I give you hundreds of reasons why this movie is rubbish you feel victorious when you can refute a couple of them as nitpicking?
First, a quick refutation of your refutation, and then on...
How many stars in the galaxy? 100 billion minimum and 400 billion maximum, according to the 10 seconds of research I just did online.
Admiral Ozzell may have thousands of probe droids searching the galaxy, but even if we assume they used 999,999 probe droids (otherwise he would have said a million), then 999,999 divided by 100 billion means that each probe droid would have to search 100,000 systems. And, if we assume that all the planets will be earth sized, and that earth's surface area is 197 million square miles, you don't even have to do any math to see that using probe droids to search a galaxy is ridiculous. Use the force, Darth. And score zero to the lazy scriptwriters for mathematical accuracy.
However, his has NOTHING to do with why Empire Strikes back is rubbish. Individual nitpicks can't ruin a movie, (especially a space fantasy), cause you can just make up stupid pseudo technological reasons to explain all the stupid shit afterwards, and who's gonna argue?
Let's be serious in our criticism for a moment, because I know you'll never be convinced that Ion cannons should be able to point in directions other than up, or that X-wings can have hyperdrives, despite their size, or that Luke's radio can't work on Hoth, or that you don't need spacesuits in space, and all those totally lazy plot devices that the lame scriptwriters came up with.
This is a character driven movie - story over plot! All right, let's look at the characters:
The characters are all boringly static. Lando contributes nothing that Solo didn't already give us. Another scoundrel with a heart of gold. He couldn't decide what to do, but in the end chose the right thing. Seen it all before, and in a far more convincing and dramatic manner... (Did Solo come back for Leia, for money, for Luke, for the rebellion, or did Chewie start pulling Solo's arms out of their sockets until he turned the ship around? We'll never know for sure.)
Why did Lando change? Cause he's handsome and Hans buddy, (or something... who cares?) Even if they had introduced Lando only to kill him off later, it would only be a lame ass way of pretending to kill Solo to try and add some depth to the lame ass story. Even in Star Wars, Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru, all of Alderann, Obi Wan, and Biggs are killed.
In Empire (the supposed "dark" movie), nothing significant happens and nobody is killed. Not even one dead Jawa or smoking skeleton.
Solo is an even bigger disappointment in terms of lameness. There's no subtlety to him anymore. In Star Wars he was far more complex. For example, he had a chess board on his ship, but the subject was never broached about why a guy who seemed unlikely to be interested in such an intellectual game would have
something like that on board. In Star Wars, sometimes he seemed to be a bad ass pirate, and at other times he seemed so scared that he looked like he was about to drop a load in his pants. He blew Greedo away with no hesitation, but then he was freaking out on the Death Star. Is Chewie his dog or his partner? What exactly did he smuggle in that ship of his? The new Solo? No way HE plays chess. He's just a bad ass pirate all the time now. He´s too popular now to deviate from the "bad ass" template; the fans might object. Instead, just have him delcalre that he is a "gorgeous guy" a few times, and strut around like a frat boy. So does he play chess, or does he just hang out in cantinas drinking lite beer?
We saw Darth choke a guy with the force in the original, to make him shut up when he was talking shit about the force. (THAT had a point; "Do you belive in the
force now, asshole?...") Okay, let's have him do the same thing TWICE in this movie, and it doesn't have to have a point this time. Don't want to expand him as a character too much, don't invent any new interesting force techniques or anything, just rehash the same old stuff. Yawn. Here's a better idea; why doesn’t he just put a permanent squeeze on their lower colon? Make their digestive system run in reverse or something! It would be very amusing to watch Admiral Ozzel spewing projectile turds from his esophagus just before his head explodes– now THAT will motivate the rest of 'em.
But the worst of all are Luke and that little green turd, Yoda. What is the point of all that? Luke is supposed to be learning about the force, but he spends all his time pissing and moaning instead. Can't even get his own ship out of the bog, (which should have been his final exam, actually - "when you can raise your ship, it will be time to leave..") Nope, Yoda just burbles on about the importance of patience, and "Don't try.. do!", and then hands the ship to an impatient Luke, who did not "do", but instead "tried", and then claimed it was impossible. Nice lesson, Yoda! Luke doesn't listen to ANYTHING Yoda tells him - don't take your weapons intio the cave, don't go to Bespin, stay and finish your training, etc. Yoda doesn't teach Luke anything, and Luke is incapable of learning because he is incapable of listening.
Yoda was right - he could not not teach Luke. Luke doesn't grow at all. He may have taken his first step into a larger world back on the Falcon, but he seems to
think he has already arrived at the summit. There is no internal conflict, no external conflict, he just runs a few lamps of the swamp, and levitates a rock, and leaves, fully trained. He swears he'll come back to "complete his training". Hell, he hasn't even started yet! What a wanker.
So in the end we have characters who are either static, (or worse, characters who are reduced in stature) treading water for 2 hours spouting really bad dialog and
acting like dumbasses, as has been described in detail above. Oh yeah, Leia and Solo and their "chemistry". Chemistry in this case means "pretending to argue" to
show that they really like each other, but can't admit it. They were more interesting in the original, and their arguments seemed more legit - in the detention block tunnel, the garbage masher, just outside the Falcon, and after the tie fighter atack. Here it's just a tired continuation of those same little spats. Neither of them really change. Well maybe Solo changes from a doer to a talker. He DID leave at the end of Star Wars. In Empire, he talks about it, but you know he ain't going anywhwere.
This post has been edited by azerty: 20 June 2005 - 03:43 AM