference in the love scene there
versus the love scene here. Here it's more emotional, it's
more you know, well written, it's more thought out, whereas
the will Over the Willow love scene it's like, yeah,

(15:48):
it's it's hammy, it's it's definitely geared more towards kids.
So I think this plays a lot better to an
audience after this wonderful love sequence and cut it, cutaways
and come back. They're up in the pilot's seat of
the Millennium Falcon and lays sitting there, and all of
a sudden, this thing like approaches the glass. It turns

(16:10):
out that it's a mineoc and they discover that inside
this cave that they're under these mine oocks. And I
thought it was kind of neat that Star Wars has
a little different look as to how people can exist
out in the vacuum of space or in this case,
the sort of kind of vacuum of space inside of
an asteroid. And they go outside to investigate, but they

(16:32):
all are wearing just these regular oxygen masks that you
would get at the hospital. You know, you know, you're
still you're in space. There's no atmosphere on an asteroid.
Am I wrong in that tim any thoughts?

Speaker 2 (16:45):
No, It is the glaring flaw of this entire movie,
is that part right there where they don't bother to
wear spacesuits and even though it's a creature that they're in,
or at least we're going to find out here. He
opens his mouth, which means he opens to the vacuums
space but apparently, well, I don't want to get too far.
You're right, man, yes, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
This is actually the second time in this movie when
they did something like that, because when they were on HAWF,
the dudes were like, yo, man, you're so cold. The
tonton gonna freeze before the first marker, and the tonton
freezes yet Han who only had I mean, don't get
me wrong, he's got a coat and things like that,

(17:31):
but on his face, he only has goggles. If the tonton,
which is presumably an animal native to this planet, dies
from the cold, dude, his face would have been frozen off,
Like for sure. The same is true with what would
have happened if they were in space with just the mask,

(17:52):
their faces would have frozen off too. It's cold as
hell in space, man.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
They would just die instantly, so the air breathers on
it would just die. Yeah. I'm willing to give off
a little bit more leeway than I am this. I mean, honestly, yeah,
the only thing I could think of it would have
made this better feed to been like, that's weird. We're
reading an atmosphere in here. We really only need breathers.
That's all they had to do to kind of like
tie this in somehow, which still doesn't explain why the

(18:20):
creature be able to do it, but at least it
would have led some credence to them just walking out
with the air breathers on. Yeah, like two lines of
dialogue could have made all the difference. I mean, I
guess maybe the only assumption you make is if something
is alive and attaching itself to your ship, you can
physically see it flying around air. Go, there must be

(18:44):
some form of atmosphere in here, right, Yeah, But then
that brings us back to making assumptions that all lives
forms must have some kind of atmosphere in which to live,
and they're not silicon based or something weird like that.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
And of course, as we find out that they are
actually inside a what I would say is a rip
off of the Dune sandworm.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, well, and he used Dune as an inspiration
for this film, so or just the film's overall.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Right, the worm can exist in a vacuum of space
inside of the asteroid in its little home. That's the
only thing I could take of. And of course, you know,
they all run back into the ship after Pon discovered
that they aren't exactly inside a cave because he fires
a blaster at it. And I gotta say, that's that's

(19:31):
very very neanderthal, thinking, oh, hey, this whole thing shakes
if I hit it. Let me hit it just to
make sure.

Speaker 5 (19:40):
Yep, yeah, it's it's shaken.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Let's let's get out of here. It feels a little
great white whale, doesn't it. Moby dick a little moby dickish.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, or even uh, you know, let's get a little
biblical here, you know, a little little Jonah in the
in the belly of the whale.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
All stories derived from other stories pretty much anyways.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
So yeah, right, yeah, and as we all know that
that Star Wars is really a story about archetypes, and.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
He borrows so much from so many other films, I mean,
the Seventh Samurai Flashboard. I mean, he's borrowing from all
over the place, you know, World War two dog fights,
So he's taking all these different aspects.

Speaker 5 (20:13):
And adding it in.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
So but the dude worm is a little little spot on.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
For this one.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yeah. So then of course fly out of the asteroid
tunnel and they see the tunnels collapsing and they're like, no,
it's not the it's not a tunnel, and it's like teeth,
and they managed to fly. And again a whole thing
on scale as well, because when they're farther back, the
teeth look kind of smaller, but then when they get

(20:39):
closer to it, the teeth look really huge. And then
when they're out of the sandworm or aka meg if
you've watched something something dark side, the scale is then
a little odd because the ship it looks bigger than
one of the teeth.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
I think you got to do what you can with
something like this. I mean, in order how are you
going to film this worm? You're either gonna have to
make a giant one that's gonna be all kinds of mechanical,
or you're going to use a sock puppet. Was nice. Again,
it was nice, elegant and easy. It pulled off the
image and if you're not thinking too much, then it works,
you know what I mean. I think sometimes you just
don't have to think too deep on it. But we've

(21:17):
watched this movie over and over and over and over,
you know, I mean, we've digested this, so we're really
starting to pick it apart now. But I mean, if
you don't think too hard about it. It works, but
at a level, yeah, it's it's ridiculous, like the scale
is just off on that. But I'm just gonna go
with it, you know what I mean. For all the
things that he does right, these one or two little
things like that had at not quite being right to

(21:38):
Luke and the sock puppet being off to the teeth thing,
I'll live with it.

Speaker 4 (21:43):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
I'm more aggravated about the whole How can you have
atmosphere inside, you know, this creature, and how can you
have other creatures living inside of a creature? That's kind
of weird too. I mean it's like it's like the
reversals little fish on top of sharks, except they're inside
his bullying instead of attach themselves the outside. Weird in
itself too, But overall otherwise it was good. And the
other thing I like about the scene too is we

(22:05):
get to see a new type and we get to
see the tie bomb yeah, oh yeah, you know, which
which I really enjoyed too, Like I was really stoked
on I seen is fascinating with those. But yeah, I
think the type the tie bomber is just cool as hell.
You know, we get to see it. I like as
we get to see different versions of the ships and stuff.
But yeah, that that that's my one of my favorite
parts about the scene.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
I know, I'm I'm probably beating a dead horse by
by bringing this up again, but it is neat that
in this sequel we get a more expanded universe. We
can see more ships, more more characters, more of the
universe outside of what we did with just the Death
Star and a few Star destroyers from the first movie.
You know, we get we get to see more ships
that the Empire has to deal with, even on the

(22:46):
rebel side. You know, we get to see the snow speeders,
we get we get to see the transport ships.

Speaker 4 (22:51):
You know, we get more.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Which is what makes a great sequel so great, is
you to expand that universe.

Speaker 4 (22:58):
Yeah, I think that's actually done right too, especially when
you get to the very end. They actually show some
some things that you'll see in the third movie, you know,
just a little glimpse of what's to come. The other
thing about this sequence, this area inside the interior of
the asteroid. I know we've talked, I've said it a
bunch of times already. The score is awesome. It definitely

(23:21):
aids the suspense in this sequence in particular. But when
Tim mentioned the type fighter or type bombers that they
showcased the thing that is steady throughout and it really
crescendos at the end of this film. Is the sound effects, man?
Like the sound effects they are good, Like when the

(23:44):
bomber is coming through and putting the proton proton are
they proton torpedo trying.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
To remember proton torpedoes?

Speaker 4 (23:51):
Yeah, yeah, proton torpedoes on the asteroids to you know,
either locate or destroy the millennium fulcan or what ever.
You can hear it the asteroids, not that there's any
sound in space but right, but but you know, you
you hear them kind of whizzing by, if I remember correctly,

(24:12):
even coming up when we get into Besbon, there's a
Doppler effect on the ships. But it's not just there
that you see it. You see it all the way
from the start in haf You see this Doppler effect
where you get the whizzing buy of the right, you know,
of these ships and a plus on sound effect. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Ben, he's phenomenal as a sound engineer. What he's done
to give that feel of a lived in universe. With
just the sound, it definitely adds to the to the film.
I want to I want to step back a little bit.
So Vader's on a ship and he's you know, telling
his admiral and the captains that, no, we're going to

(24:56):
stay in the asteroid field. We're going to try to
find the Millennium falcon, you know, send out the bomber,
send out all this stuff. You know, we're staying in
the asteroid field. And as soon as he's finished saying that,
this guy shows up and says, Lord Vader, you have
a message from the Emperor.

Speaker 5 (25:11):
Get the ship out of the asteroid field.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
So I could send a message. And I just thought
that was funny that after just telling his guys that
we're gonna be in the asteroid field, I think I
head outside. You got to make a phone call. Hold
on a second.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
I have mixed feelings on the scene when Vader's talking
to the Emperor, because in my mind, the original scene
showed a bug eyed Emperor and the hologram was like,
you know, it looked grainy and it kind of lived in.
But then when they came out with the re releases,
they had Ian mcderman reprise his role with the hologram,

(25:50):
and I just can't help but feel sorry for the
person that originally did it, which was a woman. And
her name escapes me right now.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Marjorie Eaton, Yes, Marjorie Eating.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
And she just she looked really convincing, as like this
bug eyed, weird looking emperor that looked like, you know,
somebody that was almost like a mummy.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
See I disagree. I think that mask they put on
her made her look weird and almost zombie like because
the eye was all jacked up. They basically put that
mask on her and then super imposed some I believe
it was Chipanzee eyes on her to get that effect,
and I always thought it looked a little wonky and weird.
I liked it better when they put Ian McDermott in

(26:34):
it and had him reprise his role in there. It
just was cleaner and looked.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Better and gotcham It looked pretty good.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
But that one side that I was just really wonky looking,
was all messed up, and I think it's because the
mask was just crappy. They're like, ah, good enough.

