Blu-ray Review: 'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back' (2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment Reissue)

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The packaging for the 2019 "Multi-Screen"  re-issue of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back blends elements of Roger Kastel's classic 1980 "Gone With the Wind"-style poster art with new elements depicting iconic characters and vehicles from Irvin Kershner's classic follow-on to Star Wars: A New Hope. ©2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

On September 22, 2019, in anticipation of the December 20 premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) re-issued the existing Star Wars Saga and Anthology films on Blu-ray. This re-release features all-new cover art loosely based on poster art from the 1970s, '80s, '90s, 2000s, and the current Disney/Lucasfilm era. It's also dubbed the "Multi-Screen" Edition because each Blu-ray package comes with both the physical Blu-ray disc (BD) and a code for the Movies Anywhere/iTunes/Google Play/Vudu digital copy. 
Publicity shot showing nine of the 10 titles in the 2019 "Multi-Screen Edition" re-issue. ©2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

What's New...and What's Not

Although 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the first six Star Wars films of the Skywalker Saga on Blu-ray before and after George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company, this is the first time that Disney's home video division, Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) does so. However, in the case of Episodes I-VI, this is yet another re-release (the fourth such re-issue of the BDs in the Fox/Lucasfilm 2011 Original Trilogy, Prequel Trilogy, and The Complete Saga box sets.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back presents the 2011 BD of Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes in all-new packaging. The slipcover and the plastic jewel-box boast all-new cover art that mixes elements from classic movie poster art and depictions of scenes from the film or iconic vehicles and/or settings. In the Empire Multi-Screen Edition's cover, we can see images lifted directly from Roger Kastel's classic Gone With the Wind-style A-poster of 1980 rearranged and mixed with new elements. Fittingly, since the film is about the evil Empire striking back at the Rebellion the menacing outlines of Darth Vader's helmet and breath mask dominate the background, and the film's principal characters - including Han Solo, Princess Leia, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, and Boba Fett - are arranged in a collage that is colored in (literally) cool blue-white hues that suggest the icy world of Hoth, one of the film's major settings.

The physical BD now has new label art; instead of the rather plain label that 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment stuck on the 2011 disc, the Multi-Screen Edition of The Empire Strikes Back now features a Blu-ray disc with an illustrated label that features a still image from the final scene in Irvin Kershner's "second act" in the original Star Wars Trilogy. Because Buena Vista Home Entertainment has taken over distribution of Disney-owned Lucasfilm's Star Wars films, all of the indicia associated with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment have been removed from the label; however, when you watch Empire from this disc, you'll see the old Fox logos and menu options from the 2011 release on your television screen.


  Discover the Conflict Between Good and Evil

 The Rebels scatter after the Empire attacks their base on the ice planet Hoth. Han Solo and Princess Leia are pursued by Imperials, while Luke trains with Jedi Master Yoda. Luke battles Darth Vader and learns the shocking truth of his past. - back cover blurb, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

 Obviously, the Multi-Edition BD of Empire has no surprising new changes: as a matter of fact, when I test-played my new disc, the Sony Blu-ray player "recognized" the BD and asked me if I wanted to resume playback, as we have been watching the Star Wars Skywalker Saga films to prep for The Rise of Skywalker. So if you are thinking that Lucasfilm is rolling out an all-new post-George Lucas edition of Empire, forget it.

The one new wrinkle ﹘ and my sole reason for buying the Multi-Screen Edition ﹘ is that the BD comes with the digital copy code that will let me stream the movie on my Internet-connected personal computer. I already have digital copies of The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, and Solo; Buena Vista included codes for those movies with the physical discs. 20th Century Fox, on the other hand, only released the digital versions of the two George Lucas Era trilogies in 2015 as a package titled Star Wars: The Digital Collection, but not in any of its physical media releases.

The Bonus Features are only available in the online version and are a mix of all-new featurettes and behind-the-scenes material from The Complete Saga box set:


