Star Wars: Ranking Every Film From Worst To Best

It's hard to explain just how bold of a film Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back is.

Hot off the success of A New Hope, in an era not exactly known for high-quality sequels, the obvious way to follow up that film's success would have been to deliver a cheap, rushed film that just gave audiences more of the adventures they loved so much the first time. Instead, Empire subverts everything about the first film and turns it into lyrical poetry in a way that's insane.

A huge part of this is thanks to Lawrence Kasdan's script. In working off of Lucas' story treatment, Kasdan was given the basic outline and told of the climactic reveal that Vader was actually Luke's father. In his writing, Kasdan turned this into a parable of growing up. Suddenly, Luke's world was no longer the black-and-white, starkly contrasted good-and-evil of the fable-esque A New Hope. Instead, those blacks and whites had turned to grey.

In his direction, Kershner took this idea and ran with it, brilliantly. The entire film expands upon Lucas' previous work in ways that are staggering.

From the Battle of Hoth, to Yoda's introduction, to Luke's training, to Han and Leia's love story, to Cloud City, to the best lightsaber fight the franchise has ever seen. This thing is a masterpiece from beginning to end, one that made Star Wars into the poetic high-opera it is at its absolute best.

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