This ’80s Sci-Fi Epic Shows What Hollywood Lost

Science fiction movies are enjoying another remarkable surge. Modern standouts such as “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Annihilation,” “Arrival,” “Dune,” “Blade Runner 2049,” “Ex Machina,” and the much-discussed “Project Hail Mary” have helped push sci-fi cinema back into the center of mainstream conversation. Many of these titles also echo an earlier high point for the genre: the 1980s. Yet even as today’s sci-fi blockbusters share some DNA with that landmark era — and benefit from decades of technical progress — one essential quality feels harder to find now. To understand what has faded, it helps to look back at Star Wars.

“The Empire Strikes Back” arrived at the dawn of the 1980s and immediately set a towering standard, not only as one of the greatest science fiction films ever made but perhaps as the finest sci-fi sequel in movie history. In many ways, it helped define what would become a dominant decade for Hollywood genre filmmaking. Its influence can be seen in the marriage of sweeping location work and meticulously built soundstage environments, in its ambitious visual effects, and in the sense that its universe stretched far beyond the edges of the screen. The 1980s produced plenty of sci-fi movies that felt ahead of their moment, and “Empire” remains one of the clearest examples.

Still, what separates “Empire” from many contemporary science fiction spectacles is its unmistakable romantic spirit. That does not simply mean romance in the love-story sense, though the film certainly has that. It means romance in the older adventure tradition: noble quests, mythic stakes, danger touched by beauty, and the feeling that the unknown is worth chasing. “Empire” balances fairy-tale grandeur with a battered, believable sci-fi world, moving between Arthurian mystery and industrial grit in a way few modern genre films attempt.

“Empire” is, in many respects, the love story of the original Star Wars trilogy, just as the middle chapters of the later trilogies would also lean into matters of the heart. Han and Leia’s relationship gives the movie much of its emotional charge, but that is only part of what makes the film feel romantic. The enchantment is also in Yoda’s hushed lessons about the Force on Dagobah, in the deadly beauty of Hoth as Luke struggles to survive its frozen wilderness, and in the awe of seeing Cloud City glide into view for the first time.

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“The Empire Strikes Back” understands that outer space can be deeply romantic. It understands that the future can be elegant, mysterious, and heartbreaking. Lando Calrissian’s wardrobe and the refined style of Bespin’s mining colony suggest a community trying to build something graceful beneath the looming threat of Imperial control. Then Darth Vader arrives, and that fragile dream shatters in an instant.

There is romance to the sands of Arrakis in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies, but it’s a romance tainted by a dark future. The universe is a cold, brutal thing in “Dune,” where in Star Wars it is alive and healing. The triumphant moments in “Project Hail Mary” celebrate the endurance of the human spirit, but less the unknowable grandeur of a breathing, magical cosmos.

People often accuse Star Wars of being more fantasy than sci-fi, but it’s more that the sci-fi is scattered around the fringes. “Empire” is filled with these sorts of details — how the T-47 snowspeeders aren’t ready for Hoth’s frigid climate at first because they’re stuntfighters being retrofitted for the cold, or how Lando laments to Han that labor and supply issues have created problems on Cloud City due to the small size of the outpost.

These might not be the things you think about while watching the movie, but they are intentional, and they shape the story. The rebels stand at a disadvantage because their tech is not built for their purposes. Lando is forced to cut a deal that he hates because his colony is not self-sufficient.

At the same time, the sense of magic and adventure of the original trilogy pervades. The sci-fi epic has taken on an understandable aura of severity in recent years — something that wasn’t really possible in the ’80s due to the limitations of special effects. You could always sort of tell you were watching a movie, in a way that is a bit easier to obfuscate now. But in focusing on that severity, we’ve also lost some of the romance that Lucas used to balance the energy in “Empire” — a magical side to the epic that today feels distinctly of its day.