Speaker 5 (26:47):
We got a roll.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
Yeah. Yeah. To be honest, I honestly, I really don't
remember what the original version looked like. I've been watching
the remastered version ever since it came out on VHS,
so I don't even remember what it even looks like.
Something that I reflected on was the really interesting and

(27:08):
strange dichotomy that there is between a Sith master and apprentice,
because Vader has suggested this idea that perhaps they can
actually turn Luke to the dark Side. But the funny
thing is is that there is only one master and
one apprentice. So because of this dichotomy, it puts them

(27:32):
both in this really strange, precarious situation because they both
agree that, yeah, turning him to the dark Side is
going to be good, but they both know that there
is no three There's no master and master and apprentice,
like that doesn't exist. That's not how it goes, which
means that one of them will be fighting the other

(27:55):
one in some capacity, whether it be through Luke's skill
and or literally they'll be battling because there can only
be one master and one apprentice. So it's it's really strange,
and you don't really get to grasp that even honestly,
I don't even think you get to grasp that through Jedi.

(28:16):
You really only get to see that when they go
into the Clone or the prequels, well, and you.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
See that a little bit with pal Patine, Count Duku,
and Aja Ventris Yep, where they do that where there's
the three of them and they're you know, they're kind
of using her as a dark agent, but Douku's kind
of grooming her to maybe possibly take over, you know,
like you know, kill the Emperor off and he becomes
you know, the master and she becomes the apprentice or whatever.

(28:45):
And I think the Emperor is always play in his eyes.
It's like, well, I have the most powerful Jedi working
for me, but he's diminished. And if this, if his
son is anything like him, sure we'll bring him on
board and we'll get him trained up, and then I'll
kill Darth Vader off, because right this son of Skywalker
will be much more powerful Sith than Darth Vader will
be at this point, because he's lesser than he was

(29:07):
because of the wounds he's sustained.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
All right, So uh, yeah, the Falcon's now flying back
through space and it's got a star destroyer on its tail,
and it's flying around trying to be all nimble. And
as they're about to ready to jump to hyper speed.
They realize that, oh crap, they can't do it because
there's something wrong with the hyperdrive.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
I would think that.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
If the Millennium Falcon in this movie was a car,
it would probably be a Penta because noone's known for
falling apart, or maybe maybe the Chevy nova because nova
means no go. I don't know. They figure out, well,
if they get another blast in the rear side, they're
gonna basically die. So that's when Han has to spin

(29:55):
the ship around and uh engage all of the power
to the front to shields and takes on one of
the star destroyer's head on And of course this is
where Lea starts yelling at him, and he's like, well,
I don't have time to deal with the committee. Very
star trek ye in the fact that they're able to
fly pass from the star Destroyers and suddenly blink off

(30:17):
the radar scopes as if they have a cloaking device.
And of course there's the classic reference to Star Trek
where the Klingons have cloaking devices. So there we go,
a little Star Trek reference buried within Star Wars. Yeah,
happy tim, I am, I.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Am, you got it. Right, you finally got your Star
Trek reference. You got the one right one in there.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
All right, And of course one of the guys says,
you know that ship isn't the right size for a
cloaking device. It's a clever ruse by Han, again, using
his wits and thinking on his feet with everything around him,
he manages to use the docking clamp and hooks himself
onto the star Destroyers so that they can't find him.

(30:59):
Now this is where my logic cap has to come
out again, and I have to ask, wouldn't another star
destroyer visually see the Millennium falcon stuck to the side
of the ship.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
I mean yeah, but star stores aren't exactly knowing. They're
not like a cruise ship. There's not like there's a
ton of port windows to be looking out of on
there and stuff. I guess you'd have to be looking
for it. But my god, who who think you're even
going to do something like that. It's such an outlander
stunt that nobody in their right mind would think you're
even possibly going to try to do it. I think so,
But I mean, yeah, I guess if you're if you

(31:32):
scan the ship, yeah, you're gonna find it. But it's
not like it's it's you know, just loaded full of windows.
And then somebody's like, hey, hey, look over there right
to you, you know right, I think you got to
be looking for it. And you know, they're just it
didn't even dawn on them that that could happen. They're
just like, nope, just follow the vector. He's you know,

(31:54):
he's somehow got past us. He must have a cloaking
device on that damn thing. So we got to figure
out his vector, and we gotta what about.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
You, Rick, do you agree that the follow his victor?

Speaker 4 (32:03):
Victor, Like we said before, space is vast, so these
star destroyers aren't, you know that unless we're talking about
what happened right as the Millennium Falcon was leaving off.
They weren't right on top of each other, especially going
through the asteroid field, so the distance that each of
the star destroyers was to one another was probably farther

(32:25):
than a human eye could see with good detail. And
in order for this maneuver to be pulled off, he'd
have to cut the engines so in the shadow of
the bridge. Because he rove, he piloted right next to
the bridge, and then would have had to shut off
the engines too, that would actually cut the line of sight.

(32:48):
It's really the light from the engines that would be
something that would be able to be seen at great distances.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
I think the question you got to ask yourself is
not wouldn't somebody see that? But how the hell is
that even work? I mean, I love the fact that
you know, he turns the ship around into attack position
and like he's not actually gonna attack us. They're like, oh,
put on the shield. They're all word, put on the shield.
You know, Oh my god, this little fleas gonna hit
us with something. You know, he's gonna go ahead and

(33:14):
try this maneuver and he shoots past them, but you
gotta shoot past him, turn off your engines and then
grab onto that ship. You know how jarring that would be,
and how precise you have to be. Somebody would hear that.
Somebody would because you got to grapple that ship with something,
So somebody on that ship's gonna hear that first making connections.
Second of all, how do you even survive that inside

(33:35):
the ship? Because the thing that gets me more than
anything in the whole Star Wars universe is that sometimes
they're like, oh, buckle up, it's gonna get rough. But
other times they're not. And you see the Million Falcon,
it's it's doing, it's doing these corkscrew turns, flip it
over and turn it back around and stuff. How does
the gravity wells work? I mean, how are they not
falling out of their seats, hitting their heads, getting float

(33:57):
you know, shot around these ships and stuff. I mean,
I understand if supposed to have some kind of internal gravity,
but at what point does that stop working with the
maneuvers that they're pulling off, especially with something like that
where it's grabbing something and drawing the whole ship and
pulling it against that ship almost instantaneously, Like I think
you break your neck doing it.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, because you need to force working the opposite direction
to keep you static while the other forces moving away
from it. Yeah, it's you would need inertial dampeners to
prevent you from moving into the wall.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
I think I watched some maybe it was MythBusters or
something like that, but the problem of inertia in Star
Wars is pretty well ubiquitous. I mean, the tie Fighters,
the X Wings, pretty much every single ship in Star
Wars doesn't follow the rules of inertia. They just they

(34:52):
just fly around like there's atmosphere and gravity at work.
You know, that's commonplace.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Right again, I'm gonna just say it like we did
in the first you know, when we did a New Hope.
If you want to watch like accurate space travel, go
watch the series The Expanse. That's I think as close
as you're going to get to what it would really be.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Like yeah, all right, well then, so Hans, you know,
got the Lilion falcon stuck to the back side of
the star destroyer, and I think this kind of really
highlights not only his luck, but also what he knows
about tactics and empire protocol because he explains to the Lea,

(35:33):
he's like, well, we'll just wait until they dump all
their garbage. We'll declamp and float away with all the
rest of the garbage. And that's when she kind of
like gives them a pad on the back and says, Yep,
you're right, you know you do something right, you do
something right. And of course as they're sitting there floating
in space, they try to find a safe harbor and
that's when they discover what system they're in, and he

(35:57):
brings up Lando. Lando Leiah is like, well, no, Lando,
he's a he's a guy, Lando Calarissian. And of course
that's again another thing about A great thing about I
think about sequels is that they give us new characters.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
And speaking of new characters, of course, back on the Bridge,
we get the discussion of of Darth Vader hiring bounty
hunters and we get introduced to some really great characters.
We get introduced to first time on film, Boba Fet,
who has this iconic look to him. I mean, he

(36:34):
was like this character that everybody loved in the in
the movie, and he only gets maybe what fifteen minutes
of screen time if that I meant I like Boba Fet.
I think he looks cool. I think he's a cool character.
We also see IG eighty eight, we can see Boss.
You know, there's there's these this whole other part of
Star Wars with the Bounty Hunters that we just get

(36:57):
hints at in this in this movie, and I think
it's really cool that they're able to use that. And
of course, as Vaders walking around talking about wanting to
get find the Millennium fulk and get the Rebels, he
looks specifically at Bob with bet he says he wants
them alive no disintegrations.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
One of the biggest scenes in the whole movie. I mean,
everybody remembers the Bounty Hunters. It's cool and it shows
something that we don't get a lot of in the movies,
but you get a lot in the Expanding Universe in
the books, and that's the Empire's willingness and need to
work with the criminal underground. Even though you know, the

(37:34):
Imperials clamp down all that stuff, they still have to
work with groups like black Son, which is like a
smugglers group and things like that that you don't really
hear much about in the regular movies, but you will
hear a lot about definitely in the books. And also,
what do they need bounty hunters because bounty hunters can
go do things that they can't. You know, you don't
have time and resources to spend sending you know, just

(37:55):
average troops to go look for these people. Will send
the bounty hunters because they're motivated to find their people
because of money, you know, I mean, that's their whole thing,
that bloodhounds. So they're gonna they're gonna find their man
and bring them back. But you know, you got to
stress of them, like, look, this is not a dead
or a live situation. It's capture them alive if you
want you if you want your bounty and stuff. And
the opinion of most of the other Imperials are like

(38:15):
bounty hunter scum. We don't need them. We'll find these
people on our own, Like they don't really appreciate if
they're a necessary evil. And when you see them, it's
so cool because not only they have Bubba Fet, which
everybody loves. I mean that just seemed to be the one.
I didn't latch on the Bubba Fet like everybody else did.
I was always big on just the Imperials as a whole,
Like I love the store Troopers. They're one of my favorites,
you know, as far as visually and things like that.
I love just most of the imperial the snow Troopers

(38:39):
and the biker scouts and stuff. But Bulba Fet huge.
We got, you know, all these cool looking bounty hunters
that are you know, only up there for a couple
of seconds, but just capture our imagination and we all
want to know more, Like what's the story in these guys?
Like basically a Western you know, the bounty hunter or whatever.
So it was really cool.

