Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 266: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

Just in time for the "conclusion" of the Star Wars saga (sure, whatever), take a look back at the franchise's cinematic high point (and all the related games) with Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, Ben Elgin, and Chris Sims.

This week in Retronauts, the only podcast strong enough to wrestle the ears off a Gundark. and 66 of Retronauts. This time I actually planned it out and figured out what number it is. This is 266. Unless we change up the schedule, in which case it is not 266, but we will burn that bridge when we cross it.

We like to burn bridges. Anyway, I'm Jeremy Parrish, hosting this week. And with me here in this room, we have the usual assorted collection of star-studded luminaries. So Star Studs, who are you? Ben Elgin. Ben Edwards. I'm Chris Sims, and I want to talk about how C3PO killed those dudes.

Which dudes? The dudes that C3PO kills at the beginning. Which dudes? That's the beginning? Yeah, when he riffs off the sign that says that there's a wampa in a room, why do they have a wampa in the room for C3PO in the moment in the, like, deleted scene? In which the wampas invaded the base, and they corralled them into that room using R2D2 as a Pied Piper-esque allure to hide. them in a closet and then they locked them in

there and then C3Pio. And like wouldn't that have been convenient for video games if there were actually Wampas in the Rebel base? Yes, wow. So are, okay, hang on. I'm sorry, I know we're going to get into this in a minute, but I have a lot of questions. So are Wampas like animals or are they like sentient creatures? Well, in the movie, they are only really

presented as like creatures. Yeah, it's a predator. It's a predator. Grizzly bears basically. However, in one of the Expanded Universe novels, I do remember that they had to go back to Hoth for some reason, and there was a one-armed wampa who had a look of hatred and revenge in his eyes. Is this like how Jaws 2, or is it Jaws 3, is about the shark wanting revenge?

It's Jaws 2, the revenge. That's right, just to the revenge. Because Jaws 3 was Jaws. My question here is, why don't they shoot the wampa? Instead of just putting a sign on a door. They had to print out the sign. I don't know, man. Don't feed the wampas.

You think they'd need some meat supplies? Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, C-3-O does some murderous. It's an important thing. Let's get into it. I mean, he also was turned into like a battle droid in the prequels, and you're a big fan of those. You know it. Anyway.

I love those prequels like Anakin hates sand. Wow. That is passionate. All right. So, yes, we are talking about Star Wars. The Empire Strikes Back, episode five of Star Wars. Episode 5 of the Star Wars trilogy Because George Lucas cannot count

Anyway, with the rise of Skywalker launching imminently This is a December airing Even though we're not recording in December The Star Wars nonology Will be coming to a supposed end And so we figured This would be a good time to continue our series

Of looking back at the Star Wars movies And the video games based on them, Benj No, it's just kind of like a dumb joke Hey, it's really cold outside. What? I was going to say, hey, guys, it's really cold outside, burr. See, it's funny, because right now, it's like 80 degrees yesterday, yeah. But people listening to this will not understand that.

Visualized hall. Off would be good right now, yeah. If there's a cool spot to the universe, this is the farthest point from it. All right. So anyway, Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back. You might wish to refer back to, I don't know, an episode we did like a year and a half ago about the original Star Wars, A New Hope. And this is the sequel to that podcast episode, because it's all about sequels. George Lucas always intended for Star Wars to have sequels, as you may know, but he wasn't sure how successful Star Wars was going to be. Because as we talked about last time, it was

kind of, it was not really that good a movie until the very end, basically, when it came out. And then all of a sudden it was really cool. And the editing came together, the music, et cetera, et cetera. And so there was a lot of question about, like, what would the follow-ups be to this saga that I have in my mind? So he had a dual-prong approach. If Star Wars was a success, he was going to make another movie. But if it was not a success, not a success, he was going to make some schlocky novels to serve as sequels. And as it turned out, he did both.

And so that is where we end up with Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back. But before that, there was Star Wars Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Do you got, have you guys ever read that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Chris, it sounds like you have opinions about Star Wars Splinter of the Mind's Eye. The only thing I remember about it was the part where,

I can't remember if someone, like, forces another character to lick his boots. I think Darth Vader, like, forces some dude to lick his boots or something. And I was like, wow, that's, I was like eight when I read that. And I was like, man, that seems really gross and weird. Yeah, it's a real horny book. Well, it wasn't like a sexual thing. Oh, was it, though? It really wasn't.

That wasn't. I say that. That wasn't. I got Splitter of the Mind's Eye in the mid-90s because I was reading a ton of expanded universe, Star Wars novels at the time. So, so, okay. Sure. This movie dates back, or this book dates back to like 1979 or something. Yes, it's very early. And it shows. And I'm old enough that I remember when it was newish. Well, I got it. I got the re-release. And the interesting thing about reading it with all three of the original Star Wars movies coming out is that it clearly doesn't line up. It was written by Alan Dean Foster, who also wrote the novelization of Star Wars, uncoded it. The novelist also credited to George Lucas.

But it features, I remember. very specific things like Luke not knowing what a duck is, which I think is a very good bit that I wish I'm sure there's a Wikipedia page called Ducks in the Star Wars. Wait, yes. Who else in the Star Wars universe knows what a duck is? Are we talking about the graveyard duck

here? Why does Obi-Wan know what a duck is? Obi-Wan mentions something about it's like he's talking about Anakin or something and he says that someone like took to something like a duck to water and Luke's like what's a duck? Which I think is very funny. Well, why would Obi-Wan know that?

that because he was well-traveled. Have you seen the clone wars? Although more importantly, was it a horrible duck? Did it steal everyone's shit? No, that's a geese. It was neither a horrible goose nor a graveyard dog. At least he didn't say like a tarqu rat to water. Yeah, like they do in other things.

I like it much better when they just talk about ducks. And of course, the novel also has the extended Biggs scene. But there's very specific, like, dialogue and, like, writing quirks in the novel. So you can tell Splinter of the Mind's eyes. is written by the same person, or at least is very similar in tone. It also has a section where Luke thinks he's going to die so he confesses his love to Leia, which I feel like tells you how much was planned out. Yeah.

I mean, it's well established that Luke and Leia were not intended to be siblings. In fact, there was, like, the idea of Luke having a sibling was explored for the Empire Strikes Back script, but it was not, it was not Leia. It was someone who was, like, mentioned in the script and then never referenced again. Yeah. Hey, spoiler alert. Sorry. Come on.

So it's this very weird experience of having all the Star Wars that we did in, like, 1997, 1998, like, peak expanded universe Star Wars time. Like, you know, Shadows of the Empire and Masters of Teres Casai and, like, all of the books and comics. And thinking about how when Star Wars was the only piece of Star Wars that existed. it. Besides the holiday special. Besides the holiday special. And like you said, no one knew if there was going to be anything else. So Star Wars tells a complete story, which I think is one of the things that really

recommends it as being, I honestly think it's kind of the best Star Wars movie because it stands on its own really well. But then imagining that like what you had if you really liked that movie was Splinter of the Mind's Eye and the Marvel Comics, which were very weird and huge. successful. Are we going to talk about Jackson? Jackson. I love Jackson. He's giant green Star Wars. Giant Green Space Bunny. Yeah. He's great. Benj, you're shaking your head in pain.

Yeah, I thought this was the Empire Strikes Back podcast. We're getting there. Not the Splinter of Chris's Mind's Eye podcast. But it's, it's so weird, though, because Splinter of the Mind's Eye doesn't feel like Star Wars. It feels like a pulpy sci-fi novel, and it kind of feels like a Star Trek tie-in novel in a lot of ways, which were also, like, a big thing at the time.

They were just getting started, yeah, with the Ballantine books. Yeah, and doing one every month. And Alan Dean Foster was writing those, too. Bingo. He was writing the mission logs, which were transcriptions basically, like mini-novelizations of the TV series. Exactly. And the cartoons.

So I was into both of these things at the same time and kind of going back and forth reading, you know, obviously the new next generation novels that were coming out of the time. There's one that opens, by the way, side note to the side note to the side note, with Riker and Jordy playing on opposite sides of the Enterprises Beach Volleyball League, which everyone should get, and that should be a movie. Maybe not now. They're kind of old now. Frank still got it.

