The 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival is opening with a flex of galactic muscle: “The Empire Strikes Back,” celebrating its 45th anniversary, will kick off the 16th edition of the festival presented by Turner Classic Movies in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 24. And even better, The Maker himself, George Lucas, will be in attendance to introduce it.
It’ll be an opening turbolaser salvo for a whole weekend of films revolving around the theme “Grand Illusions: Fantastic Worlds on Film,” brilliantly overseen once again by longtime festival director, Genevieve McGillicuddy. Other films in that otherworldly lineup include “Spirited Away,” “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “Mothra,” and “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.”
The festival will run the entire weekend, centered as always at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, which offers special rates for festival attendees, with screenings at the neighboring TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX, the TCL Chinese 6, the Egyptian, and the El Capitan.
Michelle Pfeifer will have a hand-and-footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre, and filmmaker and AFI founder George Stevens Jr. will receive the Robert Osborne Award, given to figures who have played a special role in keeping film history and heritage alive. The award is named after the original and longtime TCM host who died in 2017.
In recent years, the TCM Film Festival has had extraordinary events such as last year’s opening night “Pulp Fiction” screening, and a restoration screening of “Rio Bravo” with Angie Dickinson in attendance. (“Rio Bravo” happens to share a co-writer with “The Empire Strikes Back” in the great Leigh Brackett.) The festival is low-key one of Hollywood’s hottest tickets, with even A-list directors of the highest magnitude angling to introduce films they love: Steven Spielberg was proud to introduce a restoration of George Stevens’ “Giant,” in addition to engaging in a conversation with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz about his own work.
Lucas is particularly suited for the festival, and it will be a real treat to see him introduce the “Star Wars” sequel given his own extraordinary film history knowledge and acknowledgment that “Star Wars” was inspired by many films of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.
“’The Empire Strikes Back’ is like ‘The Godfather Part II,’” Mankiewicz, TCM Primetime Anchor and Official Host of the TCM Classic Film Festival, said in a statement. “Yes, technically, they’re sequels, the second movie in a series. But they are so much more. ‘Empire’ not only dazzled and delighted ‘Star Wars’ fans, it pushed the boundaries of moviemaking, further deepening its characters and expanding the most popular cinematic universe of all time. The first ‘Star Wars’ picture in 1977 ignited a new era in Hollywood and turned a generation of young people into passionate movie fans for life. Then, somehow, three years later, along comes ‘Empire,‘ which might even be better. It’s a stunning accomplishment and surely stands one of the great achievements in the history of film.”
IndieWire certainly agrees. Putting “The Empire Strikes Back” on our list of the Greatest Movies of the 1980s, we wrote, “The emotional truth of this story of mentorship and its limits, of friendship and its compromises, and of one very deranged father’s quest to be reunited with his son (a father who thinks he can sever his son’s hand but still win his companionship and loyalty), cuts through any plot holes with a commitment to its themes so timeless that even Homer and Virgil could understand it.”