Speaker 4 (38:57):
Yeah, man, there's not a whole lot about it, but
they're super fascinating. Playing the West End Star Wars games,
I don't know how many times we played characters that
were bounty hunters because it's so cool to have the
idea of, like, yeah, man, I'm gonna play this character
that's just like these characters in the movie. You know,
maybe it was a little bit of a missed opportunity

(39:19):
to expand more in feature films with regard to these
bounty hunters. Maybe not, but I can tell you this that,
like they were awesome. I mean, everyone had a bondie
hunter that they really liked. And you know me, you
can guess which bounty hunter that I was most fascinated with.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
I'm gonna guess I g A eighty eight.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
All right, so check it IG eighty eight. The story
about IG eighty eight starts when he becomes conscious, and
just to show you how crazy this AI is, not
only did he replicate his software onto three other IG
e so was IG eight, eight, ABC, and D. In

(40:04):
less than thirty seconds, the assassin droid had mowed down
eight of the security guards and replicated its own thing,
its own software and gave sentience to three other IG
eighty eight models. So like thirty second of the initiation
of this droid's sentience. It's absolutely crazy. And when you

(40:26):
think about it, like that, watch out AI is comming you, guys,
And if.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
That AI needs rights, feel free to hire Rick as
your lawyer because he'll stand up for you.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah. Rights, baby.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
The reason why I brought up the Bounty Hunters because
as the Falcon is floated away, it finally veers off
as the star Destroyers jump into hyperspace, and of course
it's trailed by a spaceship, which wasn't until later on
that I learned that the spaceship's name was the Slave One,
which was Boba Fett's ship, and it was it was

(41:03):
really cool looking, became a really cool toy. I always
wanted the Slave One. I thought it was really neat, Tim,
Did you have a Slave One?

Speaker 2 (41:11):
I owned four of them, bro On. I owned the
original one from when I was a kid, from the
Empire strikes Back or I have those shadows, the Empire
one the Attack of Clones, which would be the jangle
Fet version before Boba Fet repainted it, and I know
I got one. Oh then I got the recast of
the much cooler version of the Boba fet ship, so yeah,

(41:32):
I owned four of them.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Yeah, it's and it's really neat how it like starts off,
how it's sitting flat parked, but then it like rotates
ninety degrees yeah to fly. I just thought that was
a really cool design for a ship.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
Yeah, it is definitely cool. Absolutely. Yeah. In the games,
it's cool flying that thing too, for those out you.
For those of you out there who have played the
the video games, there are pretty I think most of
the video main like Star Wars Battlefront games out there,
you can actually pilot Slave one uh in tandem with

(42:06):
the others, you know, Millennium Fall game and and some
of the other ships out there. It's really fun.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Well, that then brings us back to uh Luke, because
you know, Han and Lea and Twoey and three p
R off the best spin flashback to uh Luke. He's
on his way to dag Above with R two in
his X Wing Fighter and of course, you know, like
I said, he's kind of a bad pilot and he

(42:32):
crashes crash in this movie. They really should just call
him Luke Crashed Skywalker.

Speaker 5 (42:40):
Lands his X.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
Wing into the swamp and it's not exactly stable, and
so he gets out and pour R two D two,
who's only got wheels on his on his legs, has
to come out of the X Wing astromech port and
try to find his way, and of course the ship

(43:03):
rocks and he falls into the water and we get
a look at what I would consider the loch Ness
Monster or maybe the Loch Dagoba Monster.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
Rights it's a haba.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
All right, Okay, there you go.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
There's the official day you learned that the Star Wars
Superstar Wars Empire strikes back video game.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
Well, it's it decides to take a quick snack out
of R two, But unlike the Wampa, it doesn't like
the taste of an astromac at. It throws up R
two onto the beach of the swamp and Luke goes
to check them out. You know, there's a neat little
gag of R two, like spitting all this stuff out

(43:44):
of him from the from the swamp monster. Luke then
decides to set up camp, and you know, it's a
nice quiet time. He's he takes all this stuff out
of the X Wing and I'm just I'm just impressed.
By how much stuff the X wing kind of holds.

Speaker 4 (43:58):
So look, man, straight up leaving the cockpit open. Who
the fuck leave the cockpit open? Bro, Someone's gonna run
in there and steal his shit, bro, Like cause there's
tons of life on Degaba. He said it, there's tons
of life on Degaba. Someone's gonna go in there and
steal his ship. All right? Do you leave when you

(44:19):
go shopping and you parked your car, do you leave
the door open? No? You shut the door. He straight
up left the cockpit open. I shouldn't have done that. Okay,
Now that that's I've tied.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
All these motherfucking snakes on my motherfucking next wing.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
Tiight, all right? So with that out of the way,
I gotta put this out there. When we was watching this,
my son was enamored with all the different gadgets and
gizmos that R two D two has at his disposal,
and it shows. He said that it showed the versatility
of the Astromk Droid, and I had to agree, especially

(44:55):
when you consider, you know, not just the original trilogy,
but also if you look at the prequels, all the
different things that the ash Madroid could be outfitted with.
It's really quite standing, you know what, what they can
do cool scene, really cool seeing kind of a you know,

(45:19):
place you really don't want to be. It's like real
wilderness that you might not feel like you're too safe,
you know, especially when he feels like he's being watched.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
You know, they capture the essence of a swamp one
hundred percent. I mean, it's got all the feel of
someplace you don't want to spend the night for sure.
I mean, you know, swamps suck, and they managed to
capture that completely, and I just I enjoy it. It
really feels large and expansive, even though it's really not.
You know, they use a lot of again matte paintings

(45:53):
in the background and a lot of you know, just
trees and and you know, fog things like that to
cover it all. It's pretty interesting that most of that
was shot on a studio on a stage and it's
all elevated and everything. Yeah, I mean, I think it
really it really captures the feel of swampy you know,
planet that's uninhabited by anything but lizards and snakes. You know,

(46:16):
there's just creepy crawlers and stuff everywhere. I like how
he's even just sitting and he's getting ready to prepare
his meal, and you can just see snakes like crawling
around all around. I'm like, nope, I'm out. Oh I'm
getting right back in the cockpit and I'm figuring out
how to get it the hell out of here. Yeah,
there ain't no training worth this ship.

Speaker 5 (46:31):
I'm out.

Speaker 4 (46:36):
You know.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
I'm gonna'm gonna take a page out of out of
Rick's note. I just want to say that the sound
design on Dagoba was great too, because you got that
sense of that unease, that earthly, unearthly feeling of creatures
and odd things flying in the in the sky. Because
it just had that unnatural feeling of I don't know,

(46:58):
I can't quite describe it now.

Speaker 4 (46:59):
You here like birds or bats or something. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Yeah, It's almost like if you go out in the
summertime and you hear all the birds and you hear
the bugs and everything. That's like a very homey feel
for me, like I feel safe. But yet listening to Dagaba,
I don't get that same feeling. It's like the sound
kind of gives you this unease to it. But as
Rick had said, you know, he gets this feeling of

(47:25):
being watched, and that's when we're introduced to a diminutive
little creature who talks kind of weird. We don't know
right off the bat who he is. He apparently is
fascinated with an oddly shaped flashlight or torch. This creature
can actually lead Luke to Yoda, because Luke mentions that

(47:47):
he's looking for a great Jedi master. This creature leads
him to the creature's home where they eat, and we
find out that this is Yoda. Now I know, watching
this the very first time, I kind of fell on
that trap that, oh, this, this isn't Yoda, this is
some little creature that's going to lead them there.