Frank still got it, baby. Yeah. But yeah, like, it's so weird to imagine a world where Star Wars didn't become Star Wars. It continued in this vein of, like, weird space, fantasy, pulp novels and Weird Space Fantasy comics like we got from Marvel. And then Empire comes out and it's so different and honestly, so much better. But I will say that when Empire Strikes Back was first conceived, when it was first written, it was very pulpy.

By all accounts, the original script draft, and I don't think that's ever been released, but everyone who's seen it or seen bits of it has said, yes, it was very pulpy. And that is because the original draft was written by Lee Brackett, who was a pulpy science fiction author who had interned or studied under Robert Heinlein, and she had written a bunch of pulpy movies and a bunch of pulpy novels. And it was just like, that was her thing. And it's impossible to know how Brackett would have followed up in future drafts with her work because she passed away just like a few weeks after she submitted the first draft. And, you know, a lot of the elements, like the major elements were apparently present in her draft, but they were factored in very differently. Like the love triangle between Luke and Leah and Han was much more prominent. And like half the movie took place on Hoth.

And you don't get the big revelation at the end with Darth Vader talking to Luke. So, you know, some of the key beats and elements were very different. And Lucas actually came in and did a second. draft where he basically came up with a structure of the movie that we see now, which was basically like shifting assets and details and things around from what Brackett wrote. And then the final draft was written by Lawrence Kasden, who had just written Raiders of Lost Ark and is a brilliant writer, really, really just like nailed the dialogue, everything except that weird, like, flirty scene in the Hoth Medical Bay, which has always been really awkward.

But everything else about the movie, like the dialogue is spot on. It was, you know, three people working together kind of progressively taking Empire Strikes back from that sort of Allendine Foster, Star Trek novel, you know, kind of paperback sci-fi style to something that is much better. And I think most people or a lot of people recognize Empire Strikes Back as, if not the best Star Wars movie, then certainly right up there at the very top. And as you said before, you know, the fact that it's not a self-contained movie, it's the opposite of a self-contained movie, does hurt it somewhat.

And it was a big risk when it was first released, because, you know, at this point, the idea of movies as franchises is inescapable. There's no turning back now. And that's probably because of Star Wars. But at the time, in the 70s, in the 80s, the early 80s, the idea of a movie sequel was basically like, hey, I'd like to lose a lot of money. Sequels just did not perform anywhere near as well as the movies they were based on. I mean, uh, you know, something like the godfather part two did not perform as well as

the original godfather. So Lucas was actually taking a pretty big risk by creating a sequel to his hit movie. And, uh, I don't think the studios were really into it. So he ended up self-financing it. That also gave him great control over the licensing rights and, uh, you know, the creative direction. But he ended up self-funding most of it until it went over budget by like 10 million dollars and Bank of America was like, whoa, that's a lot of a loan money there. So Fox ended up helping to finance it, and they got some cut of the rights and everything. But, you know, it was kind of like the original Star Wars. It was a passion project that he really believed in and felt like this is going to make a lot of money.

And it paid off. Adjusted for inflation, Empire Strikes Back is the highest grossing film sequel of all time. I'm not surprised. It's a very good movie. It is. In my opinion, it is the best Star Wars movie followed very closely by, that's right, the Last Jedi, I said. I'm with you on those.

But I'm like, I'm also. I'm like, I'm also really curious about, like, I'm also really curious about like the reception of this. like when it first release because again so this was this was 1980 right um so again so you know i was four so i was not very aware of the cultural zeit guys in 1980 um but like i'm curious about this because like you know you'd had star wars and it was you know an unexpectedly big success but like the end of that is right we blow up the death star we won the good guys won and then you come into the opening of empire and it's like no actually not like actually the good guys are struggling everything's going bad and i'm like what was the reaction of people coming into the theater of this like was it shot because again you know we didn't have you know everyone didn't

know everything about the upcoming movies on the internet back then right so speaking as an old um i was there for this and i distinctly remembered that at the time empire strikes back was you know well received people liked the cool set pieces and stuff yoda was very popular but overall the critical reception was kind of muted and you know the popular reception was kind of like well this is sort of the least of the star wars movies because it doesn't really tell a full story and it ends on such a downer and you know it's it's very incomplete and i think it was really like 10 years later that people started to sort of rehabilitate and reevaluate the empire strikes back and go back and say you know what actually you know now that we see where this fits into the story and we

kind of are better at observing return of the jedi's flaws um you know maybe maybe this movie wasn't so bad and i think i think it's its opinion its reputation has gradually grown over time And I don't think it's some sort of like, you know, I don't think it's insincere. I don't think there's like some sort of overrating going on here. I think people just to kind of come to appreciate better, like the really excellent film qualities of the movie, like how well it's directed, how great the cinematography is, the set design, just how everything fits together. And it does tell this kind of important middle chapter of a story.

And middle chapters are hard. It's easy to tell beginnings and it's easy to come up with a cool ending. but that middle part where you're like, how do we move the plot forward? How do we move this story forward? That's tough. And this movie does a really good job of it. Yeah, and I think that's true

that you really need the context for it. Like the moment to moment of this movie is some of the best stuff that exists in the Star Wars series, but it needs its context to make any sense, but in some sense, both the before and after context. I love this film. I love it so much.

It's probably my favorite movie of all time. And there's, what I love the most about it is every scene, has the perfect tone. Nothing falls flat. Except the sick bay. Yeah, that's a little awkward where he's grinning and stuff. But other than that, I mean, it's just, everything is just so perfect.

The dialogue is great. And, I mean, there's just little things. Like, one of my favorite things is where, like, Han is, like, where's Luke, you know? And then C3Pio comes up and he puts his hand over his mouth. He's, like, talking to him, you know, and, like, that kind of stuff is, like, so fluidly put together. There's a lot of that going on in the film. It's just the greatest film. And just compared to a lot of the rest of the Star Wars song

and the fact that the dialogue is actually good. It's amazing. A big part of what makes this movie great is that, unlike the first movie, Lucas, which is great, but unlike that first movie, Lucas stepped back and let other people have more creative control. And the director, Irving Kirchner,

was a very experienced movie director who didn't really have any hits under his belt and Lucas liked him because he apparently was, you know, kind of saw him as an outsider who wasn't part of the Hollywood system and wasn't going to kind of operate in the same limiting ways as

most Hollywood insiders. And Kersner had a very different directoral approach than Lucas. Lucas is kind of famous for basically like doing two or three takes just like Jonathan Frakes. Two freaks, two freaks takes. Two takes freaks, yeah. Takes freaks.

He does like... One shot close up. That's all he needs. Yep. He does like two or three takes and doesn't give dialogue notes to the actors, doesn't really give them much direction whatsoever. Whereas Kershner, like, he would have conferences with the lead actors and talk to them. Like, let's talk about your motivations in this scene. Let's fine tune the script. Let's, you know, really talk about staging and what you're going to do and what you're feeling and trying to accomplish here. And it really shows because, you know, there is a lot of, you know,

a lot of kind of personal moments in this more so than in many of the other Star Wars. movies, you know, whether it's Leia and Han and the Falcon kind of like flirtatiously and and kind of prickly, you know, together, like, do they love each other? They do, but they also kind of don't like each other. Getting over that and Luke with the Yoda, like, you know, Mark Hamill is acting with a puppet and, you know, doing a hard physical labor for like half an hour. A puppet operated by one of the greatest puppeteers of all times. It is, but nevertheless, it is a puppet. And there's a lot of great stuff that comes out of that. Yeah, it's incredible.

They managed to sell the Yoda thing so well, considering how badly it could have gone, you know, with a puppet and with... He never feels like a puppet in the movie. And I think that's true of a lot of things in this movie. Like some of the, like the Han and Leia flirting scenes, I mean, maybe outside the Med Bay, but there's a lot of this through the movie of them flirting. And in a lot of ways, it's really dated now. You know, Han is the bad boy scoundrel.

