Much of the good in this film comes from Part IV – the setting, the characters, the look, the special effects and the music. And as in Part IV, clunky lines and stiff acting don’t detract from the action, and we’re still engaged by basic values like loyalty, love and self-sacrifice.
But in A New Hope, classic movie-serial plotting keeps us in a story that's unspooling as fast we we can follow, while The Empire Strikes Back bogs down at many points in excessive exposition. Luke’s time with Yoda lingers too long, includes too many soliloquies on the Force, and has too much repetition, like Luke's failures and the lectures he gets. And for a Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back takes too long to restart its action in the Cloud City after the initial battle on Hoth. These lulls unwind the narrative spring in the other parts of the film and, if we’re not interested in the philosophy, it's easy to drop out of the film.
Empire Strikes Back aims at large ideas, but in doing so, it misses the engaging story that enlivens A New Hope. This an interesting film, but in substituting ideas for action, it involves us less in its characters and their concerns.
