And what, we ask, would Spike TV (DISH 168) do for about one- third of its programming without Irvin Kershner?
The man perhaps best known for directing The Empire Strikes Back passed away this week, and his work on what is generally thought of as the strongest installment in the Star Wars trilogy has influenced a generation.
When men were men and Jedi masters were puppets: Kershner and Yoda. Via
He infused Generation X with wild hope, for one thing, simply for his placement in the original trilogy. After the debacle that was The Phantom Menace, fans despaired: Could the next one be worse? Could it possibly be worse? (Answer: Um. Yeah.) In desperation, some fans formed The Sandwich Theory: Maybe the first one was horrible, and the third one will be horrible, but perhaps the second will be great. It has to be all dark and stuff! Wasn’t Empire great?
But Empire wasn’t great because it was second. It was great because of Irvin Kershner, and it’s somewhat too painful to contemplate what might have been had the rest of the franchise been turned over to him.
George Lucas, for all the pounding his reputation has taken in the past decade, made perhaps two indelibly great decisions in his directing career: He made Star Wars. And he got Irv Kershner to direct the sequel to Star Wars. It was perhaps the most plumb assignment in all of Hollywood, to take on the next chapter in one of the most successful movies of all time– and Kershner was reluctant. He is responsible for some of the strongest shots and strongest scenes in the film, such as Han Solo’s famous “I know” response to Princess Leia’s last- second “I love you!” By keeping that moment intact, Kershner advanced both characters more than any trillions of computer-generated pixels Lucas could possibly imagine.
Kershner’s filmography is short. He didn’t churn out movie after movie, desperately seeking the next big one and eroding his reputation in the process. He permitted his relatively sparse work to speak for itself– and my goodness, what it has to say.