  • Conversations: The Lost Interviews, a featurette that showcases taped audio interviews conducted by Lucasfilm's first publicist, Charles Lippincott, with members of the cast and crew of Star Wars: A New Hope
  • Discoveries from the Inside: Matte Paintings Revealed, a brief (less than five-minutes-long) look at the matte paintings used by Ralph McQuarrie, Mike Pangrazio, and other Lucasfilm artists to create some of the stunning images of that galaxy far, far away in the photochemical age of cinema
  • Featurette: George Lucas on the Digital Revolution (7:51)
  • Conversations with the Masters: The Empire Strikes Back 30 Years After (2010): A 25-minute-long documentary made a few months before Empire director Irvin Kershner died, in which he appears, along with screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and producer George Lucas, in a 30-year retrospective about the second Star Wars film made. Ported over from Star Wars: The Complete Saga's third bonus disc
  • Dennis Muren; How Walkers Walk (1:54): a short "home movie" narrated by special effects artist Dennis Muren (now a senior vice president at Lucasfilm) showing how stop-motion photography was used to create the All-Terrain Armored Transports' movements on the ice planet Hoth
  • Interview: George Lucas on Editing The Empire Strikes Back (1979): a short (3:24) behind-the-scenes look at how Lucas approached the editing process of the 1980 film
  • Interview: George Lucas on the Force (2010): a five-minutes and 19 seconds featurette ported over from the second bonus disc in the Star Wars: The Complete Saga box sets

So, is the Multi-Screen Edition Worth Getting?

As is the case with the Multi-Screen Edition of Star Wars: A New Hope, whether this re-issue of Empire is worth buying depends on your circumstances and point of view, especially when you are dealing with a repackaged version of a movie you may already have in your Blu-ray collection.

When I first got the news that Buena Vista and Lucasfilm were re-issuing all of the live-action Star Wars films on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital copies, I balked. I already own the 2011 and 2015 The Complete Saga sets, as well as Fox's final reissue of the six Tragedy of Darth Vader entries of the Skywalker Saga in Steelbook packages. Did I really want, much less need, more copies of the BDs? 

The answer, until recently, was No. I did not. I have not even watched the films in the 2015 Steelbook release of four years ago except to check for playback issues. Standalone repackaged versions of Blu-rays I already own three times over don't usually interest me. They take up shelf space I could use for other movies, plus I don't have money to burn. 

And even though I am not one of those fans who complain online about Lucas not wanting the non-Special Edition cuts on Blu-ray, I would have been more eager about this release if Lucasfilm had deigned to give us something new to ooh and ahh about. 

So, what changed my mind?

It wasn't the packaging. I have, in the past, knuckled under for re-issues of Star Wars DVDs because of some tweak to the packaging, so now I have the original 2004 Star Wars Trilogy box set and the 2008 DVD box sets for the Classic and Prequel Star Wars trilogies. (I also once owned the individual DVD releases of the first six films, but I gave those away to the young son of one of my mom's caregivers back in 2010.)

I decided, albeit with some hesitation, to get the first six films of the Skywalker Saga in Multi-Screen Edition for the digital copy codes. I have digital copies of The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, and Solo in my Movies Anywhere account, so I figured I might as well get the rest. So even though I tend to be a completist when it comes to Star Wars movie and TV content, I will not be getting the 2019 re-issues of the more recent movies; I don't need them since I have the physical discs and can stream them on Amazon Prime Video and Movies Anywhere. 

Whether or not consumers get this re-issue depends, as Obi-Wan Kenobi might say, on their unique points of view. Fans who already have earlier Blu-ray releases and 20th Century Fox's 2015 Star Wars: The Digital Collection may want to skip this 2019 Multi-Screen Edition. Already have you what the disc and digital copy contain, so this re-issue you do not require. 

However, if you don't already have the BDs of the Star Wars films, need to own the digital copy, or are a Packaging Completist, then you might want to consider getting Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in the 2019 Multi-Screen Edition.

Blu-ray Specifications:

(Note: This release contains the two audio commentaries found in the 2011 Blu-ray edition in various languages.)


Video
  • Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
  • Resolution: 1080p
  • Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Audio

  • English: DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
  • English: LPCM 2.0
  • Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
  • Spanish: LPCM 2.0
  • French: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • German: LPCM 2.0
  • Italian: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono
  • Russian: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Ukrainian: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Polish: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Czech: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Hungarian: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • English: LPCM Mono
  • Music: Dolby Digital 2.0

Subtitles

  • English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Iranian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian
Disc
  • Blu-ray Disc

Digital

  • Movies Anywhere

Playback
  • Region A 

Point of Interest: If you watch the digital copy of The Empire Strikes Back, the opening logos sequence is not the same on every streaming service. For instance, on Movies Anywhere, the 20th Century Fox "searchlights" logo appears just as it does in all pre-2019 home media versions, as well as the theatrical release version. On Amazon Prime, though, the Fox Fanfare by Alfred Newman and the famous logo are absent. In its place, the movie starts with the Lucasfilm logo, accompanied by a brief riff from The Empire Strikes Back score.



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