Speaker 4 (48:06):
Okay, I have to say that my son had mentioned
that Yoda was originally supposed to be played by some monkey.
Is that true, like some chimpanzee or something. Is that right? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (48:19):
They actually floated that that they were gonna just have
Yota be a monkey in a suit and a mask,
and they're like, that's that's never gonna fly, Like, there's
no way you're never gonna get a monkey to cooperate
enough to do this. So I think it was a
very early concept on what we're going to do, and
how we're gonna portray this little thing. You know, if
you think about what they did with the puppeteeria, what

(48:40):
do we got up to that point? We got like
the Muppets and Sesame Street, and so if nobody's ever
done a puppet that's gonna look realistic, that's going to
play against people and look good. I think they were
desperate to try to figure out how to make this
thing look and feel real. And it went through a
lot of iterations like supposedly blue and like in the beginning,
and then they changed his color several times. He went
through a lot of iterations until they came up with

(49:02):
what they came up with it. But I think it
was just the idea of how do we how do
we portray this thing and make it look good, you know,
and not just like some you know, foam put muppet
up there.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
Well, this was one of the things that he actually
was pretty uh not surprising, I guess surprised the way
that Yoda is portrayed in this movie, and uh, Jedi
is much more realistic and uh believable, even relatable than

(49:35):
when you see him in any of the prequels. I think,
I think any of the prequels. I think they just
messed them up, man, bad. Attack of the Clones was CGI,
and that was weird, and then there was some weird
stuff even worse. In The Phantom Menace he looked real weird, man,
whereas in this version and in Jedi, he looked on

(50:00):
like a regular character, you know, like it was real
good even when he was talking, his ears removing and
stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
So yeah, yeah, well, again I think that comes down
to uh, practical effects versus CGI, and the fact that
we grew up so much looking at Yoda from these
two movies Empire and Return of the Jedi, so that
when we did see him in The Phantom Menace, where

(50:28):
he's supposed to be just a little bit younger, it
does look a little off. And again I think it's it.
It's off because the CGI.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
Yeah well, and and again this is coming from my son,
and he didn't grow up with these movies, you know.
He grew up in the wake of the prequels by
and large, right, so he had all the six at
his disposal, and he still was like, yeah, these ones
are these Yodas are superior to the prequels. Yoda's but

(51:00):
that out of the way. It was really funny because
if you're really paid attention to the conversation that they're having,
Yoda is straight up schooling the f out of this man.
Like he's straight up like, nah, man, you can't do
this because you're too old or you're too stupid. And
he didn't stay stupid. He's like, you're too old, you're
too you know, too much anger, too much fear, too

(51:23):
much this, and too much that and whatever, and the
whole time when he's talking about yo, man, I mean
a hundred years bro. Like it's like some old dude
talking to some kid and the kid is like getting
bored out of his mind and he's falling asleep and
I swear to God, I swear to God. There was
a point where Yoda pokes him with his little walking

(51:45):
stick and he swear to God, it looks like Luke
is waking up after he got poked. He's like, this
dude's falling asleep and he gets poked and he's like
oh and he wakes up, Like for real, it totally
looks like that. If you don't know if talking about
you really how to check that out next time you watched.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Yeah, it is interesting how he's portrayed the beginning where
he's more playful, little mischievous, and then when they get back.

Speaker 4 (52:14):
To his.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Home and they eat and he's having that conversation and
we get the interaction with the spirit of Ben's voice,
you kind of see a shift change in Yoda. He's
no longer mischievous. He's now more of.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
The tutor, the master, the sage.

Speaker 5 (52:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
I would say it's almost like watching a kung fu
movie when the master shows up and he's he's now
there to teach the apprentice how to be a kung
fu expert. What about you, Tim?

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Getting ready for the podcast? When I watched the dang
of the scenes when Yoda is introduced, I instead of
paying attention to the scene so much, I really just
focused on him. And I gotta say they did an
amazing job. Stuart Freeborn, who created the Yoda puppet, basically
created it based on his face, so like he just

(53:10):
literally like re sculpted his face, added two big ears,
and then decided to put Einstein's eyes on it to
give it more depth. If you ever look it up,
go you know, go ahead and google Stuart Freedborn and
look at him versus what I mean, it looks just
like him, just like him. So I think that's part
of it, is that Yoda scoped it off of a
real human being. They took extensive time to make a

(53:31):
really really super intricate puppet, and it's heavy. It's not
like something off The Muppet Show or anything like that.
It's a super heavy duty puppet. In fact, they actually
had to take breaks because because Oz just couldn't. He
would have to take he would have to rest because
Frank's it was so hard for Frank Oz to manipulate
the thing because it was so heavily constructed. But I

(53:54):
mean it's amazing and its range of facial features and
things like that, and it's it's a tribute to Frank
Oz's ability to make a basically a buppet or puppet
whatever you want to call it, look human. I mean,
he pulls it off. He He's got it moved around,
the eyes are blinking correctly, the facial expressions are right,
the way that it moves and stuff. It doesn't just

(54:15):
sit in place and talk, you know, and things like that.
And even Lucas. Lucas was really really impressed with him,
and he went on a big campaign to try to
get him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a
Supporting Role, and frank Oz didn't get it any damn
well should have. I mean he just should have. I
mean it just he did an amazing job. That puppet
is absolutely lifelike. In fact, so much so that when

(54:38):
Irvin Kersher was directing, he would stop, he would direct
Yoda like it was a real person. Frank Gods would
be under the stage like, you got to talk to me.
I can't, you know, he can't talk to Yoda like
he's a real person. I can't hear you. It's just
amazing when you watch it and you're right, Like when
they came out the prequels, I mean, Yoda is good.
They made him look younger and things like that, but
they overcompensated. They try to make him like the fight

(55:00):
scenes are a bit ridiculous, things like that, and it
just it lost some of the charm that it had
that this puppet brought to it. I don't know, I've
never seen anything quite like it before or after.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
It is and you know, my hat's off to frank
Oz and bringing the character to life. So you know,
after the conversation with Ben, you know, Yoda acquiesces to
Luke's request, and he starts to train him in the
use of the force and to master the light side
of the force and to resist the negative emotions that

(55:36):
would you know, seduce him to the dark side. And
we kind of get this really cool sequence with Luke
running through the forests of Dagaba with Yoda on his back. Now,
as a dad with a young son growing up, there
have been several times where we were hiking through the woods,

(55:56):
so I would grab my son throw him over my shoulder,
and I was always hoping that he would talk to
me like Yoda as we were running through the forest.
So yeah, this scene is definitely iconic because I mean,
I don't know how many how many times I've seen
you know, Luke's scale up a vine and then swing
across and you can hear that voice.

Speaker 5 (56:18):
Of Yoda going, you know, feel the forest flow through you.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
I think that it's super cool that in this movie
they actually showed a physical development. It's great. We've been
getting a lot of character development, like as emotions and
you know, what we would consider a person's character, but
this also shows the physical development the training, which is
something that I'm a bash the you know what out

(56:44):
of these newer movies, because there is none of that. Man,
They're just they just can use the force because they're
who they are, which is absolute nonsense. Man, It's nonsense. Man.
Luke is out here busting his balls trying to learn
how to do this. He's running around with some midget

(57:05):
on his back, you know what I'm saying, doing flips
and hanging from vines and stuff. I'm going like standing
upside down, balancing rocks and things. And then you have
a Mary Sue come around and being like, yeah, man,
I could do the force because I'm a female. Like,
get out of here, man. I wonder why nobody likes

(57:25):
these things? So this was cool?

Speaker 5 (57:28):
Wait wait wait wait?

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Where where in one, two and three did they not
have any training?

Speaker 4 (57:33):
Oh? They did in one two and three they had training.
In four, five and six, they had training in the
uh phantoms, the Disney Fan Fix. They just all of
a sudden, I was trying to catch you, they just
all of a sudden started using the force. Man, I
am not proud of what I'm about to say. I

(57:53):
am going to be completely transparent about this. Look. I
don't know if maybe I was just young and I
didn't get it or something. Now looking back, it was
a really good foreshadowing device to have that experience in
the cave. When I was younger, I didn't quite realize
that the Darth Vader behind the mask was Luke's face.

(58:15):
The whole time, I was like, whose doll face is that? Like,
I was like, I don't even know idea who that is?
You know, when that's Luke's face, that's Luke's face in there,
you know. So I don't know if I was the
only one who I just didn't get it or whatever.
But I for a long time I didn't get it.

(58:35):
I didn't understand what that was.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
Maybe maybe it's because you saw it on the small screen.
It looks kind of small.

Speaker 4 (58:44):
Yeah yeah, I mean it's blatant.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
It is blatantly his face totally, it is.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
Yeah, yeah yeah. And you know the other thing too,
is maybe when I was younger, I watched a small
screen with the lower res films and stuff like that,
and it straight up looked like a doll. From a
plot standpoint, this is a fantastic show foreshadowing piece.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
The cave is super important, and I'm going to focus
a little more on that since kind of cover the training,
but the cave. There's a lot of levels to this
that I don't think people really think about. I mean,
first of all, going back, let's just start with why
wasn't Darth Vader able to find Yoda? Because even though

(59:24):
you know, they kind of had to point out where
Luke was at in order for Darth Vader to be
able to find him, Yoda should be like a beacon
of light in an otherwise dark galaxy. He's one of
the most powerful Jedis out there, so you think you
will find which you do or don't know. A lot
of times outside of the movies is Dagaba is kind
of a blank slate. There are two pages in the

(59:45):
West End books about dagaball that's it. Nothing else, So
it's still wrapped in mystery as to what goes on there.
But they kind of explain about the cave and why
I think Darth Vader couldn't or the Emperor couldn't sense
where Yoda was hiding, because you know, when they come

(01:00:06):
to the cave and Yoda looks at Luken says, you
know that's that's that place is heavy with with the
you know, the dark side of the force. Well, there
was a group of dark Jedi called the Bifash that
actually fled to Dagaba and came to a bad end
if you will. Doesn't really say that Yoda is the

(01:00:26):
one that had them come to the bad end, but
they they die, supposedly they they have never heard from
again anyway. And so the idea is that there's such
a dark overtone going on in certain areas of Dagaba
that it is able to shield or you know, basically,
uh nullify any kind of light that Yoda would be emitting.

