#23 The Empire Strikes Back: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

1980. dir. Irvin Kirshner, starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Frank Oz, Anthony Daniels, James Earl Jones.

Seen it before? Oh yeah.

It's more highly regarded by many than the first one, and rated higher up on the list. It's slower and talkier than the first one. There's more philosophy here; the Yoda scenes are sort of like Zen Buddhism For Dummies. Vader is a total badass in this movie. Blackest brother in the Galaxy. Nubian god. It seems like the worst thing he can do is give you a promotion. The last half-hour with Han getting frozen, Luke and Vader's duel, and the famous reveal (that always gets misquoted. he doesn't say "Luke, I am your father*") is basically pure awesome.

Nevertheless, Empire Strikes Back has some problems:

C-3PO. Is this guy a totally annoying liability or what? Every single scene he's in, he's either being rescued, or he's whining and trying to surrender. "Oh, we'll never make it!" One of the best scenes is when Leia shuts him off.

You're pretty annoying too, Chewbacca.

A lot of the Han and Leia dialouge is just as awkward as anything in Attack of the Clones. As Harrison Ford once said, "You can type this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."

The Imperial Walkers are supposed to be all huge and intimidating, but they just look slow and clumsy. The guns are way too high up to hit anything. When Luke trips one of them, I wasn't surprised. (Made an awesome video game level on the SNES though.)

Why does the Empire try to stop the Falcon from escaping Hoth, but not Luke? Seems like that was rather the point.

Eeeww, you kissed your sister!

And how long was your Jedi training anyway, Luke? It can only be as long as Han and Leia's escape, trip to Cloud City, and capture. So, two days, tops?

The Imperial March gets all the love but I actually liked Vader's theme from the first movie better (skip to about 4:36 of this video.)

Need more Emperor, even if he looks weird.

*That was a spoiler. If you have not seen Empire Strikes Back, you should not have read that sentence.

Position on the list: 10
Adventure, excitement? A Jedi craves not these things.