Hello, everybody, welcome to the Fictionphile podcast where we explore the wide world of narrative entertainment, from movies to literature and everything in between. My name is Jason Boyd. I'm the editor of Fictionphile and I'm joined remotely today by managing editor Corrine Asbell. Hey, Corrine.

Hola.

Como estas. Also somewhere else in cyberspace. We have associate editor Dalton McCay, good day to you, Dalton.

Oh, Konichiwa. I did hola, I did hola last time. I don't know. I did hola last time, so I couldn't do it this time.

Okay, that's fair. You know, I will, um I will prepare better next time with my languages.

See that you do.

Thank you, so that you can throw any language at me you want. And I'll say hello back. Well, hello to everybody in the world listening. So today, we'll be poring over a single work of fiction. And after we introduce this work of art, we'll discuss what makes it enjoyable. What makes it a work of art in the first place. What makes it universally relatable. And finally, we'll talk about what it could have done better. So now that we've got the introduction, and we got our format, what piece of narrative entertainment are we talking about today, Corrine?

Well, we're going to be following up on our last show. With Star Wars Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back. It's widely considered the best of the original trilogy, it was one of the highest grossing sequel films of all time. Empire was released on May 21, 1980, produced by Lucasfilm and directed by distributed by 20th Century Fox. The screenplay was by Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett and the film was directed by Irvin Kershner. And, of course, the story originated in George Lucas's mind. Other than the big three. I'm sure you don't need a refresher on the names of the stars. We also have Billy Dee Williams, Frank Oz, Kenny Baker, Anthony Daniels and James Earl Jones.

After the rebels are brutally overpowered by the Empire on the ice planet cos Luke Skywalker begins Jedi training with Yoda while his friends are pursued by Darth Vader, and a bounty hunter named Boba Fett all over the galaxy.

Huh, very nice, very nice. So let's go over the critical opinion for this movie, for Empire Strikes Back. So now on IMDB, and of course these numbers are subject to change. On IMDB right now. It's currently 8.7 out of 10. Metacritic, it's 82 Metascore, Rotten Tomatoes critics have it at 94% an audience has at 97%. So almost 100% there. Yeah. Well, that's kind of no surprise on that one, honestly that the audience would rate that so highly it is, as Corrine said, one of the most beloved Star Wars. So now that we've gotten all that out of the way, let's let's get on to our first topic.