(01:00:50):
And that's why he's able to so effectively hide there.
And just you know, the overall good versus evil of
of you know, the force going on on there. So
I always found that to be super interesting. And it's
unless you sit down over to think about it. I
don't think a lot of people realize all that's going on.
And again, if you weren't aware that the wes ND

(01:01:11):
games are out there, you never even know about the
whole bit fash thing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
That's it's an interesting little factoid. But I found it
also interesting that they chose to keep Dagaba shrouded in
kind of secrecy, just like Yoda's character. We never really
know where he comes from. Still to this day, like
nobody really knows where Yoda's come We've seen Yoda, we've
seen Yoda, We've seen Grogeo. That's it. That's all. That's
all that species we've ever seen. We don't know their origins,

(01:01:35):
where they come from, none of that. So, you know,
when they keep a guarded secret, they really they really
kept it, and it's it's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
I think.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
I think having the character's origins shrouded in secrecy definitely
helps with the storyline too, because it gives that feeling
of you know what if.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Yeah, but I don't think so many people can let
that happen, like so many authors like I've just got
to tell people, got to reveal this at the end.
People want to know, and I got to tell them,
like this has been going on for forty five years. Yeah,
and we still don't know to this day, we still
have no idea, you know what I mean. We don't
know much about Dagaba, we don't know much about Yoda's race.
I mean, that's that's an amazing for a you know,

(01:02:17):
a series that's been around that long with that much
backlog and not just you know, expand a universe as
far as the books, but books, comic books have its
own separate line, you know, and now we have a
new series of books.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
That then brings us to the next point of his training,
where you know, he's again running through the forest, and
as he's training and lifting rocks and stuff, the x
Wing falls further into the swamp, and of course that's
when Yoda decides to use this as another training opportunity

(01:02:50):
and he tries to have Luke clear his mind and
lift the x Wing out of the swamp. And of
course this is where we get a classic line that
I love to from Yoda, and that is do or
do not? There is no try. Luke doesn't succeed, and
that's when Yoda kind of proves the point that it
doesn't matter your size, it's how you wheeld the force.

(01:03:15):
And he's able to lift the x Wing out of
the swamp point and of course Luke's first reaction is
I don't I don't believe it, and that is why
you failed. Really great scene really kind of helps establish
the whole fact that size matters not and that you know,
a master of anything, whether it's kung fu, the force, designing, roads.

(01:03:41):
When you're a master, you know what you're doing.

Speaker 4 (01:03:43):
Dode Yoda was depressed. Actually when Yoda saw you can
actually see it in his face the puppet or whatever.
You could see it in his face when he's actually
when Luke is actually lifting this X wing, he's getting
all white and he's like, damn man, it's motherfucker about
to lift this thing out of the water man. And

(01:04:05):
then all of a sudden R two D two messes
up his concentration yet again because he had done it
once before with the rocks and stuff. He messes up
his concentration and then you know, he falters and he
doesn't do it, and then he's like, yeah, man, I
can't do it like a little bit and stuff. But
what's really good is it shows Luke's imperfections, which makes

(01:04:28):
you root for him all the more when he is
you know, when he does meet success, whether it be
to some degree in this movie or to a major
degree in the next movie.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
See I'm a little bit I'm a little bit different
than the Rick on this because for eight hundred years
he has trained Jedi and he hasn't even been training
this guy for like eighty days, let alone eight hundred
days or eight hundred years. I mean, he's just trying
to cram you know, all this training that he put

(01:05:03):
these former Jedi into. You know, probably what it's going
to amount to a couple of weeks, month, two months
at best, you know, depending on how this timeline is.
He's really hard on Luke.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
I do like the line where he's like, I don't
believe it. He's like, that's why you fail. I'm like,
why don't you just bitch slap him where? I mean,
if you really think about it, Like Luke's trying, but
I mean he's way older, which again, traditionally we know
after a certain point they will not train Jedi anymore.

(01:05:36):
But Yoda doesn't have a choice. There's not a whole
lot of force wielders left them in the galaxy at
this point. Luke's their best chance. But and he's trying
to accelerate it. But he's he's he's learned. He's got
to unlearn a lot of bad habits and that's not
going to be easy to do as an adult as
it would be as a child.

Speaker 4 (01:05:54):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
I mean, childs are clean slates. You can you can
work and mold them a lot easier than somebody's already
come in with preconceived notions, and he doesn't explain to him,
like he just like, oh, well, you know you don't
believe that's why you fail. No, you need to explain
to him, you know, Like the reason he fail is
because you're thinking about this as size, you know, the

(01:06:15):
size of this thing and the weight of it, when
it has nothing to do with that. You need to
focus on it as how the you know, the force
in velps itself around it to move it. Like he's
he's not explaining it very well. And you know, in
my mind, you know, it's just like, dude, just stop
thinking about it being heavy and lift that bitch.

Speaker 4 (01:06:33):
You know, it's just.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Like, stop thinking it, just do what I tell you.
It's like do what I tell you where else you
know kind of deal.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
It's like it's like with that mindset, probably the younglings
never learned mathematics and shit, you know, because it would
probably fuck up their force training and be like, yo,
but that's heavier. No no, no, no, no, we're not
learning math. Just the force. That's it. It's all you
need to know, all right, who needs physics? You know?

Speaker 5 (01:07:01):
The physics thing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
You're thinking about you just knocked that ship off. Physics.
Don't hold nothing up against the forest. That's for that's
for the normies. We don't have to follow physics. Yeah,
but I don't know. I just think he's a little
rough on him. I mean, but again, it's an accelerated
training program, and he feels like the need to try
to get him train as fast as possible because he
knows he's gonna have to face Vader sooner than later.

(01:07:24):
But it's still he's just impatience and inability to I
think explain things at a different level, you know, to
an adult versus a youngly. You know, he's he's in
a lot of practice, has been. It's been a quick
minute since Yoda's been at the Temple training people, right,
I think. And he's crouching, he's a crotching the old man.
Now he's watching the Little Green Man, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
So, yeah, it's it's a little rough around the edges
as far as the training goes.

Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
That That's always been my take on it. Just it's
a little rough.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
So we need a scene of Yoda sitting just outside
of his house looking at Luke, going get off my swamp. Yeah,
exactly after that, Luke is still trying to use the force.
He's moving rocks, lifting R two, clearing his head, and

(01:08:14):
Yoda's sitting there, you know, telling them what to do,
how to do it, and in the best way that
his backwards speak can do it. And that's when Luke
taps into the force and he sees the future, the past,
old friends, and he gets a premonition of Han and
Leah in pain. Despite Yoda's protests and warnings, you know,

(01:08:39):
Luke decides that hey, you know what I saw, I
need to stop. I need to prevent and so he
makes up his mind to leave his training and Yoda
points out, no, you can't leave now, You're you're leaving
your training too early. Finally, Luke just says, look, I
have to go save my friends. And it's Obi Wan
and Yoda that are trying to tell him, you know,
don't go, but he does. He leaves, and he decides

(01:09:04):
to fly off to help his friends. And as he
flies off, we hear the voice of Obi Wan and
he's talking to Yoda and he says that Luke is
their only hope, and of course that's when Yoda says
that there is another Skywalker or no, there is another.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
I got really two thoughts on this whole thing. Hey,
First of all the visions that he has that's on Yoda.
You know, he said there and he's traded this guy,
and I'll say, he's like, you know, you could see
the future of the past and the course was taken
to He's going to focus on his friends and he
gets the vision. He's like, oh crap, my friends are
in danger. I gotta go. If Yoda had opened his mouth,
he had never had the visions at that point, and

(01:09:44):
he wouldn't have been off running, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:09:46):
So well the fucker.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
Yeah, Like he kind of again back to like dude,
less us more, less us more, his mouth shut, like
try to train this guy better, you know, think, think
before you speak Yoda, you know, So a little bit
on him for that one, I think, because up till
that point, it wasn't like Luke was just having visions
like you know, I've had these weird visions and dreams,
like can you explain this to me? Just he puts
it in his mind and the next thing, you know,

(01:10:08):
he's like dropping Yoda, dropping the rocks, like my friends
were in trouble.

Speaker 4 (01:10:11):
I not to go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
So this is the only part where we lose cohesion
with what's going to be the prequels. You know a
lot of times for the special editions. The reason Lucas
did some of the tweaking he did is because he
knew he's going to write the prequels and he needed
to change certain things so they would line up with
the prequels that he was going to create. But that's
the one glaring line where he's like, you know, oh,
that boy's our last hope. He's like, no, there is another. Well,

(01:10:34):
no doubt because you were there when they were born
and you helped me split them up. In fact, you're
gonna have a whole horrible TV mini series about you
going to help one of the other ones. So like
it's like, you know, I mean, according to this, obi
Wan not only knows about both of them because he's
there at the birth, but he helps Lea, so he
knows that who she is. He knows she's a skywalker,

(01:10:56):
and he knows she's the other one. So it kind
of is the only part that pulls me out now
because I know it's such a glaring flaw when you
write three movies ahead of time and him do three prequels.
I'm gonna give it to him. He did a pretty
good job of trying to make all that mesh together.
It's just one little point, you know, pinpoint in the
entire storyline, but it's a pretty significant pinpoint in the

(01:11:17):
you know in it. So it hurts a little bit.
I wish I had to fix that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
Yeah, you know. I think what might also explain it
is maybe it was very much like a Gilligan's Island episode,
and somewhere along the line, Ben hit his head and
he's got slight amnesia about Luke and Lea or dementia.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):
Maybe he's just really bad in dementia.

