By bkuchera@arstechnica.com (Ben Kuchera), Ars Technica – May 21, 2010 at 07:51AM
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back is one of the best science fiction films ever made. It’s also 30 years old today, so we give you official permission to feel old. While every movie in the original trilogy is endlessly quoted and referenced in pop culture, Empire Strikes Back is the film that comes the closest to being a great movie.
The film is jet black in tone. Luke lost the only person he knew that connected him to his father, and to the legacy of the Jedi Knights, when Obi-Wan was struck down by Vader in A New Hope (or as older Ars staffers still refer to it, Star Wars). Han Solo is biding his time with the rebels before leaving to return to his life of being a professional smuggler and scoundrel; the bounty on his head is becoming too much to bear. The rebels may have destroyed the Death Star, but they’re still undersupplied and on the run, holed up on a frozen hell of a planet. Darth Vader is scouring space to find them, and he seems oddly preoccupied with a young pilot named Luke Skywalker. It only goes downhill from there.
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