Thoughts on "Empire"

I have to confess that watching Star Wars a few weeks back in this post-prequel era was something of a disappointment. The Empire Strikes Back on the other hand, is a much superior effort. Whilst it can can't match Attack of the Clones for the sheer wow factor of the visuals, it more than makes up for that in scripting and direction - perhaps it's no co-incidence that this is the episode in which George Lucas took something of a back seat - providing only the story.

• First appearance of "The Imperial March" and other cool John Williams music.
• Disappointingly, Iain McDiarmid doesn't play the Emperor in this episode, as he does in Return of the Jedi and the prequels.
• Watching Alec Guinness in this, I'm rather more impressed by Ewan McGregor's performance in Clones - the match is pretty darn good.
• I recognized the orchestral hits during the lightsaber battle by the window in cloud city from the trailer for The Phantom Menace - Yoda's lines "Fear is the path to the Dark Side (po-po-pom) Fear leads to Anger (po-po-pom) Anger leads to Hate (po-po-pom) Hate leads to Suf-fer-ring".
• Some really nice "simple yet elegant" effects shots - e.g. the falcon doing a loop-de-loop around a cloud bank.
• Somewhat downbeat non-ending. Yay! Woo!
• Said ending brilliantly spoofed by the end of ep. 6, season 2 of Spaced.
• The "I am your father" spoof contest - how many can you think of? Here's 3 to get you started:
  1. Spaceballs - Dark Helmet to Lone Star: "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate."
  2. Austin Powers 2 - Dr. Evil to Austin: "I'm your father" / "Really?" / "No, I can't back that up."
  3. Monkey Island 2 - LeChuck to Guybrush Threepwood: "I am your brother." / "No! That's not true! That's impossible!" / "Search your feelings. You know it to be true."