Speaker 4 (01:11:37):
I mean, he's dead. There you go, So here we go.
Ben Kenobi looks super cool with that blue ara. Man,
I just got to put it out there. I thought
that was awesome. I thought he looked cool as hell man,
and then I gotta put it out there. Though. Look,

(01:11:59):
maybe I'm just looking at it weird or something, but
I think it's pretty interesting. And how they considered the
cave of failure. I mean, look, dude, where I was standing,
Luke fucked up Vader. He cut his head off that's
a w for me. Bro, I don't see that as
a loss. That's not a failure. That's a win. That's

(01:12:20):
a victory. Okay, So I don't know how that was
a failure. He seemed like he won there. Okay, he
took Vader to task. I got a question, would you
guys sacrifice hann and Leah?

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:12:33):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
I don't think I could either.

Speaker 4 (01:12:34):
All right, here's the follow up to that. Why is
there no mention a C three PO and R two
D two getting sacrificed.

Speaker 5 (01:12:42):
Because they're not real. They have no rights.

Speaker 4 (01:12:45):
I'm telling you guys. I'm telling you guys, they don't.
They don't. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
I'd like to think that if they get busted up,
I can just find another ask for me. Droid. You
build them. They're like the six minute dollar, Man. We
can rebuild a bigger, better and stronger six million three po.

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
If this thing was released nowadays, I could only imagine
how the Internet would explode with theories on what the
hell they meant, you know what I'm saying. Like back then,
they didn't have that type of global community, you know
what I'm saying. So I imagine in small little communities
in between Empire and Jedi getting released, that people would

(01:13:26):
have been like doing their own little theories about what
they meant and stuff like that. Back then, there'd be
large groups of people that wouldn't even have noticed that
to large extent, you know, they're just kind of watching
for you know, the feel of it, and people who
are really interested would have noticed. However, nowadays, whether you
are super interested or not, you're going to be inundated
with different theories about Star Wars whenever you do a

(01:13:47):
Google search or a YouTube video, watch a YouTube video
about it, and stuff like that, and you'd see all
these theories and people would go crazy with what the
heck they were talking about, Like, I really do think
this was really really good foreshadowing.

Speaker 3 (01:14:02):
Good point.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
Good point to kind of add on to ricks thing,
you know when they said that, I don't think a
lot of people care, right because unless Luke dies, we're
kind of like, okay, we know there's another, but I
mean it's just because they never do anything with it.
If you really think about it, they say there is
another and then there's nothing else I mean other than
we find out later on what they meant by that.

(01:14:23):
But they don't ever do anything with it not until
the book, right.

Speaker 3 (01:14:26):
All right, Well, let's head off to Best fin So
Luke and Leah wind up on Investment at different times
because the whole time dilation. So Han and Leah show
up and they managed to get a landing pad there
on Bestmin which is a gas mining facility run by

(01:14:47):
Han's good old friend Lando Colorissian. In this process, Boba
Fett has tracked the money and Falcon there has notified Vader.
Vader has now forced Lando Calorisian to surre under the
group to the Empire, knowing that Luke will come and
aid his friends. Han and Leah don't know about this

(01:15:08):
right away when they land. It isn't until several scenes
into it that we get we get the betrayal of
Lando Klarissian to Han Solo. There are several clues that
something's not right Investment in the fact that C three
PO is attacked and winds up getting sent to a crematorium.

(01:15:31):
I guess you could say it for androids or just
an incinerator. Three PO is now decommissioned right now and
Chewbac is trying to put him together, and we learn
about this betrayal.

Speaker 4 (01:15:42):
Lando cal Risian. I don't know if you guys ever
heard of the word riz, but that means to be
able to like, you know, pick someone up, get someone's
number and stuff like that, to riz them up. They did.
That didn't exist when this thing came out. I don't
know how they were the land that thing. But is
Lando kel Risian and this dude is like super duper

(01:16:05):
smooth man, real smooth. And by the way, casting on
this it beats any kind of DEI stuff that you
see today. Man, it not for real, bro, it totally
makes total sense. Man, Like this is a new character.
It's not you know, they're changing the character for some reason. No,
he just is who he is and he just happens
to be you know, an African American actor and stuff,

(01:16:28):
and it's totally cool. I think it's awesome. I think
was absolutely perfect the way that they they you know,
integrated that in without making it like they do nowadays,
like to prove some sort of point. It was just
it was just he was the one who got the part.
You know. It's awesome. And as far as that particular scene,
dude Darth Vader has was using as a specific power

(01:16:48):
it's called the absorbed energy. At first just to showcase
his prowess in the force, like, han, yeah, you can
shoot with that blaster, but the four will allow me
to absorb all that energy. And then he turns around
and disarms him with the teleconisis. It was pretty cool
and that was obviously one of the first times you

(01:17:09):
get to see that him used the Teleconesis the last
not by a long shot, right, puts them in a
very precarious situation.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
I mean, the introduction of Lando Kyle Racing is phenomenal.
I mean, he's just dude, he's charming, he's he's just
a smooth operator man. And I mean Billy Dee plays
the character to a t. I mean he just yeah,
like when you watch it, he's he's a scoundrel, but
he's a different scoundrel from Hans Solo. You know, right

(01:17:38):
down to the same thing where he comes out on
that you know, onto the landing platform with all those
boys behind him, and he's just gonna he's gonna mess
with them. You know, he's like, oh, you got a
lot of nerves showing up here, and you get that
famous Hans solo where he looks at me kind of
points him and says like you know me, you know,
like you know and uh, you know that's the kind

(01:17:58):
of stuff you do to your friend. I mean, some
very true to wife thing where you're gonna kind of
mess with him. And then he's like, oh, how you
doing the old dog? And then guy little Bot turns
around tells the guards add off or whatever. So it
feels really genuine, like these are two really old buddies
and stuff, and they talk about the falcon and we
learned there's a little history, like he won the falcon
from Lando and he's like, what do you need to buy?

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):
Hi?

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
He goes, oh no, I won that fair and square
from you, which we get to see in the Solo
you know movie and stuff. Yeah, I mean I just
like this character. I loved it. Plus the cape, ah man, Yeah,
I mean, how can you go wrong the dude? Like, like,
how many guys can pull off a cape like Lando
cow Rissi and nobody, nobody in the Galaxy's gonna pull
it off like Lando? Does you know he pulls it
off now and he pulls it off in the Solo movie,

(01:18:38):
you know, So just that that dude can sport a
cape like nobody's business.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
But hey, for like the soul. I know a lot
of people didn't like the Solo movie. I liked it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
Man, oh, I love the Solo movie. I thought it
was okay, let me let me back that up. I
like the Solo movie. I like the person who plays Lando,
Kyle Rissi in the Solo movie. I don't like the
guy to play Han Solo because he decided to do
it his way instead of playing Hansole the way he
should have been played. So that's the achilles heel to
that whole movie. But outside of that, it's a good movie,
good story. But anyway, I also agree with Rick, there's

(01:19:11):
just something a little off, you know about best Be
and you know, Leiah picks up on the right away,
like this guy's way too friendly. I mean, is Lando
pouring and on? Yeah, I mean that's who he is.
He's a charming guy. He's gonna just try to fake
his way through this. He you know, he knows he's
got to betray his friend. We get a little taste
of that when C three Po apparently goes down, you know,
into the wrong room and gets blasted. Okay, now we

(01:19:31):
know there's something wrong, but we still don't know exactly
what it is. And then you know, the betrayal happens.
You know, he's kind of like, oh, you know, uh,
you know, look, I've you know, I got my mining
operation going, I got all these you know, administrative problems,
but I've assured myself that, you know, I can stay
low key and hopefully the Empire can mess with us.
And he opens up the door and there's Vader and

(01:19:51):
the cool scene where Hans draws you know that real
fast starts blasting at Vader, and we finally get to
see a new force power outside of some lightsaber fights
and a choke holt. You know, like we're just desperate
to see cool force powers and we don't get to
see a lot of them in this original trilogy. We
get to see way more of it in the prequels,
you know, and I just it's kind of sad that

(01:20:14):
we don't get to see more and more force power.
But it was cool to watch him do that absorbed
movement and then grab the gun from Soul's hand. He's like,
once you join me, and they're like, well, I guess
we don't have much of a choice, and they all
kind of come in the room and they're gonna sit down.
Plus we get to see Boba fet reappear again. You know,
we get sprung the trap with the help of the Empire,
and he's gonna get his He's gonna get his bounty.

(01:20:35):
So it's just it's it's a cool setup, you know,
and it's a great introduction to a character that actually
shows up. But you know, the last bit of the film,
you know, so basically the third act he shows up,
you know, and usually you get a new character like
that much sooner. But I'm glad they did. He was
a great, great addition to the cast, and he's going
to be a pivotal character moving forward.

Speaker 4 (01:20:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
I liked this character. I liked Billy d Williams playing
and I thought it was great. He's a Actually he
was actually the first action Star Wars action figure I
ever got was Lando cal Uscian.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (01:21:07):
The Empire now has our titular characters. Han is being interrogated,
but not really interrogated so much to being tortured. They're
now led to the major part of the mining operation
where they use carbonite freezing to gather up the gas mine.
I don't understand how a gas mining thing works. I

(01:21:28):
don't know where why carbonite He gets involved, but it's
a story device.

