Is This the best Written Star Wars Movie?
Im writing a screenplay
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MovieChat Forums > Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Discussion > Is This the best Written Star Wars Movie...
I'd actually say the first one. A New Hope has a near-perfectly crafted space age fairy story. The dialogue's a little goofy at times, so Empire might have it beat there, but for story beats, crafting of scenes, etc., I'd say that Star Wars Episode IV is at the top.
shareIs story beats something people say to try and sound mart?
shareNo, but I've been watching a lot of story structure videos lately, so it's floated to the top of my vocabulary.
I was just trying to explain why I liked that script over Empire's script. The contained story is tighter in the first one, in my opinion.
I don't think people who say "story beats" are smarter at all; it is not an indicator of intelligence, just trivial knowledge of one term. If somebody said "plot points" or something like that, they'd be just as accurate. I think how people talk about it is better than the exact terminology.
When you say the story is tighter in the first one, it made me think of something that’s been on my mind lately. Not sure if this is exactly what you meant but...
After Star Wars, the story doesn’t really go that far. There’s a very strong classic structure: introduce characters, the conflict, Luke has an arc, etc. After that, over the course of Empire and Jedi, there’s not all that much. Vader is his father, Han and Leía kiss, lots of stuff explodes, Vader kills the emperor. Right?
I really love Empire but when I think about it in terms of story, maybe it’s not chock full o stuff. I guess a valid counterpoint to that is that some movies go entirely overboard with convoluted plots in an attempt to cover other deficiencies
Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm talking about.
Empire isn't as tightly plotted for those reasons. It also introduces the Vader is Luke's father thing, which is a brilliant plot twist, but doesn't match Obi-Wan's dialogue in the first film. So, that introduces the first really big plot hole/inconsistency in the Star Wars universe.
In terms of character growth, it does take Luke from a farm boy who dreams of being a hero to a hero who dreams of being a monk. I think that's a great arc, and the conclusion of that arc in Jedi (a monk who dreams of just saving his father's soul) has a great message for viewers about what real heroism is. It's not *really* blowing up the Death Star, it's redemption for evil. This message was done more subtly and much better than when The Last Jedi tried to ram-rod it down our faces, too...
I think Empire is marginally inferior - let's be clear. It's still a brilliant movie. It introduces the next step in Luke's journey to enlightenment, it builds his personal relationship with the Empire (thus making it a deep need for him to beat them, not "just" political), and it forges a really great romance between Leia and Han which, until the next film, made for a tense love triangle between the three leads.
Return of the Jedi is a little more haywire, with an opening sequence that only really serves to resuscitate Han and doesn't have much bearing on the rest of the story. It's super-fun, but it's not really thematically connected to the rest of the plot. Then the ewoks are...what they are. It also pulls the eject lever on the love triangle. I feel like they shouldn't have done that, and maybe should have just written an ending where Luke still loves Leia but recognises that she loves Han now and that their paths aren't really the same anymore. It would have made for some better scenes, I think...
Anyways, yeah, that's what I meant: in A New Hope, all the scenes, characters, and plot points drive like a locomotive towards a focused ending.
I think that's because Lucas' original plan for the trilogy was boiled down into one movie for IV, because he didn't know he'd get to make more. The Death Star was going to be the "main threat" throughout all the movies, finally getting destroyed at the end, for example. That's (probably) why there's a new one for VI.
shareFrom what I've seen and read, my best guess is that Lucas intended for Star Wars to be one film. He ran around a lot building a weird universe and that ignited his brain to dream up the before and after of that story, but I think it was supposed to be one.
He waffles a LOT in interviews. "One movie. Three movies. Nine movies. Six movies. Three. Nine." It's dizzying. Because the story keeps changing, I have a feeling he envisioned a big story, condensed it to one film (as you say) and then later thought, "Maybe I can get some of that other stuff out there, too..."
Maybe that's just semantics, like what we mean when we say, "always intended"...
Empire does suffer from being the middle child, doesn’t really have an ending.
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