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Was thinking about The Empire Strikes Back (because it's what one does) and how it balled up the obvious blueprint for "let's make a #StarWars sequel" and threw it in the trash. Every zig you'd expect as a rabid fan (or as a studio exec) is an onscreen zag instead.
One of the craziest ones is also one of the most subtle: Han, Luke and Leia, AKA the Big Three, the newly minted cultural icons, are in ONE scene together. They interact for a grand total of 90 seconds.
The big battle -- the SFX Gotterdammerung -- starts before the half-hour mark. Like the script got flipped in a mirror.
The heroes get their butts STOMPED. Brutally. Leia gets her character shaken to its core. Han gets frozen and hauled off. And Luke not only gets maimed and learns a horrible secret but makes the absolutely wrong decision and nearly gets his friends killed. With no resolution.
And the filmmaking risks, whew. The movie flies or dies on whether the audience will be convinced by a freaking puppet. If Yoda doesn't work, ppppt. The whole movie collapses, and the saga with it.
It's just so unbelievably ballsy from start to finish. For me, the lessons are two: First off, believe in your story. If it's what speaks to you, don't worry about whether it follows X structure or you think the audience is expecting something else. Stick to your damn guns.
Second, Mark Hamill is a badass and gets no credit for it. Yoda's amazing, but equally important is that Hamill makes you believe in him. On Dagobah he's essentially alone, barely able to hear Frank Oz. There's a puppet, a tin can, and some snakes. And he makes it fucking work.
Same for the iconic Vader reveal. Watch it again, just focus on Hamill's face, and think about the situation on-set. There's a wind machine howling and a stuntman feeding him fake lines. As an actor, he's alone. Once again, if he doesn't make that scene work, the movie collapses.
Luke has almost no dialogue. Hamill does it all with his eyes, letting you see the emotional dominoes fall. Denial to shock to terror and -- last and worst of all -- the realization that it's true. When Meryl Streep does one of these scenes, film classes lose their damn minds.
Yeah yeah, Tosche Station, power converters. Stop that shit. Mark Hamill's amazing. And so is Empire. We all know that last part, but what we've forgotten is what a high-wire act it was, from the story to the filming to the performances. It amazed me as a kid; it amazes me now.
That's it; thank you for attending my Star Wars TED talk. And hey, maybe go watch The Empire Strikes Back?