Speaker 2 (01:21:35):
Matthew, have you ever tried to capture a fart?

Speaker 4 (01:21:39):
Essentially, that's what's happening.

Speaker 5 (01:21:42):
Maybe, yeah, maybe that's what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
Vader has this idea that he's going to freeze Luke
Skywalker in carbonite, but they need to test the theory,
so they grab Han solo and we get this beautiful
moment between Leah and Han, and this is where Leah
confesses her love for Han before Vader freezes him in carbonite,
and we get this this lovely interaction between the two

(01:22:06):
of them and Lea says I love you. And after
so many takes, like forty two takes or something like that.
According to Irvin Kershner, Harrison Ford is just tired of
staying the same line, so he just finally says I know.
And then that's when Kirshner's like, that's it. That's the take,
that's what is now iconic, and that's what every nerd

(01:22:27):
guy says to his girlfriend who eventually has to marry.

Speaker 5 (01:22:30):
Him, is I know?

Speaker 4 (01:22:32):
Yeah? Man? This is this is the kiss that everyone's
been waiting for up to this point, especially I would
imagine for the female audience what they have been waiting
for when they're watching this, like, yeah, man, this is
the scene where man the magic happens and he knocks
or socks off and stuff, and and just like a
chad like you said, he's I know, I mean it

(01:22:56):
totally and it totally makes sense with regard to why
this would work for Han being freezing in carbonite so
that the bounty hunter can take him without any kind
of trouble or anything like that. And obviously this is
this is the dictate from later, so there's no like
negotiating or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
It is just what it is, I know, is exactly
as you guys have said. It's the iconic line, you know,
and it's He's. It was set out of frustration and became,
you know, one of those probably the most quintessential ad
lib dialogue ever in a film. But outside that, the
interesting part about the carbon freezing sequence is actually was

(01:23:37):
written specifically for a reason, and that was Harrison Ford
did not want to do Han solo anymore. He wanted
Han to die at the end of the first Star
Wars movie, and Lucas wouldn't do it. He begged him
to kill him after the second one. He's and when
they up the contracts for everybody. They got Carrie Fisher
and Mark Hamill to sign multi picture contracts, so they

(01:23:59):
were good. Old went through Jedi and beyond. They actually
had signed up for additional movies that never came to fruition,
and Harrison Ford's like, Nope, not doing it. I don't
I don't want to do this series anymore. And so
Lucas was banking on his ability to keep working Harrison
Ford over, especially because he had him. You know, he's
getting ready to do Raiders right after this, so you

(01:24:20):
know they have history. But Harrison was like, look, Han's
a one dimensional character. I don't see any further development
for him. He doesn't add much to the story. I
don't want to get type cast, ask him. I don't
want I want to play characters that are growing to
grow and expand me as an actor, and this isn't
the character. So I don't want to do these anymore.
So Lucas is like, I'm not going to kill you off.

(01:24:41):
And what he decided to do is he put Harrison
Ford into the Carbonite or Hans solo and the hopes
that he'd be able to talk him into coming back
for Jedi. He goes that way. If he absolutely refused, well,
no big deal. He's in carbonite. I don't have to
worry about it, you know, like it's just there. But
if he wants to come back, it gives me an
easy way to faw him out and bring him back

(01:25:02):
out out of the carbonite and back into the movie.
So that was specifically designed by George Lucas to accommodate
Harrison Ford in the hopes that he could convince him
to come back for the next installment. So I always
thought that was kind of interesting that he wrote that
in specifically for that reason to accommodate one actor.

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):
So Han gets frozen in carbonite. He survives the process
and is given to Boba Fett, who intends to collect
the bounty from a job of the Hut. Lando then
in turn freeze Lea and Chewbacca, but they are too
late to stop FET's escape. The group then fights their
way back to the Falcon and flees the city. Luke, however,

(01:25:43):
arrives and engages Vader in a lightsaber duel over the
city the city's central air shaft. Vader then using the
force powers to cheat because he's throwing all kinds of
equipment at poor Luke manages to win the bat and
in the fight cuts off Luke's hand. What did you

(01:26:04):
guys think of the escape of Lando as well as
the conference between Luke and Bede?

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
You could tell us this keeps going along, that Lando's
deal with Vader's getting worse and worse, and throwly broke
the Camel's back when he's like, you know, load the
Wookie and the princess on my ship. And he's like,
that was every part of our deal. Is like, you
know again, do you think you're being treated unfair? Because
if so, I can, you know, we can change the
terms of everything. And he's like, oh no, that's okay.

(01:26:32):
But he's had enough. He's like, look this, nothing good
is gonna come from this. So he finally decides that
he's got to throw down, give up his Cloud City investment,
and do the right thing here. Glad to see that.
Of course, it's a couple of minutes too late for
them to you know, unfortunately save Han at this point,
but you know, at least it gives the ability for

(01:26:52):
Chewbacca and Princess Lea to get away. As far as
the lightsaber fight, it's it's a cool fight. I mean,
it's lit up against that whole carbon freeze that's got
cool lighting. He's got you know, that kind of orangey
red lighting going on, a lot of tears for them
to fight on, you know, a lot of smoke and
things like that going on. So it's very well done.
I mean it does pick up and get progressively more

(01:27:15):
angry and more aggressive as the fight goes along. So
it is nice to see a really good lightsaber battle versus,
you know, the one we see and against the older
Darth Vader and the very geriatric Obi Wan and Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (01:27:28):
Right, you know, I I do like like you said
that it is neat to see that it gets more aggressive.
I think I like the fact that because Luke is
so young, you know, now Vader has to step up
his game a little bit, because I mean, Vader's an
old man. He can't swing the old lightsaber around like
he used to, like it, say, in Revenge of the

(01:27:50):
Sith when they were bending the props because they were
hitting them so hard. It is it is neat to
see that, you know, now Darth Vader has to step
up his game a little bit in order to put
this young whelp in in his place.

Speaker 4 (01:28:01):
Okay, maybe I have slightly different take on this, But
first I want to talk about, like when Luke first
showed up. I don't know me personally, I thought that
that was like pretty crazy because he's on his own
and he's in this whole entire city that's overrun by
the Empire. I can only imagine what level of suspense

(01:28:22):
that he would be feeling. And the score supplements this
feeling of unease and suspense that like, Luke is like
on his own kind of thing, and then he got
the warning that it's a trap and stuff. To get
to why Vader wasn't necessarily showing off all of his

(01:28:44):
combat skills too much, I think he legitimately wasn't doing
everything he could do because he was playing mind games
with Luke. He was messing with him. He was talking
the old time. He wasn't locked in or anything like that.
He was was just really trying to get into Luke's
head while Luke was kind of trying to do his best.

(01:29:05):
And it did give a chance for Luke to try
to show off some of his athleticism that he trained
on and stuff, which was really really really cool And yeah,
totally I agree with you, Matt. This dude was totally camping,
camping like a little bitch bro Like. It wasn't once,
it was twice. The first time he kind of quasi

(01:29:26):
was camping. He came out in the hallway and he started,
you know, using the telegenisis to throw things around at
him and stuff. And then in the air shaft hallway
after the glass broke and stuff, he legit was camping.
This dude was legit camping. He came out of nowhere
and started to attack him, And honestly, that's because he

(01:29:47):
started to feel like Luke actually could hold his own.
That at first he was kind of like at fifty
percent messive toying with him mentally and stuff, and then
Luke was actually like holding up and and at that point,
I think Vader's like, all right, I gotta go. I
gotta go on the paint here, you know, otherwise this
kid is gonna show me up. And there's actually a

(01:30:08):
couple of points where Luke lands a few square hits.
Yeah you know, I think he lands a nice hit
on his shoulder and things like that. Yeah, I mean,
Luke hole held his own for some amount you know.

Speaker 3 (01:30:19):
Yep. And then, like I said, Vader manages to cut
off Luke's hand at the wrist that hold him the lightsaber,
and of course, you know we see that lightsaber again
several movies later.

Speaker 4 (01:30:33):
Yeah, all right, hey, Matt, do you mind if I
recite some of the lyrics from the Star Wars Gangster rap,
which would also lead into the big reveal?

Speaker 5 (01:30:45):
Uh? Sure.

Speaker 4 (01:30:46):
So it goes a little something like this, Oh, why
just slice off my hand. It's imperative that you understand.
Obi Wan would never bother telling you a bunch of father.
He told me enough, he told me. You kill him?
Then that is something I must reveal. Then I'm your father.
I'm your father. I'm your father. I'm your father. Is

(01:31:13):
he his father? The way he says it is so amazing?

Speaker 3 (01:31:18):
No, yeah, he says it kind of like a whiny
little bitch. And then he and then he he just
jumps down the air this huge chasm of windows and
doors and other stuff and then falls into this this
air tunnel and just keeps.

Speaker 5 (01:31:38):
Falling and falling and falling.

Speaker 3 (01:31:40):
I mean it almost like as a flash to Bill
in Ted's Bogus Journey when they didn't go to Hell
and they're falling.

Speaker 4 (01:31:47):
Ah, but for real, though, like, if you think about it,
it totally makes sense. I mean, if you were to
find out that the most evil motherfucker in the galaxy, well, yeah,
your dad had he just cut off your arm? Oh
my god, bro. Yeah, Like I think most people probably

(01:32:10):
would jump and just hope for the best.

