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Hidden Meaning of Star Wars Ep.5: The Empire Strikes Back – Earthling Cinema - YouTube
Channel: Wisecrack
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Greetings, and welcome to Earthling
Cinema. I am your host, Garyx Wormuloid. This
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week’s artifact is The Empire Strikes Back,
the fifth film in the Disney franchise Star
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Wars, and the most critically acclaimed until
Episode 12: Rise of Darth Goofy.
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The film is a sequel, which means means all
your favorite characters are back: Vader,
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Leia, TARS, this guy. Even Luke couldn’t
stay away!
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When Empire begins, the gang is hiding at
a ski resort called Hoth. Vader is pissed
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that they're hogging all the slopes,
so he attacks them with giant robot turtles.
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Foregoing a concentrated attack from behind,
the rebels fly around erratically, then make
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a trip-wire out of the strongest rope in the
universe.
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Han and Leia escape with their sidekicks and
hide inside a snake. Luke escapes to planet
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Dagobah with his sidekick and meets Yoda,
who inexplicably acts like a crazy
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person just to trick Luke for five minutes.
Luke begins his Jedi training, which consists
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of wearing a backpack while doing some light
exercise.
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Meanwhile, Han and Leia go to the lazily-named
Cloud City to get ambushed by Vader, who freezes
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Han in carbonite just to show he can afford
it.
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Fun fact: actor Harrison Ford ad-libbed the
line “I know” instead of using the written
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line “I know you are but what am I?”
Leia and the sidekicks escape with some help
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from the mayor, but not before Luke falls
for Vader’s bait like a total Yajj noobula.
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Vader disarms Luke and tries to have a heart
to heart with him, but Luke bails. Classic
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teenager, embarrassed to be seen with his
dad.
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The Empire Strikes Back is visually distinct
from its predecessor, and not just because
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of the decisive lack of sidebuns. Whereas
before it was mostly sand and starships, here
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it is predominantly snow, swamp, and clouds,
with some lizard bowels thrown in for good
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measure.
Still, the film touches on a few of the same
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themes, such as humanism and nature over technology.
Yoda, like Obi-Wan in Episode IV, lives a
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simple life on the bayou — the Jedi master
way, but not something traditionally associated
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with power. When Darth Vader is in his power
pod, we catch a brief glimpse of his milky
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white head, revealing that he does have some
humanity left in him, and probably takes his
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helmet off for naps and showers. Later, when
Luke misplaces his hand, he puts on a cybernetic
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prosthesis, symbolically moving him one step
closer to his father, a hybrid of man and
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machine. He’s still got that squeaky voice
though. Must’ve gotten that from his mother’s
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side.
The Dark Side of the Force
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becomes a central conflict for Luke. Swiss psychiatrist
Carl Jung believed in something called “the
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shadow,” the unknown dark part of human
personality. Inside Yoda’s cave practice
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facility, Luke confronts an illusion of Darth
Vader and defeats him by slicing his neck
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with the light-thingy.
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But behind Vader’s mask, Luke sees
his own face. As Jung say
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"Everyone carries a shadow,
and the less it is embodied in the individual's
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conscious life, the blacker and denser it
is.” Black and dense like... Vader’s helmet?
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Ooh, I’m getting goosebumps! Which, of course,
means it’s nearly time for me to molt.
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You might say that the Dark Side threatens
to turn Luke’s world upside down. And indeed,
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Luke does spend much of the movie inverted
like some sort of bat-boy. This can be related
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to the idea of the Hanged Man as seen in Tarot
symbolism. Remember Miss Cleo? Yeah, me neither.
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Luke is upside down three times in the movie:
in the wampa cave, training with Yoda, and
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trying to fix a TV antenna, and in each instance
Luke uses the force. This is in line with
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the description of the hanged man as being
in deep concentration -- complete calm and
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assurance -- rather than pain.
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Another element that separates this film from
the previous one is the addition of Yoda,
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a very popular character among humans and
frogs alike. Yoda’s name means “warrior”
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in Sanskrit, and “badass” in every other
language. The make-up artist Stuart Freeborn
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based Yoda partly on his own face and partly
on the face of celebrated patent clerk Albert
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Einstein.
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In addition to being a handsome
devil, Yoda ascribes to the principles of
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stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy whose
faithful believed emotions like fear, envy,
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lust, or passion arose from false judgments.
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"Excitement, a jedi craves not these things."
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The sage -- a person who had attained moral
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and intellectual perfection -- would not succumb
to such trivial pursuits, despite a love for
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knowledge-based board games.
Empire’s most lasting impact is the line
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“I am your father”. Often misquoted as
“Luke, I am your father,”
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this phrase was inescapable on Earth, especially at adoption agencies. Vader’s reveal was one of the
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original twist endings in Earth’s cinematic
history, and therefore a source of the very
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first spoilers. In fact, historians believe
they can trace the phrase “spoiler alert”
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to a ticket line outside a screening of Episode
V in Pensacola, Florida. This alert lead Earth
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down a dangerous path, eventually culminating
in a spoiler culture that left humans paralyzed
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with fear of checking the internet unless
completely caught up with Game of Thrones.
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Fortunately, this all stopped when their planet
exploded.
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For Earthling Cinema, I’m Garyx Wormuloid.
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