author: Andrew Rilstone
content: "Where Star Wars had a simple, linear structure, Empire Strikes Back has\
  \ almost no plot, but instead, a sophisticated complex of echoes and foreshadowing.\
  \ There aren't many X-Wings. The climax of the film isn't an action sequence, but\
  \ character development. The good guys lose. It is as if Leigh Bracket had pinched\
  \ George Lucas's action figures and started to act out Ulysses with them.\r\n\r\n\
  Good movie, almost certainly: Star Wars II, almost certainly not.\r\n\r\nThat fans\
  \ are on the whole not concerned about or even aware of this disjuncture shows the\
  \ capacity of the fanboy to extrapolate universes where none exist, or perhaps,\
  \ simply, to read for the plot. Provided the film tells you 'what Luke Skywalker\
  \ did next' and does not knock over any of the furniture, then the film will be\
  \ accepted, canonised and treated as a classic. Joseph Campbell said that mythology\
  \ is psychology misread as biography. I have been trying to think of a way of misquoting\
  \ that line and applying it to Star Wars. 'Fantasy is imagery misread as history'."
id: f2ffc47a-b880-4fc3-9312-038c7a78bdf2