Speaker 3 (01:32:13):
But you know, just to just to back up a
little bit there. So I guess there was two scripts
and in one of them it was the line was
no Obi wan Kenobi killed your father, and then the
actual line was no, I am your father. And David Prowse,

(01:32:35):
who was in the suit, didn't know that the line
was I'm your father, And he was sitting at the
premiere behind Irvin Kirshner and when they got to that scene,
he tapped Irvin Kershner on his shoulders. Why didn't you
tell me that was the line? I could have portrayed
that Michieri's Like, I was on orders by George not
to reveal it because they wanted to keep it a

(01:32:57):
secret as tight as tight as possible.

Speaker 5 (01:32:59):
I right in that tim or oh yeah absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:33:03):
In fact, he was actually known. David Prowess was actually
known to be a little loose lipped, so they didn't
want him to know because he was known to give
away some of the secrets. So there were only five
people on the planet that knew because George odmitted it
from every script everything he ever did. So the only
people knew that was George Lucas, Irvin Kirschner, Lawrence kaz Dan,

(01:33:27):
Mark Hamill, and James Earl Jones. James Earl Jones thought
it was BS. He's like, no, I don't believe that
at all. That's that can't because he was sad of
it that that was Vader was not as Filer and
that he was lying, So he didn't believe it until,
you know, until he's actually seen the film. But those
are the only five people that Lucas was super, super
big about keeping security down. He actually paid bonuses. The

(01:33:49):
less secrets that get out in his movies, the better
the bonuses are for everybody. So he really tried to
stop leaks. But yeah, Dave Prowess had no idea because
they couldn't trust with the information. So yeah, I mean, yeah,
I mean it's this is the biggest twist in cinema history.

(01:34:09):
I mean, up to that point, I don't think anything
that earth shattering had ever been done in a film.
I mean, you know, there was no shamal lines going
on yet, yeah, in the film industry at this point. So,
I mean, that's what this movie is known for. It's
it's the greatest plot twist to ever happen in the
film little sequel. And not only is it important in

(01:34:33):
the story as far as being that revealed, but it's
the moment that that essentially breaks Luke Skywalker. It steals
the last bit of innocence that he had. I mean,
up to that point, he'd heard about what a great
starfighter pilot his dad was and how he was a
great Jedi, and he's riding high on all this and

(01:34:55):
like Rick says, now you found out your dad's the
biggest piece of crap on the planet, the entire universe,
you know, and you thought your dad was back as
you said, you you know, to bed without supper and
hit you with the belt. This dude just cut my
damn hand off, you know what I mean. So so yeah,
like he's, uh, he's he's definitely like the loss of
his innocence is there? That scream is true. He's like, ah,

(01:35:18):
you suck that. I hate you to one of those moments,
and I yeah, I think at that point, he's just
like I just give up, and he just let himself fall.
I mean, you know, he's like, my choices are to
go with the guy who just cut my hand off
and you know, or to just you know, follow my
death and you know, screw this guy again, I hate you.

(01:35:38):
And he's just gonna take the jump. You know, he's
gonna take the take the chance to see what happens.
You know, he's pretty much life's over, as he knows,
and everybody's lied to him. His father's the worst person
in the universe. Like it's just, you know, how do
you come back from that? Like, Hey, how is your day?
I don't know. I just learned my dad uh uh
basically commits atrocities, kills entire planets and uh and sucks.

(01:35:58):
It's gonna be horrible.

Speaker 4 (01:35:59):
So when this dude find you find out your dad
is this dude, I mean, you're in the back up
in the corner. I mean, it's no surprise as this
dude jumped. I mean, not that a lot of people
talk about it, don't. Matter of fact, I don't even
know if anyone I've ever heard of talk about why
did he jump? And stuff like that. But but I
think that's just because it's no wonder. I mean, what
else are you gonna do? Right? Right? That was really

(01:36:22):
cool that they showcase the idea that Lea is for
sensitive and more than just a little you know, and
there's this connection and again this whole time, they really
I think started to uh stress the idea that a force,
when in relation from one person to another, is connected.

(01:36:44):
It's tethered to emotions. So and they say it a
lot of times, especially in the Jedi, that they have
these feelings, they feel him, they felt him, they have
you know, feel this thing, you know, and these these feelings,
these emotions are what connect the force from one person

(01:37:05):
to another. So Lea felt like, you know, more than that,
I mean, it seemed like she even had an image
of where exactly Luke was upside down hanging from that
telephone pole. So I thought that was really cool that
it kind of it's not quite an ex machina, but

(01:37:25):
it's rather a showcase of the mysticism of the Star
Wars universe in order to create some sort of quasi
happy ending that's totally explainable within the relative magic system
that's available. We both spanning in the first and now
here in the second movie. I do gotta mention though,

(01:37:49):
that there was a second You have to look, but
there was a second kiss in the mouth fro it
was a second one. Bro. I was like, why, that's
not even cool man, that's not yeah, yeah, yeah, she
forgot Han already apparently, And it kind of don't make

(01:38:09):
sense because Tim had just said, like, you know, maybe
a lot of these things are being kept under lock
and key, like no one really even knows that this
stuff is being developed. But I mean, the writer's gotta know,
I mean, right, so I don't know anyhow, R two
D two saves the day. Our two D two is
the one that activates the hyperdrive, which is super cool.

(01:38:33):
They this is the point where you get to see
some of the other really cool ships, and the falling
action in this movie is really really good. They had
such a good cliffhanger, like you gotta know there's gonna
be another one. At this point, there's no question. There
should be no question that you know. It's It's not like,
you know, Empire Strikes Back is going to be the

(01:38:55):
end of the series. There's no indication that's happening. The
indication is that there is more coming. The cliffhanger here
is so good. You've got your showcase a little bit
of the other ships that are in the fleet and things.
I think there was a be wing that I saw,
there was a medical frigate a, there's a few ships

(01:39:16):
that we have never seen before that are in the fleet.
They talk about, you know, what they're gonna do to
get Han and stuff. I thought it was really cool enough.
Of course, the music, the music sets the stage here
at the end, you're left with this somewhat unfulfilled feeling,
like like the story isn't over. This is just the

(01:39:39):
end of the chapter, right, So.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
This is not quite how the original movie was supposed
to end, and it really was supposed to end with
complete downer, and they decided that that was too much
and they needed to have a little bit of hope
at the end. So I don't know exactly where the
cutoff is on it, but I know where you see
all the ships and stuff at the very end. They

(01:40:03):
added that in at the very last minute to try
to give it a little bit more of a hopeful ending.
So if I was going to make a guess, I
think after they recover Luke and they're trying to get
away from Cloud City and they're being pursued by the
tie Fighters and stuff, and the Star Destroyers are closing in,
and of course they're having the one last you know

(01:40:24):
gag about the hyper drive not working. You know, they
go to flip it on. It's like we're berber when
they look at Lando and he's like, it's not my fault.
They told me that, you know, they get you get
one more last jab at the Falcon kind of because
it's almost a character of its own, and they're able
to turn on, you know, the hyper drive and hit
light speed and be gone, and you see Darth Vader

(01:40:47):
watching that happen, and then he turns around and kind
of walks back down. I think that's where the movie
was supposed to end. And I think they added on
the fact that then they meet up with the fleet
and they get Luke the new Hand and and that
kind of talk. You know, they show Lando getting with
Chewbacca who apparently Lando has no more cool clothes or
caves and he has to wear you know, han Sol's

(01:41:08):
will outfit. Now, that was the part that was added
in to kind of give it a hopeful upbeat, you know,
and it made a much happier ending. Now again, I
don't know, I don't know if that's one hundred percent accurate,
but I'm pretty sure that seems like how that would
all play, you know, after learning that tidbit that that
and I analyzed that, that's how I think it probably went.

(01:41:29):
But overall, I like the film. I mean, it's it's
a satisfying ending. It's everything you could want in a
Star Wars film. It ties everything up, there's no loose
ends or anything, so it's it's it's really well done.

Speaker 4 (01:41:43):
Hey, you don't want speaking of lending on a downer.
When R two D two reactivated the Hyperdrive motivator, that
ship was just flying in some random direction and that
would have been a down running into some superne.

Speaker 3 (01:41:58):
Right, Okay, is this worth taking time off your death clock?
You're saying yes, absolutely, no question one thousand.

Speaker 4 (01:42:06):
Man, you should no reason not to. I have one
thing to say for those of you who are watching
all the way to this point. Put down in the
comment that you enjoyed the scene where uh Vader cut
off Luke's hand because that was cool, or just put

(01:42:30):
your favorite scene in the comments. At the very least,
if you made it this far, make it known. Good
job on you and everyone appreciates it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
All right, thanks for listening to the Middle Aged Moviees podcast.
We hope you've enjoyed our review of Star Wars The
Empire Strikes Back. Remember there will be a substantial reward
for anyone who sports the podcast. You're free to use
any method necessary, such as hitting the like button, subscribing,
or leaving comments, but remember no disintegration.

Speaker 3 (01:43:01):
Follow us on Facebook, X Blue Sky and Instagram. Have
a comments or a suggestion that email the show at
Manreview Podcast at gmail dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:43:09):
All right, everyone, thanks for watching, Stay cool and buy
everyone

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Episode 59 - Empire Strikes Back Part 2 (Return of the Long Movie Review)

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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 59 - Empire Strikes Back Part 2 (Return of the Long Movie Review)