And like, like, I could see scenes like this. He's nice men. Yeah, he's a very nice man But, you know, there's a lot of ways that scenes of that nature Could come off so badly now in the modern context But like just the dialogue and the the chemistry between them is so good that it still works Like I do think a lot of what helps that is that Han Solo as played by Harrison Ford is a huge dork

Who is pretending to be a cool guy Yes, and also Kerry Fisher is tough as nail She's empty and strong Like that totally goes away in Return of the Jedi But here, like, is peak Carrie Fisher, like, really coming through in the role, and she's in charge of most scenes that she's in. Like, you really get the idea. Like, yes, this is a born leader. Like, she has an incredible presence.

Yeah, she does. And you can see why, why Han is, you know, kind of, like, throwing his bravado at her. Because, like, who wouldn't be in love with Princess Leia? But, you know, he had to kind of work through her defenses. And, yeah, like, it just works. And again, I think this is the director working to the strengths of both the actors and the characters that he has and just showing off the best parts of them, which is something that fails to happen in some other Star Wars movies. This film has a lot of humor, too, and it's got a lot of funny stuff without being a comedy, which is why, like, it doesn't go too far in any direction of being silly or ridiculous, just like some little things. Yeah, I mean, Yoda is silly at first, but that's by design.

He's deliberately being obnoxious To provoke Luke Yeah But Han Solo There's just all these funny things with Han too Like there's a scene where I don't remember where they are But you know He's down in a pit in the Falcon like fixing it

And something gets The toolbox falls on his head And he goes ow The hydro spanner That's funny It's just that little thing It's a little thing You know

It's not my fault Han is so put upon through this whole movie Like just everything goes wrong for it I think he's the best part of this film. I think the thing that people often forget about the two major Harrison Ford characters of the 70s and 80s when they try to recreate them. Like there's a lot of very bad Han Solo and Indiana Jones knockoffs. And I feel like the thing they miss is that Indiana Jones is a huge nerd who gets beat up a lot. And Han Solo is a gigantic dork who is introduced to us bragging about his.

car to an old man and then he's constantly like trying to play a cool guy. And I think Ford does a really good job with that. There's an aspect of this movie that I think is really interesting structurally in that it does have that pulpy set piece structure that works so well in Star Wars in the Indiana Jones movies and in Jedi. Like you think of Empire and you've got these clearly delineated set piece acts. You've got Hoth and then Degaba and Cloud City and then back to Degaba and then back to Loud City for the big thing at the end.

But it's, the focus is so much on the emotional core and the storytelling and the dialogue and the character work. Because this is the most character work that we get in the entire trilogy. The entire series. The entire franchise. I mean, arguably, yeah. I mean, I guess you could go into phone wars and stuff. Don't forget about episode two, though.

Yeah, I mean, you really get into what makes Anakin tick. Yeah, I hate sand. And sand people. I do feel like that is why. And we're going to get into this in a minute because we're going to talk about video games in a second, I think. Not so much a second, but yes, later. In a little bit. Star Wars and Jedi, I think, rely much more on those set pieces, which makes them easy to translate into the type of video games that they were translated into.

And I'm specifically, like, my big experience was with Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back and Super Return of the Jedi on Super NES. Because Star Wars is just action set piece to action set piece. And they're all good. Jedi doesn't have those Or Empire doesn't have those Because there is no way Like press X to deny that you are Darth Vader's son Yeah

It's like you get the the Hoth battle at the beginning And then it turns into a different movie Like there would be a I think a great Visual dating sim Like visual novel dating sim based on like The flirtation of Han Solo and Princess Leia Yeah well there's like there's like big stretches on like Cloud City where there's just, there's no violence going on.

It's characters doing things. And then you get stuff that like, like Haun Solo being tortured that also doesn't translate to video games. I mean, you can do that in Middle Gear Solid. You mash the Circle button to survive. And then Merrill doesn't die. Remember that?

I never played Metal Gear Solid. I don't know, I've seen this movie a hundred times. I don't know. I've seen this movie a hundred times. I don't, it's probably one of the most replayable films I've ever seen. I can never get tired of it. I've seen it. Every single time I watch it, I love it again. and I don't get tired of it. I don't know what it is about it. Because it just everything, every note is hit perfectly in the right way.

For me, anyway, for me of my culture of my generation, I mean, this is the perfect film. So it's just, oh, man. The only other movies I've seen that often

are Ghostbusters and Big Trouble and Little China. Interesting. Better than Ghostbusters. Yeah. Probably not better than Big Trow and Little China. I don't know. This is the most film, filmic of the three.

Although I love Ghostbusters, too. It's also, like, incredibly full of memorable lines. Like, there's so much quotable stuff in this movie. And some of them are particularly burned into my brain because I had this, like, sound resource pack for, like, my Mac Plus that, like, replaced all the system sounds with, like, lines from Empire Strikes Back and, like, so the, like, you know, the, like, Dark Vader impressive and the, like, Yoda stuff. And, like, it would just, these would just be spouting out of my computer for my forward of

years. story. But they are like there's, you know, all the, all the famous Yoda lines are in this and like a bunch of good Darth Vader stuff. When you think about what's good about empire, you think about character moments. You think about I love you, I know. You think about do or do

not. You think about I'm your father. Those are all like very big character-driven moments. When you think about what's good about Star Wars or honestly what's good about Jedi, you think about action. You think about blowing up the Death Star and you know, choking out a giant

worm with a chain. Yeah, sure. Why not? You know, having 200. Knocking Boba Fett into a space butthole. That's what you get for being

in the holiday special, you ass. Yeah. Yeah, like, I mean, honestly, if you want to see the difference in those movies, Empire makes Boba Fett seem super cool.

By just with, with two words, no disintegrations. That he doesn't even speak. He doesn't say those themselves. But he does do, like, the only actual, like, useful thing

that he does on screen, which is to figure out what Han's scheme is to get away from the Star Destroyer. That made everybody think that BobaFet was cool for the next 30 years, despite every other thing he was in, him being terrible. But his design's cool. That's a Macquarie design, too, isn't it?

It is. He was originally the Super Stormtrooper, and then they modified that. BobaFet. That's a Jedi. Sorry. That's another thing that's a lot of an empire. It's a lot of really cool.

Macquarie designs. Let's talk about Yoda a little bit more. Yeah, I was going to actually go there because I really feel like if you want to get to the heart of what makes Empire Strikes back, I think kind of speaks to what they wanted, what Lucas wanted to accomplish. It's what Yoda is because he's presented as go find the Jedi master who instructed Obi-Wan Knobe. Holy crap, that guy's got to be badass. He's going to be amazing. He's going to be like so cool. And no, he's like, he's a little green thing that talks like Grover. Yeah, but he's like the German version of Grover with his reverse syntax, which is such an incredible, and again, it's something that I don't think today if you weren't there at the time, and I wasn't, but going back and looking at what existed when, I think it's impossible to appreciate what a good swerve Yoda is because Luke says he's looking for a great warrior. Wars not make one great.

Exactly. Wars don't make one great. And then that's so beautiful and such an interesting lesson and such a good translation of what the difference is between the light side and the dark side. And then it is completely, like, I'm not going to talk about the prequels a lot, but it's completely destroyed in episode two where, oh, no, it turns out Yoda is actually super good at fighting and is going to fight Christopher Lee.

An 80-year-old man and a puppet are going to have a great action sequence. A puppet who looks more like a puppet now. It's a flip. Yeah, he flips around a lot. Yeah, that just ruins everything. Don't, don't even bring me there. But that whole sequence, like, from Yoda's introduction, yeah. To, like, the reveal that he's the guy is so good and so, like, well-paced and such an incredible bit of character work and acting from Frank Oz. Yeah, Franks is amazing.

Who, again, is acting through a, you know, through an animal object. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's part of, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's Part of, like, a film legacy that was very unique to that period that has been completely lost. I realized there was just a dark crystal sequel on Netflix, which I haven't seen yet, but I hear it's really good. I've heard good things. I've been meaning to watch it, yeah. But, like, the idea of here is, like, a bizarre fantasy that you take seriously, but it's acted out by puppets. Like, that was, there just wasn't a lot of that.

It was a very short-lived thing, like this very brief period where Jim Hinson's technology got good enough that you could actually believe these characters. and them being phased out in favor of, you know, C.G. And I think it is, like, I like a lot of modern movies that rely heavily on CG, obviously. Like, I think it's fantastic in endgame. Like, the Hulk looks like a guy. Like, it looks like the Hulk is there. He looks like Mark Riffalo. Like, he has good acting.

