Ben says: First off, the audience reaction to Empire was nonexistent. We went to see it at the Odeon Leicester Square again, but the lack of audience reaction was fairly understandable due to three factors: firstly, we went to the Sunday afternoon show which was full of kids too young to have seen it at the flicks originally with their parents who were being very grown up, secondly, the audience hadn't had the time (or the inclination) to get somewhat pissed up and thirdly, we all know the plot of Empire - it's not a movie you want to cheer at, it's high tragedy what with Han Solo getting turned into a coffee table, Luke meeting his dad and the sacking of the neat-o Hoth base.

And what a scene that still is! Part of my reasoning behind making Empire my favourite of the trilogy is down to the superb AT-ATs advancing, seemingly invulnerable, on the rebel's base. The weirdest thing is that only one goes down thanks to the nifty harpoon routine and in the end they only manage to kill two AT-ATs out of the whole bunch. Even the effects stand the test of time for the most part, other than the dodgy scale change as Luke goes up on his bat rope to blow one up and the obvious helicopter shots for the snowspeeders floating over the glaciers.

The additions in the new film are very low-key, the only obvious ones being the added bits in the Wampa's cave and the flight into Bespin. The rest are little tweaks that you might not notice unless you were told like the plain walls in Bespin being replaced with windows looking out over the city, etc. Fortunately, the film doesn't suffer from revisionims in the same as Star Wars did, and for that reason I am quite happy to give it full marks.

Ben gives it:

last updated: 20th April 1997