Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

The Rebel Alliance is in hiding on the icy planet of Hoth. The Empire is searching the galaxy system by system, sending probe droids to various worlds. Luke Skywalker witnesses the landing of one, but is suddenly attacked by a Wampa Ice Monster before he can investigate. Luke is strung up in the Wampa's cave to serve as dinner. He cuts his way free and chops an arm off the Wampa, but the gravely injured man finds himself in a night blizzard, hopelessly far away from the base.

Han Solo, meanwhile, is planning to leave the Alliance in order to pay off Jabba the Hutt and to finally get the bounty hunters off his back. Fighting his conflicted feelings for Princess Leia, Han sets out on Tauntaun to find Luke.

Freezing to death out in the blizzard, Luke sees an apparition - the supposedly dead Obi-Wan Kenobi, who tells him that he must go to the swamp planet of Dagobah to be trained as a Jedi by Yoda, "the Jedi Master who instructed me." As the vision fades, Han appears. Before he can get Luke to safety, his Tauntaun dies from exposure to the cold. All Han can do is build a shelter, give Luke first aid, and hope for the best....

The next morning, the Echo Station snowspeeders find the duo and bring them back to base. Luke is healed in a bacta tank, albeit permanently scarred. Hoth base soon finds itself attacked by several Wampas, whom they keep penned up in a cell. Han and Chewbacca investigate signs of a spy outside the base, only to encounter a probe droid. Han destroys it, but it's already sent its' findings....

The Imperial Death Squadron, under the command of Darth Vader, receives the probe information and heads to Hoth at top speed. The Rebels face a gruelling evacuation and ground battle, with AT-ATs pounding the base and swatting down snowspeeders. In all, sixteen Rebel transports are destroyed. Despite all this, the heroes all make it off Hoth, with Luke and Artoo going to Dagobah; Han, Leia and Chewbacca flying off in the Millenium Falcon; and the rest of the Alliance flying to a rendezvous point on the Galactic Rim.

Vader, who has become murderously obsessed with finding and capturing Skywalker at any cost, lets the other Rebels go and doggedly pursues the Falcon with his entire fleet (led by the SSD Executor) into an asteroid belt. The Falcon, its hyperdrive disabled by improper repairs earlier, hides in an asteroid cave, only to be chased out again by mynocks and a huge space slug. Han desperately attacks a Star Destroyer head on, attaching the Falcon to it to make it seem it got away. After a while, the Destroyers break off the search and head off. The Falcon detaches and makes for the nearest settlement, the tibanna gas colony Cloud City on Bespin - owned by a former friend of Han's, Lando Calrissian. However, Vader hired bounty hunters to find the Millenium Falcon - and the best of them all, Boba Fett, is following the limping Falcon straight to Cloud City. Emperor Palpatine reveals to Vader via holo transmission that he knows of Luke's existence and wants him killed - the boy could conceivably become powerful enough to overthrow them both. Vader protests, offering to turn Luke to the Dark Side instead. Palpatine allows it, planning himself to have Luke replace Vader if necessary....

Meanwhile, Luke crash-lands his X-Wing on Dagobah, where he soon encounters Yoda. The old Master plays foxy with the boy, pretending to be a senile loon to gauge the boy's manner. He finds to his dismay that Luke is too impatient, impulsive, and quick to anger - in other words, just like Anakin before him. With Ben's urging, though, Yoda reluctantly begins training the young man in the ways of the Force. He puts emphasis on Luke confronting his flaws and overcoming them, as graphically illustrated by a vision inside a cave tainted with the Dark Side - a duel with a phantom - like Vader, only to reveal Luke's face under the mask. Yoda later raises Luke's X-Wing from the lake bottom to show the true power of the Force.

Two months pass.

Nearly at the end of its resources, the Millenium Falcon finally finds sanctuary at Cloud City, as Lando welcomes the tired group warmly. Han and Leia have slowly been growing romantic over the course of the chase. However, Threepio soon sees something he should not, and gets promptly blown to bits by the stormtrooper corporal Drazin....

On Dagobah, Luke begins to be haunted by visions of the immediate future-visions of Han and Leia in agonising pain. Yoda warns him that if he quits his training prematurely to go rescue them, "you will have sacrificed all for which they fought and suffered."

At Cloud City, the trap is sprung. Lando delivers the group to Vader on a silver platter. Vader promptly puts Han through a gruelling torture session, promising to give the smuggler to Fett when Skywalker arrives. He begins reneging on an earlier deal with Calrissian, putting the ex-conman's city and people in increasing danger....

Luke finally cannot take it anymore. He vows to rescue his friends from Vader's clutches, in spite of Ben and Yoda's urgent warnings. Realising he will face Vader in battle without any help, he takes off. Ben despairs - if Luke dies, the last chance at redemption for the Jedi and the galaxy dies with him. But Yoda surprises him with the words: "No, there is another."

Vader decides to trap Luke by encasing him in a block of carbonite, and tests the process by turning Han into a metal slab before Leia and Chewbacca's horrified eyes. He gives the slab to Fett to deliver, "with my compliments," to Jabba. He places an Imperial garrison in charge of Cloud City and takes the other Rebels to go with him to the Emperor - in direct contradiction of his deal with Lando. Finally realising he has been duped; Lando turns the tables and frees the heroes to go after Fett. However, the stormtroopers slow them down just enough for the bounty hunter to make a clean getaway in his ship, the Slave I. Lando orders Cloud City's population to evacuate immediately, and the heroes rush off to the Falcon.

Meanwhile, Luke arrives and is led into the carbon freezing chamber and the waiting Vader. A fast and furious duel ensues. Vader pulls out every stop, but Luke manages to survive and keep fighting. Increasingly furious and frustrated, Vader traps Luke at the end of a gantry, chopping the Jedi's right hand off and sending it and his lightsaber tumbling down an endless reactor shaft.

Then he drops the ultimate bombshell: Darth Vader, murderer of the Jedi, is in fact Anakin Skywalker - Luke's father.

Devastated by what he realises is the truth, Luke opts to commit suicide rather than join Vader in the Dark Side. A long fall later, he is dangling from a vane on the city's underside. Ben can no longer help him. Without even knowing why, he screams out to Leia for help through the Force. Incredibly, she hears his call and turns the Falcon around, picking him up and racing into space.

Waiting for them is the SSD Executor and Vader. He had the Millenium Falcon's repaired hyperdrive disabled, so only a tractor beam separates him from total victory. At the last second, Artoo Detoo enables the hyperdrive, letting the Falcon snatch escape from the jaws of capture.

The heroes arrive at the Rebel fleet, now massed at the rim. Luke is fitted with a robotic hand to replace his lost one. Lando, now with nowhere to go, agrees to join the Rebellion. He is assigned with Chewbacca to finding Han Solo and saving him from Fett and Jabba, if that is possible. He swears to Leia he will bring Han back to her, any way he can. The Millenium Falcon flies away toward Tatooine, as Luke and Leia watch....