But, I mean, I can still tell it's CG. Yeah. But there is such a, and this applies to Star Wars as well. well. It's such a different feeling when it's real. Like when there is a physical object being filmed that is present on the set, whether it's the Death Star blowing up, whether it's the miniatures or matte paintings, I love Matt paintings, or whether it's Frank Oz crouching down on a soundstage meant to look like a swamp. Yeah, I feel what Hollywood is mostly lost is that CG is best when it's used to

embellish and enhance things that are already there. They use CG now in Star Wars movies to like do everything. I've seen shots like before and after shots of cockpits in Rogue One where it's like the seat and the person sitting in in it are real. Everything else is white and then

they put all the control panels and surfaces and dials and stuff into a CG. Like is that really necessary? Which is weird because you would think like if if anything had the money to build the sets and then enhance them with what is presumably less expensive, which is C.G., which is why it's so commonly used, you'd think it would be Star Wars. You'd think they know it at this point it's going to make money. Yeah, there's definitely a physicality to everything on Degaba.

They are in a massive, swampy set full of trees and actual snakes and a little crazy green puppet. Yoda bopping R2 with his cane would not work. If it wasn't a physical object interacting with a physical object, if it wasn't Frank Oz and Kenny Baker, like having it out, like doing that on the set, it wouldn't work, especially wouldn't have worked at the time. I don't think it would work now. I don't know. Oh, By the way, has anyone else lived their entire life by the philosophy of Yoda? And then you just realize, wait a minute, I hope it was good. Like, good philosophy.

No. Okay, gosh. I'm a Spider-Man guy philosophically. Really? try and do or do not try not I think I actually still try things so I can't comment there's some Irvin Kershner commentary on the DVD version it's interesting where he says they got that from it's sort of like watered down Buddhist kind of stuff and and he was surprised at how it resonated with people so much his advice and and it's it's almost like Buddhists know what it's up yeah maybe

they do yeah the but there's so there's what's in that cave only what you take with you. I mean, there's so many deep moments in that, that little thing, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Everything that Yoda presents to Luke is done in a way that, you know, it kind of comes at Luke's sideways. And the viewer, too, because you go into it, having been prepped by the first Star Wars and the intro to this movie, which is a big battle on Hoth. And so you just think, oh, you know, action movie. Everything is about solving, you know, resolving problems through conflict. But the whole point of Basically, Yoda's belief in the force is that, no, that's not what it's about. It's about really, like, knowing your limits and understanding your place in the universe.

And, you know, those are hard lessons for Luke to come by. But the digabas scenes basically sort of break him down and break down his expectations without, you know, without demeaning the character or diminishing him in any way. It's basically saying, like, you know, you didn't have a lot of good examples growing up, but here's what's actually going on. Now you need to apply this to the confrontation that's ahead of you that you're rushing into. It's one of the only times in the larger franchise that the Kung Fu movie and like samurai movie and Buddhist Zen Buddhism stuff feel like it has been made its own thing. Because it's all like obviously and very heavily influenced, but it's also done in a way that I feel like is very unique to Star Wars. A lot of it being because it is introduced by Yoda who doesn't. doesn't feel, like, is very clearly, you know, the, the wise hermit monk living in the mountains, except it's a swamp and he's a puppet.

But he doesn't feel like that. He feels like, oh, this is what a Jedi master is. Because we've seen Obi-Wan, and we know that Obi-Wan is also a weird hermit who lives alone in a desert. But Yoda is all of that aesthetic just cranked up so much and is so, like, the swerve is so good and he's so concerned. Not just about, like, Luke's well-being, but the idea of all we are doing is giving him the tools to be a bad guy, which I think is a really interesting thing.

There's such a good vulnerability with these characters. Like, every good guy in the movie has extreme moments of vulnerability. Luke, obviously, has multiple ones, but Han gets tortured. And Leia is very, like, the whole situation on Cloud City is out of our control. We meet Lando and Lando's being boss around. Leia is supposed to, you know, be off with the Rebel Command. She gets cut off from the escape from Hoth and ends up going with Han. And it's totally out of her control because Han is, you know, in addition to all of his other great qualities, he's really bad at maintaining his own spaceship, which is, you know, just basically like a high performance piece of garbage.

It's like a junkie-looking space jaguar. It's like a Jaguar, it's like got a race car engine. A gelop. And also like the body is the RV from Breaking Bad. It should have a spoiler that's the wrong color and a Dale Earnhardt 3 painted on the cockpit, honestly. So this is what I want to know. Before we talk about video games, is Yoda doesn't want Luke to go help his friends because it's a trap and stuff. And Ben doesn't either.

So what do they expect to happen? and they expect him to sacrifice his friends and then train up and then go fight. Yeah, for the greatest fine. Yeah, if he honors what they fight for is what Yoda says. Like, if you honor, you know, the fact that they're trying to thwart the galactic empire, trying to rid the galaxy of evil, yes, you let them, you know, let what things happen to them because you are not ready yet.

Like, you can't go. Although on the other hand, a through line through all these movies that gets explored a lot more in the sequels is that, you know, just because you're a Jedi doesn't mean you're always right either. I mean, this is what Ben and Yoda think is the best. That doesn't necessarily mean they're right. But there's a very compelling reason why they think that. And it's because of Anakin, which we get, like the reveal that we get to the end. And that's actually, I think, the other part of the movie we need to talk about is the fact that basically the entirety of the Empire strikes back.

The story here is just that it's not that the Empire wants revenge, just not that like they're pissed off about the Death Star and they're going to take down the rebels. They were going to do that anyway. The story here is that very specifically, Darth Vader, after surviving the Death Star explosion, just wants to get a hold of Luke. And the question is, why is he so obsessed over Luke? Because that's the through line in this movie. It's about like, there's the falcon, Skywalker's with them. And it's clearly driving him to the point that he's sacrificing entire warships to asteroid belts just so he can capture this one stupid little ship that they could easily blow out of the sky. but he wants to capture it because it's got Luke Skywalker in there.

And so there is this kind of sort of question lurking in the background. Like, what's Darth Vader's deal this entire time? He even has a chat with his boss, the emperor, who is a woman and a monkey and talks like an old person. And so at the end, you finally discover why Darth Vader is so obsessed with capturing Luke and it's very personal. I do wish there had been more This is not the angry prequel criticism But I do wish there would have been more thematic resonance with that Where the same tactic had worked on Anakin

When he was younger And like unless I'm misremembering Like there's no There's no real They're holding his friend's hostage moment Right Anakin's angle was wanting to overcome death And like being worried for Padman

I mean he was worried I guess his mom Yeah When he goes and gets her But that's not like a trap That's just I don't know. The whole prequel is kind of low.

Yeah. But I mean, I mean, it was an angle, but it was a different. It was the temptation of wanting to be the master over death. Yeah. Which is what the emperor was presenting to him. Yeah. One funny thing about Ben, I just noticed when they say, don't go, you know, to Luke. Ben steps forward this ghost.

He says, wait, you know, it holds his hand out like, don't leave me here on Daegobah. It smells bad here. He could go ahead. this guy eats, it's so gross. I have a lot of questions about how Force Ghosts work. Wait, Luke, I can only tell you this on Dagobahe, you know, like, but he can show up anywhere.

Well, I don't think he can show up near Darth Vader. I think he has to be someplace, you know, anchored by the light side of the force. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. According to the web comic where it's a D&D game, it's a cloud of midichlorians. Okay, so anyway.

