3. Cloud City Vistas
Our next change was added to The Empire Strikes Back, arguably one of the best movies in the Star Wars saga.
The first Star Wars film had been an unprecedented success, becoming the highest grossing movie of all time at that point. As a result, the budget for the sequel tripled. Still, restrictions of the time ultimately prevented the stunning Cloud City from being fully realized.
Fictional residents of the “aerial-opolis” were unfortunately burdened with real world problems and forced to deal with the counter-intuitive idea of a city in the sky and barely any windows through which to view it.
Lucas fixed this problem by replacing many of the plain white walls with large windows and viewing platforms. He opened up the world, making the place feel less boxed-in and more like the lavish city it’s built up to be.
Shots of the characters walking through hallways were now spiced with beauty and the ingenuity of classic Star Wars architecture. Also, it just makes more sense. If you’re going to build an entire city in the clouds, it stands to reason that you would want to showcase the beautiful Bespin vistas.
Lucas certainly went too far in some of his CGI rampages through the Original Trilogy, but in this instance, he used it correctly. The result was a grander, more appropriate version of Cloud City that lives up to its reputation.
