Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

  There are still people out there that have never seen any of the Star Wars movies.  I'm not just talking about the cinematic mutants that are the prequels, either, I'm talking any of the Star Wars movies.  That just blows my mind.  This post is dedicated to you bunch of freaks.

Ok, back in the late 70's and early 80's there was a set of three movies that defined awesomeness in sci-fi for decades to come.  These were the original three Star Wars movies, chapters 4-6.  Why did they start with chapters 4-6?  Presumably for dramatic effect.  It won an Oscar for Best Sound and got a Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects.  This was some cutting edge shit back in the day.

This is the middle part of the trilogy, arguably the best cinematically.  My personal favorite is Return of the Jedi but I digress.  There's a prologue at the beginning to catch you up if you haven't seen the previous one.  Basically, there are rebels on the run from the forces of an autocratic empire that wants to rule the galaxy.  Helping the rebels is Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), a young man training to be a Jedi knight so he can defeat the evil Lord Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones).  To do this, Skywalker goes to a swamp planet housing the greatest living Jedi warrior:  Yoda (Frank Oz).  Meanwhile, his friends Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) are chased around by imperial troops and finally take refuge with Han's friend Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams).  Luke sees a vision of the future telling him that it's a trap and leaves his training to go save his friends.

Seriously, just go watch the movie.  If you can, try and get one of the versions that hasn't been "adjusted" later by George Lucas.  Recently, a Blu-ray set of all six movies was released.  Rob gave me crap for not using that, instead of my old-school DVDs.  What can I say?  I like my movies free of tampering.  Eventually, I'll get around to his shiny box set if only so I can make fun of the prequels here.  Right now, I'm finishing up season one of the BBC version of Being Human.  I saw the American version and I think they're both pretty similar.  The one thing that is very different is that the British version is only six episodes so everything gets crammed into a much tighter timeline.  I did like how the American version treated the ghost character, how they had her be a lot more limited.