I mean, it would be great if like every time we didn't, we weren't looking at Darth Vader there was just like a spectral Allie Guinness like dunking on him like floating behind him Hey that would be a great AR thing you know for augmented reality app

I have a like a MetalGuard 2 did that where are you going Anyway okay Like an Obi-Wan in your own room Show Captain Needed to death again Cool cool cool cool Yeah good move Good call

It's a good film It is a good film And yes so the big The big plot reveal at the very end The thing that every thing leads up to Spoilers You may want to you may want walk away if you haven't heard this before

but Darth Vader claims to be Luke Skywalker's father despite what Ben Kenobi told him that Darth Vader murdered his father he's actually like no so Obi-Wan lied to you and I'm your dad and you know

I've got the receipts I don't got the receipts but check the paternity payments I've been you know paying my alimony for the past 20 years sorry that's why he doesn't want him to go see Darth Vader because he'll figure out that he's lying to him the whole time. Well, yeah, there's that, but I think, you know, it's mostly he doesn't want him to go to Darth Vader because Luke clearly has an attachment to the idea of his father and discovering that Darth Vader is his dad. Like, that's horrible and bad, but at the same

time, you know, he is a kid who grew up without a father. Yeah, he bounces from father figure to father figure throughout the course of the thing until he becomes the father figure at the end of the Force Awakens. Right. It is a bad father figure He's a delightfully bad father figure He's not the best But yeah That's kind of the big point

And to me that is The Empire Strikes Back's biggest legacy Its biggest footprint in pop culture Is that reveal Because now so many things Have to have a story twist Like you just I don't really think you got that

In narratives before that Like yeah there'd be story twists And plot twists But nothing like hey here is a fundamental like reversal of everything you thought about the main character and it ties them to the villain

like that you just did not get that before and now everything is like how is the main character connected to the villain which is and you like can't even do that anymore because it's such a cliche like you've got to do something else right it got so bad with like Squarespace RPGs in the 90s

and they were just like constantly like well Fafong Long is also id who is like to say yeah whatever Yeah, like later, Surge turns into links and they get switched around in a freaky Friday situation. Spector, the James Bond movie,

is the worst one of those in recent memory. It's... Yeah, Blufeld is James Bond's secret brother. What? Oh, yeah, yeah. I wipe that out of my memory. It's really, again, from the perspective where we have it all,

it's really interesting to go back and think about that as being such a reveal, Because in retrospect, it's so foreshadowed. Not just in empire, but like retroactively in Star Wars. Like, it's, there's so much that points to it. And it is such a logical conclusion. But, I mean, it does, like, it hits like a twist.

Yeah. It's really amazing. It fundamentally changes the entire arc of the story, like the series. And there's this little mini cottage industry now in, like, finding people who actually somehow have not been spoiled to that and showing them the movies in a particular order and getting the reaction to the twists. Like you can look these up on YouTube. Right.

And, you know, I feel like this is where the horrible spoiler culture was created. Like, that did not exist. And it didn't happen initially, but over time, people have become so obsessive about spoilers. Like, if you mention any detail of a story of an upcoming movie or game, like, you've spoiled it. They won't watch trailers that are officially released. I understand. Sometimes those can have a little too much. information in them. But I don't know. Like, I think if a story is good and if it's well told,

even if you go in knowing the twist, it's okay. I've gone into movies knowing the twist and I still enjoy them. I love the feeling of being surprised by a plot twist and I especially love the feeling of figuring it out like 30 seconds before it happens because you feel smart, but you're just like watching a movie. But like I do think you can go into Star Wars and and empire knowing it and have it still be good. It's still a good movie and it's still a well-told twist because it's partially the the Alfred Hitchcock suspense thing about like it's a great twist in the moment. And it's a twist that like you would then have three years to talk about.

Yeah, you know, exactly. Like you also have that feeling of knowing the bomb is under the table. And you have that suspense of we know. Luke doesn't, which I think Mark Hamill does a really, really good job with in that movie. His acting in that scene is

wildly over the top, but in a very appropriate and understandable way. That whole sequence with the lights air fight is like really good. Everything on Cloud City is so beautiful too. They talk about the overuse of blue and orange in movies these days, but this is where that's from

and it's so good here. The carbon freeze. The scene in the carbon freeze. It's beautiful, and it's just, like, so striking. But then that carries into the gandry where Bader and Luke have their confrontation. And even Cloud City itself is like, you know, it's always got that kind of sunset look to it. It's just so gorgeous. By the way, as an extension to that, this is the only one of the first three films that had a good treatment in the special editions, in my opinion. Because it was so restrained, and it just accentuated what was good about it instead of inserting a bunch of dumb crap, extra things.

I mean, they made Espin, they made it look beautiful. They added some extra shots of like, you know, the falcon coming in and you see more of it and stuff. And you see a little bit more of the wampas. That's fine. But it's still like it's very closely based on the concept art and stuff. And it's just there in the background to add to the aesthetics. It's beautiful. This movie really needed its Jedi Rocks moment.

I hate that. I hate that. I hate it even more what they did to Jedi than what they did to Star Wars, you know, episode four. like in the but it's because the director of return the Jedi had died i think that george lucas had free reign at that time to do whatever the heck he wanted and irving kershner was still alive and he's like his no george yeah don't you do it yeah so he's alive thank goodness at that point i think he's passed away since then right irving kersner a few years ago maybe anyway the the silhouette shot against the smoke when luke and uh vader get the lightsaber's out is

extremely choice. It's like the best shot in the trilogy. I told you it's the best film of all time. No, it's very good. Everything about it is perfect. It's very, very good. There's so many good shots. Except the mid-based scene.

It's not that bad. Even when I was a kid, I was like, ooh, that's a little bit crazy. Even when I was like a dedicated Fuzzball, Star Wars Hater for that decade that that was a thing in my life. Like, I just wouldn't talk about Empire

because Empire has like so much like objectively really good stuff. Yeah. well that's all we have to say that fortunately it's not the video games yeah segue segue Yeah, so now, unfortunately, we've talked about the movie.

That's good, but we have to talk about the video games, and that's bad. I will start out this conversation by talking a little bit about not the games based on Empire Strikes Back directly, but Empire Strikesbacks influence on video games, because there have been, you know, references and things like that. Like Star Fox, very specifically when you're fighting through the asteroid field, Like the patterns of asteroids are actually taken from Empire Strikes Back and you get that triangle cluster of asteroids straight out of Empire Strikes back and you're like, I know what you did. I didn't know that. It's unmistakable. That's cool.

There's even a little secret hidden in the triangle. I can't remember what it is. Also, Boba Fett is widely imitated because he does look so cool in this movie. He shows up in lots of characters, including Vile from Mega Man X, who is actually called Vava in Japanese. so it's like boba-vava-vava yeah okay straight there yep unfortunately then there are the actual Empire Strikesbacks game Strikes Back games and none of them are no none of them are good

they're not amazing none of them are yeah partly because of that disconnect between what works in the movie and what works yeah it's definitely the hardest of them to adapt just because of the because there's not consistent action through all points in the movie. You think about, like, again, the Super Nintendo games are very important to me in the 90s.

And you think about, like, there's no scene in the movie where Luke goes through the sand crawler to rescue the droids. But you get it. Like, it could have been there. But there's definitely no scene where, like, Han Solo murders 100 stormtroopers while escaping Cloud City. Right. Yeah. While collecting hearts. And not surprisingly.

The most prevalent element of Empire Strikes Back in video games is the Hoth level. And by my count, in addition to the multiple Empire Strikes Backs, Empire Strikes Back, man, it's too many, it's weird. In addition to the games specifically based on this movie, there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, Unlucky 13 games with stages based on the Hoth scene, including Rebel Assault, shadows of the empire, Star Wars trilogy for the arcade,

Rogue Squadron, Star Wars Demolition. Ah, man, I forget that game even existed. What is Star Wars demolition? It's like twisted metal, but with Star Wars. For PS1, you never played this? Oh. It seems like it made something you did not know about that one. I have a scan of that on my blog.

This sounds the opposite of delightful. It's a really dumb. idea. Actually, I didn't, I didn't check to think, but I think I didn't think to check, but there's probably a Hoth background in Masters of Terrace Kassi.

Probably. There is, okay. I'm almost probably. So 14. Okay. Rogue leader, Rebel Strike, Battlefront, Battlefront to the new Battlefront, Lego Star Wars original trilogy, of course, Star Wars The Force Unleashed, and finally Disney Infinity, which is the only

good game on the show. The status of the empire is good. No. It actually It was not good. I like the Hoth sequence on that. Don't you get to fly one of the snow speeder things? I mean, as a set piece, it's just tailor-made to be a game because it can be anything from like this really simple, you know, ships. It's these bunch of little ships against these big hulking enemies.

