The Magic of Movies - Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Part Four

The scene between Han and Leia ends up justifying our little crash on the asteroid from a story perspective; this is a moment where everything, from the music to the acting to the context of the moment, manages to lift up weak writing. The male perspective on this is pretty easy for me to grasp – it would be cool to be a scoundrel and for someone to find that attractive – but I’m fascinated, as I often am, with the female perspective. I know there are women who find the bad boy in general and Han specifically attractive; he’s carried heavily by Ford here, but there is something in how he wants Leia and is perfectly forthright about that. There are two things I’ve been told about the phenomenon by women; the first is the general idea that the so-called ‘bad boy’ is usually honest about his intentions. 

The second is a review I read over a decade ago which tackled two books: an autobiography by a pick-up artist and a series of interviews a woman had with pickup artists, and the reviewer said she was more aligned with the second book but preferred the first because it was a mixture of clear-eyed and lacking in neediness – he didn’t care if you agreed with or even liked him – which matched her experience with such men. You can kind of see that with Han; Ford turns the childishness of the writing into childlike hurt, where he’s genuinely at least trying to read her.

Of course, I’m happy to admit if I’m wrong.

I’m a little more skeptical of the extent to which Star Wars is critiquing fascism – at least in any way more meaningful than a Wolfenstein game – but there’s something here in how Vader blatantly pushes his ships and troops through the asteroid field with no care at all for how many people it gets killed. Vader taking a position as main antagonist draws attention to how much he, like Luke, is powered by intuition; taking the stance that he’s a Nazi draws attention to the parallels with how Nazis were driven by emotion and mysticism; I’m always amused in a dark way by the story of Hitler ‘planning’ his first battle, coincidentally getting everything perfectly correct, and concluding he was a tactical genius. The Force can be used for Evil.

Vader meets with the Emperor, giving us our first visual of him; I find myself considering David Prowse’s physical performance. Famously, he was more upset about being dubbed over than Peter Mayhew – admittedly, he didn’t know that was going to happen in the first film – but I think he could be proud of his physical performance. He struts around like he’s cock of the walk, but he also shifts perfectly to deferral here. And even then, there’s a clear confidence to it! No fear, no awkwardness, just bowing with total belief.

This scene is actually kind of interesting from a character perspective; Palpatine informs Vader that Luke is ‘the son of Skywalker’, which is a really silly way of wording it considering they both know precisely who Anakin Skywalker is and have no reason to talk around considering they’re alone together. But the broader story context is fascinating, because Vader, I think, already knew who Luke is and was already deliberately pursuing him; he asks Palpatine to turn Luke to their side, and Palpatine finds this both useful and amusing. Someone who’s seen this a million times would find their heart falling into their chest.