Your birth year
2006
The Empire Strikes Back
1980
The Empire Strikes Back is 26 years older than you
It's from 1980, before you were born.
- Director
- Irvin Kershner
- Genre
- Space opera
- Studio
- 20th Century Fox
- Released
- 1980
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About
As of 2026, it's 46 years old.
The Empire Strikes Back is the rare sequel routinely judged better than the original — darker, deeper, and brave enough to end with the heroes losing and a hand getting chopped off. It also delivered the single most famous plot twist in movie history, a line so iconic that people quote it slightly wrong ('Luke, I am your father') with total confidence.
It introduced Yoda, the wisdom of a tiny green swamp goblin, and proved a blockbuster could have genuine weight and shadow.
Bold, melancholy, and franchise-defining, Empire is the sequel that set the bar every sequel since has been politely failing to clear.