And like you can adapt that into anything. You can adapt it into a few pixels. You can adapt it into like photoperfect 3D. And you have a very clear objective of how to beat these larger things. It requires a lot of movement, a lot of shooting. a lot of, you know, being aware of other things. Like, it's very, yeah. So you can incorporate in your standard, like, shoot and blow stuff up,

but then you've got these fun mechanics built in with the tow ropes. And, yeah. Or they're climbing up and throwing a grenade in or all these things you can do. Side note of the side note, the aesthetic of the Disney Infinity figures was very, very good and a very, very good unifying of all the various properties. And I wish they would have done more with that. I'm sad that Disney killed Infinity because it was like Skylanders and the Lego games, but done well. They looked so good.

They were also pretty fun. Like, my nephews, when they come over, that series has been dead for like three years now, and they still just want to play Disney Infinity on Wii. Well, and they don't even do anything. They just, like, fart around and, like, attack each other with Darth Mall. And now that Disney owns, like, literally everything, you could just keep adapting everything into the aesthetic. Oh, we could have gotten aliens Disney Infinity. Damn.

You get National Geographic Disney Infinity. I want my, I want my power loader infinity figure. I just love that, like, the way that they, that they came up with a way to make everything cartoony, but it all, like, like, Jack Sparrow looks like he should be standing there next to Han Solo. It looks like he should be staying there next to the dude for Monsters Inc. Like, it's, it's a very, it's a very well-done aesthetic that is applicable to do a lot of things, and I wish they would do, like, their cartoons in that style. Yep. Because nobody, nobody knows about there being, like, four Guardians of the Galaxy cartoons in the past 10 years. Anyway, so do you think Hoth was the inspiration for a lot of snow levels on other games?

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's always been ice levels, but like aesthetic wise. Have there always been ice levels? Before 1980? Yeah. I mean, Super Mario Brothers, too. We're talking about like inception here. Like, this is the, like, a movie that came out at the genesis of video games.

Yeah, so. Super Mario Brothers 2 has an ice world. Like, I don't know that, I don't know that you could say that Hoth influenced ice climbers. I mean, maybe. I don't think, I don't think writing Will Spellors. to reach high platforms in Mario 2 was inspired by Hawth. No. Sorry.

But if you are the The Smithet has a Walker. It has a rolling cannon. Oh, yeah, you're right. And an ostrich. I don't know. I don't know about that.

It counts. Ostros. If you combine the rolling canon and the ostrich. Ostros. Right. Anyways. Yeah, they're like the tauntons. Oh.

Luigi finds Mario. You wish he's a taunton. Luigi finds Mario in the snow He cuts open An Ostro and stuffs Mario inside He took it to the extreme Chris just told you not to take it to the extreme Oh man I always take things to the extreme

You should know that by now Chris Didn't you see me before? Are you doing deadlifts? Yeah What are you up to now Chris? 425 Wow 425 pound deadlift

That's a lot Yeah thank you That's you are strong enough To wrestle the ears off a gun dark Yeah I thank you Anyway, so let's actually make a journey through these terrible Empire Strikes Back video games because it's dire. I don't know. The very first game isn't that bad considering it was a, it was an Atari game. It was a 1983 Atari 2,600 game. There's only so much you can do with Atari 2,600. And, you know, compared to other movie tie-ons like Temple of Doom, or not Temple of Doom, Raiders Lost Ark or ET, the goals in this and the mechanics are very clear and straightforward. You are a snow speeder flying around. It's a hot level. You're trying to knock down the walkers.

So, yeah, so, like, as Atari games with that era go, this looks, you know, this looked pretty fun for at least a short amount of time. So you've got, it's set up kind of like Defender in that, and it doesn't wrap, of course, because you're stopping the ATATs from going one way. But it's got this, but it's got this horizontal flying layout with a little radar down at the bottom that shows you where the encroaching enemies are. And you're just, you have to shoot them a whole bunch of times, except that you can, like, hit them in a weak spot. Every once in a while you get this random force power up That makes you invincible and plays the title theme But it looks like it's a pretty zippy little game I think

I for some reason have Well I'm sure I've played it at one point But I have no memory of liking this game So it must not be that remarkable My game is bisexual We talk about the color scheme The purple and blue Yeah

Purple and pink It is the background of the game It is the bisexual fried flag Well all the more reasons And more power to it Um, so yeah, the, uh, this game is one I've never played because it's, it, I'm traumatized by it. When I was a little kid, my family and I were at a, I don't know, like a TGNY or something. What is that?

It was a, you know, family value store. Thank goodness. It's a department store. What's that? Thank goodness. It's Yenstay. I don't know. Uh, anyway, so.

He thinks he's funny. He does. He puts the lotion in the basket. Okay, just cut that part out. Uh, anyway, yeah, so we were, we were to, you know, one of those like family can, you know, not a convenience store. It was, it was kind of like somewhere between a Walmart and a CVS, like mid tier in there. Anyway, the point is, there was a, an Atari 2,600 display with Empire Strikes back. And I was like, wow, I want to look at this.

And when I resurfaced a few minutes later, I realized, wow, my parents are nowhere to be seen. And I freaked out. And my, like, someone came and said. are you lost? We'll call your parents. What are their names? I was like, mom and dad? I don't know. I'm not supposed to know what my parents' names are. So, yeah, so that's what I always think of when I think of this. I was very young when Empire Strikes back came out. I remember going to the movie in the theaters when it was, I guess, like, first or second run. And I spent the first half of the movie thinking, like, that Luke's quest for Yoda, like Yoda was the name of his Tonton. I didn't realize the Tonton was dead.

And I was like, Luke wants to go find his taunton, Yoda, because, you know, that was his pet, and he misses him. And so he's got to go find Yoda. And, like, halfway through, you know, I finally realized, oh, Yoda's a little green guy. So what happened to the taunton? My parents were like, shh, I'm just watch. What happened to the ton time? That's adorable. Anyway.

He went upstairs to a farm where he can run and play all we want. There are no tontons in the Atari game. I saw this film, you know, we had it on a VHS tape taped off HBO, and we didn't have Return of the Jedi or the first Star Wars film on tape. So I watched Empire Strikes Back over and over again. I had no idea what was really the story and stuff. I'd just like to watch it. So, you know, when you're a kid,

you don't follow it. And I didn't know it was a big reveal or fit into a bigger narrative and, you know. Yeah, I didn't. I don't think I actually saw them until the real releases. So, yeah, like I was like one for when the first one came out and four, when Empire came out. But I saw them on the 10th anniversary. They put them back in theaters.

That's what I saw on that. All right. So, yeah, so That's the Atari game. The other cool thing about the Atari game is you can actually land your speeder to repair it, which is kind of a cool little bit of like this little bit of Lunar Lander in there, a choplifter or something, yeah. It's got some good ideas for it. I don't think it would hold attention very long, but it's worth a little look.

Okay, that's actually not the only Atari game. The other Atari game was made by Atari, but it was just an arcades. And that was a vector game similar to the original Star Wars. In fact, I believe it was a conversion kit. Yeah, it was a conversion kit for the original. Because it was like, your Star Wars game has been around for like two or three years now. It's getting old. You want to put some new quarters into it.

So let's fight some snow speeders or fight some add-ats with a snow speeder. Yes. Right to tauntas. Just go slaughter some tauntun hunting. Yeah. So it's, so it's, so it's, uh, with your T-16. Isn't there a Womp Rat, like, level in the Super Star Wars? Yes.

Super Star Wars there is, yeah. Of course there is. Sorry. Yeah. So this is a vector game. It's a conversion kit for the original vector graphics arcade game. And it, of course, does the, the Hawth level, which, looks really cool because you've got these big vector graphics add-ats.

And then, like, you shoot them, and then it just goes on to the falcon shooting tie fighters. And then the final level is literally just dodging the asteroids in the asteroid belt. And then that's the end. Wow. So, yeah. So this is a game that really had a problem with, like, the pacing of where the action scenes are in Empire. And, like, there's no space. There's no, like, vehicle action in, like, in the entire back half of the movie.

I would have, like, to see, you know, a first person view of you walking. through the corridors of the Millennium Falcon trying to find Leah trying to fix the hyperjack I think that was a little beyond the engine of this arcade game I have never I've never seen this game

apparently it was really not successful like I think a lot of people a lot of arcade owners just didn't go for the conversion I still see Star Wars right because everyone loves the original vector Star Wars and so that was still making money so it's like why bother and then again like

the one cool thing about this conversion is the big vector ad ads and they are cool but then there's like really not much else to recommend it and it's also really short you can like blow through a sequence of it in like five minutes I think and then it just recycle well I mean Star Wars is pretty sure too yeah but I don't know the idea of an arcade game is like put a new quarter in every three minutes so so that works but yeah but there's yeah aside from the adets there's just not much right well the it's a little more some of this was this released as an independent cabinet at all no it was it was just an upgrade so they're like why would I ruin my perfectly good Star Wars cabinet it's such a It's a good game. Timeless classic. Yep. Yep. So there's, it's, I don't think I've ever actually come across it in the wild in a stand-up. I've never, yeah, I've never seen it in person. It's pretty, it looks neat. Yeah, it would be, I would love to play the actual ad act section on a stand-up cabinet, but I don't know where it's ever going to happen. All right. So there were no more Empire Strikes Back games for another seven years. And so that puts us when the series returns, or the movie adaptation returns, smack dab in the middle of the. Nintendo era. And so the idea is, let's turn this very talky character-focused sci-fi space opera into a Nintendo game. And that means lots of platforming. Oh, my God. So much platforming. So, yes,

we have the NES version and also ported the Game Boy in a terrible, oh, just god-awful conversion, produced by, oh, crap, I didn't put it down. Who made this? It was like sculptured software or something. Oh, geez, was it? Anyway, it was some American company, but it feels very much like a European platformer with very large, open, sort of

aimless stages where you kind of trial and error your way through. There was this whole era of platformers where the thing was to have these huge stages, and you just have no idea where to go. If you played Earthworm Gym, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's very much that kind of thing. This was a sculptured

software. Okay, published by JVC. Mm-hmm. The makers of the Kaboom box? Probably. The Kaboom box. Sounds cool. I have not played this very much, but it looks technically impressive.

Like with us, the Adats have some kind of rotation and scaling going on. It looks like almost... Yeah, yeah, yeah. The graphics are pretty nice on this. And it does combine platforming with shooting stages. It kind of alternates back and forth. And, like, in terms of what Luke can actually do as a playable character, he's kind of impressive. He starts out with just a few skills,

but by the end of the game, you have eight, four skills. Like, I did not know this from having played it because I don't have the patience to play through more than like a level. This would have been such a good place

for like a skill tree progression to have existed because instead you get this very weird like wrenching of the story into like eight and 16 bit video game mechanics because Super Empire plays the same way. It's similar, yeah.

Like everybody, loves that scene where Yoda's like Hey, run over there and jump on these three floating platforms and then that'll teach you how to throw your lightsaber like the Leviathrax or how to float with the power of the force. This is what GamePro

rated this game. Game Pro are liars. Yeah, it's like there's four out of five exploding skulls. Yeah, the highest rating. Both of the games looked really good. They did, but they... It looks good, but yeah. They're not that fun to play. I mean, again, Luke as a character has a lot of capabilities in addition to his

eight force powers, which include, like, speed and high jumping. He can do, like, a Super Mario Bros. 2-style crouch jump where he, like, crouches down to charge up his super jump. You can shoot in eight directions. He can alternate between pistol and lightsaber, sorry, blaster and lightsaber. I do really like the fun little meta-narrative between the Super Star Wars games, where... We're not on Super Star Wars yet. We're still talking about any...

I know, but it applies to the NES games as well. Kind of. Well, Luke in Star Wars just has the blaster and the lightsaber. Then in Empire, you have to, like, go and find the, like, the fourth powers essentially power-ups that you find. And then at the start of Return of the Jedi, you just got them all unlocked, which I think is a really fun little way to chart the progression of the character. Like, he doesn't throw all his force powers in the fire, like Mega Men does, yeah. Yeah, you do it fire them over the course of the game in this one. And then it, yeah, it does break it up with like, so this one actually, so like the Mode 7 stuff, of course, doesn't have until Super Nintendo.

So in this one in the snow speed level, it's once again kind of a defender-esque left-to-right thing. It even has a radar on the top of the screen. And it has a radar. But it's also got some cool features. So in addition to being able to, you know, shortcut destroy ad ads by shooting the tow cable at them, it has this thing where if your snow speeder gets blown up, you can actually continue on foot and then kind of walk into the background and grapple your way up one of the, the add-ats and throw a grenade in it and blow it up that way too until you like find yourself another snow speeder so that for an n-ES game that's actually pretty cool grand theft auto kind of then they were like we have this this aerial combat engine we got to do something with it so of course

that means that when you get to cloud city you're just blowing the hell out of lando security forces you're like just gunning down cloud car after cloud car lobot must die oh man it's it's like wow Luke, you're so bloodthirsty. Of course, at the end of the game, you fight Darth Vader multiple times. He's like, tall Darth Vader. He's like twice your height. And every time you fight him, you like, you destroy him and then you get a voice clip, impressive, most impressive.

Hey. And then finally at the end, you kill him and he falls off the gantry. Just like, just like Luke was supposed to do. And it's like, oh, well, time for the sequel. Yeah, there's a lot of weird continuity things in here. Like also, like when you, when you leave Dagaba to go rescue your friend, The cut scene is Yoda actually tells you to go do it. He's like, yeah, yeah, go rescue your friends.

Cool. If honor what they fight for, you wish to do, you must go save them. Yeah. Hey, they should have made like a Castlevania rip off with Star Wars where, you know, instead of Dracula, you got Darth Vader, instead of Simon Belmont or whatever, you got Luke, and he's got a, instead of a whip, he's got a lightsaber, and he goes through the Death Star, and he gets, wouldn't that be a cool game? Yeah.

And then Drosbator's head flies off and flies around and also Luke fights a mummy. Yeah. It's going to get Drosbator's final form. It turns into a demon, yeah. Yeah. Well, there is an ES game where he turns into a scorpion that we talked about last time. Yeah. Yeah.

Show enough. Yeah, it also seemed like the other thing that struck me about this game, it seems like just everything is a damage sponge. Like all the enemies have tons of HP. You have tons of HP, so you can kind of just like brute force your way through things. It's very weird that they never. figured out how to make the final battle where you

can't win against the boss work in the video game? Yeah. Or you lose? Well, it's very antithetical to the idea of a video game. You're there to win. Not to have your hand cut off and your view of your own like paternity inverted and

then fall to your death only to be rescued at the last second by your friends. Press exit and I parentage, I'm telling you. It's a bone press. F or F you So they should have merged empire and Jedi into one game so that would be a complete but then they couldn't have made twice as much money

get a little Mass Effect wheel where it's like no that's impossible and I'll join you and rule the galaxy yeah that's called the Old Republic Knights of the Old Republic True true That was before Mass Effect actually I know where it's from

Has a Knights of the Old Republic wheel in it How dare you speak to me like this Jeremy Parrish Speaking truth I'm sorry We live in a post-truth world. Anyway, one final game to talk about here. Anyway, one final game to talk about here. We've already kind of covered it.

And that's Super Empire Strikes Back. Super the Empire Strikes Back for Super NES. I guess this one was also by Sculptured Software. And Factor 5 was in there somehow also, weren't they? I don't know. It's like the first Super Star Wars game where it's graphically gorgeous, amazing sound, and kind of sucks. It kind of hates you. So I also owned this game as a kid, and I did not get very far in it.

This game hates me, too. It's weird. It must have a chipmant shoulder I think I finished all three of these Like on my weekend rentals from But it was because You know, I had nothing to do for those 48 hours Yeah

Yeah Yeah with all of these I would get to like I'd rent them and get like three stages in and say Because every level is about twice as long as it needs to be Maybe three times And then it does them again Every enemy takes like three times as many hits to kill as it should They're just so tedious

There's this incredibly long I mean, granted, it's at least not as like meandering and aimless as the NES version. So they're mostly, you can tell where you're supposed to go in these. But like, you know, so it opens with this, this Hoth level where you're on the surface and then in the ice caverns. And it's incredibly long. And then you finally get to fight this, like, giant screen-filling Wampa Beast, because that's what the super... Well, the graphics were so oversized anyway. Yeah, yeah.

So you fight this giant boss. It was like five times a size of his NES version. And then, like, you do the Hoth level again, like, only remix. There's another... There's another incredible... You've got to go fight the ProBach. And then you've got to fight the Stormtroopers in Echo Base. I remember.

It comes on so long. I remember using the debug screen a lot in Super Star Wars. I don't remember using it a lot in Empire. I don't know if there was a country. Was there a level select? Yeah, there was a level select. Because I have some vague memories of also hating Chewbacca fighting through the junkyard in Cloud City, but I don't think I ever actually got there legitimately.

Yeah. It looks really good. Oh, it's gorgeous. It does. It's super gorgeous The animation on the attacks, especially for Han Like Han's animation does such a good job Of like his firing pose

He carries himself like Han It's really good The game is bad, it looks so good The sprite work is amazing Yeah, I know I love it Like you mentioned, the sound is great in these Yeah, the sound is good They really took advantage of the Sony chip

And the Super Nias to get those samples in there But yeah like if you look at You know kind of the ideal Platonic ideal of the platform shooter as like Contra or Mega Man, this is a really different school of thought because those games are about quick, precise action. They're about, you know, like Mega Man, Contra, you have one, two hit enemies, you know, and also your character dies in Contra in one hit. So it's about like quick, you know, reflex-based action, whereas this is just like you are a guy with a lightsaber,

but somehow, somehow it's going to take you like five swipes to kill this monster. Anything. Yeah, It's like deadly towers. It also has the incredibly annoying power-up mechanic of, you know, your blaster has these incremental power-ups, and it gets stronger and then, of course, you die and lose it all. And the only one that looks right is the worst one. Yeah, the only one that actually. And then so it gets so, yeah, you get these like increasingly, increasingly unlikely balls of flame coming out of your dinky little gun. The rainbow-shaped bats that are the plasma gun. Yeah, but it's only when you get up to, like, the final plasma gun that you can actually kill anything in a reasonable number of hits.

Yeah. Like, and then it finally becomes a little. it fun until you die and lose it, and then it's horrible again. That's when you use a game genie code that just gives you max power-ups at all time. I think that's really the way to play this game. You mentioned Deadly Towers, but at least that has a progressive

permanent power-up system. Like, Prince, whatever his name is, Rupert, Rupert, Hector, whatever the hell. Like, he eventually, like, becomes more powerful and stays that way. Whereas here, Luke is very fragile. Chewy's very fragile. You wouldn't think so for a wookie, but there you go.

Yeah. And like, you know, I understand this from an era where, you know, you spent, you know, your $50, which is a lot more now on this one game and you want it to last a while. And so there's a lot of content in there and it makes you, it doesn't let you go through it quickly. But even so, it's just, yeah, it's not fun for a lot of the time. What I was saying about Deadly Towers is that you, you start the game in Deadly Towers and then you immediately see the first enemy and you spend like five minutes hitting it. We're never going to kill it. And then you go into the next time and then you spend five minutes. That's why Prince Meyer has no confidence in his sword.

according to the instruction manual. Oh, man. The weird thing about it is that, like, the moment to moment actually does feel good. Like, pressing the button and getting that animation is, like, very good. And, like, it feels, like, the animation and the game feels really good. But then you're doing it, like, 15 times. Yeah, like, it feels good until things don't die. And it looks good.

And, like, you start playing and you're like, this rules. And then you get to the first anime in. Yeah, like, the actual controls and mechanics are fine. It's just, it's sort of the layout and the balance that are terrible. And just, yeah, it just doesn't like you. Like, it throws you at the very beginning of the hall. level, it starts throwing these giant ice boulders at you, like not much place to hide, and it just doesn't like you. And plus all the useful power-ups, which you, of course, really need to make

the game fun because the game is no fun with the Star Blaster, are mostly hidden in invisible places where you have to know where they are and swipe the air there. Half the time you have to be standing on an invisible platform to do it, yeah, it just not great. Play this game with cheats. Then it might be fun. That's my takeaway. I'm very excited that eventually we're going to talk about Return of the Jedi and have to talk about super the return of the Jedi also. I don't know. I think you could probably just carry forward everything we said here. But yeah, at the very end, there is a fight with Darth Vader,

and he takes four goddamn ever to kill. And he throws all the scenery at you constantly. And it's cool that, like, you know, the scenery is converging on you, but the further you get into the fight, the more stuff is flying at you. And, yeah, it's just, I don't know. I don't know, man. You could, you could, like, special edition this.

game into something that was fun. You could redesign every level and maybe make it better. Like change the balance. Like keep the graphics and sounds and just like redesign the levels and rebalance the enemies and it could be fun. Yep. Basically take Mega Man or Contra as your ideal and work

around those. But that's not what they did. So that's what we're stuck with this horrible legacy. Anyway, that's kind of a downbeat ending for an Empire Strikes Back podcast because it's such a good movie. But then again, the Empire Strikes Back kind of had a

downbeat ending. So maybe it's appropriate. This is us standing... Bad games? Yes. That's impossible. Search your feelings. You know it to be true. No. So this is us standing on the window of the medical bay, looking out of the galaxy, thinking, can't wait until

we can talk about some good games again. And ow, my hand hurts. Where to go? There's a game where you play as Luke's hand crawling around. Oh, here we go, Chris. Yeah, here you go. We didn't talk about like my favorite weird dumb bit of expanded universe

you mean Ray? Ray who's cloned from Luke Skywalker's hand absolutely not yeah like the hand and the lightsaber show up in the novels oh she was originally going to be cloned from Luke's hand

yes the Force Awakens was originally going to open with Luke's hand and lightsaber like floating through space I don't know how they got there but that's how it was going to start and thank God someone said don't do that.

Yeah, very bad. I don't know if this is a kind of a virtual statement. Ray's family being nobody's is perfect and should have. JJ Abrams is going to recond that and I hate it. Yeah, I hope not. He's going to.

Just watch. I think he probably will change it. So there's a clone of Luke. His name is Luke. Because it's got to use. Luke. If it were Japanese, he'd have a bar

over the year. Because all of the clones in the novels have the same names as the people they're cloned from. but they double a silent letter. Oh, my God. So you can only tell when you're reading it.

There's a whole lot of jangos out there. Yeah. And there's Joris Kabeath, of course, who has two U's in his name as well. Anyway, he's an evil. He's an evil loot clone who has two hands and a blue lightsaber. All right. Now we've gone wild now. Now we're really ending on a doubt.

All right. That's the hope for the future. Those are the good books. Anyway, so yes, thank you guys for talking about the Empire Strikes Back and related video game ephemera with me. You're welcome. This has been Retronauts episode. What did I say it was, 266, something like that.

Something like that. Cool. So we did it. We got through this episode. Now we can record another one. But before we do that, let's sign off. I'll start. I'm Jeremy Parrish.

You knew that. I am GameSpite on Twitter. And you can find me at Retronauts doing podcasts such as this one. And Retronauts can be found at Retronauts.com. And on things like the iTunes store and so on and so forth. You can also support us through Patreon. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. If you pay us $3 a month, then you get every podcast a week early at a higher audio quality

and without any of those pesky advertisements that sometimes creep in. So please consider doing that. And if you don't, that's okay. You can still listen for free. Ben. I'm Ben Elgin. You can find me on Twitter as Kieran. That's K-I-N-N.

Maybe someday I'll have the return of my Tumblr, but today is not that day. return of the Tumblr. Yeah. And I'm Ben Jedwards. A later sequel. From all of us here at Retronaut Studios. I like to wish you all of Merry Christmas. This guy thinks he's so funny.

Yeah, he does. You know me. I'm on Twitter. Benj Edwards. Chris. I'm Chris Sims. Twitter's a bad website. Nobody should be on it.

But you can find me there as at the ISB. That's T.H.E. ISB. It's mostly me letting you know when new episodes of my several podcasts are out. Apocrypal. did a exercise two-and-a-half-hour episode on the Book of Revelation, so check that out. It's a good one. All right, and that's it for this episode. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Join us again next week. It is your destiny. ...hean...

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