Empire Strikes Back

Last Friday was the 30 anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back, one of the greatest movies of all time.  After the tredemous succuess that was episode 4 A New Hope, the amount of pressure that was on the team behind Empire must of been daunting to say the least.  But what they gave was one of the greatest movies ever and my favorite Star Wars film. IGN has two great article one featuring 100 things you might not of known about the film and how this sequel influenced a large number of sequel that followed suit.  http://movies.ign.com/articles/109/1091748p1.html
http://movies.ign.com/articles/109/1092034p1.html

One of the things that Empire did that a lot of sequel nowadays don't do is that it told a complete story that added to the Star Wars universe. I think a lot of sequel often times forget that they need to tell a story first that feature compelling story arcs for our characters.  Iron Man 2 really makes me feel that it spent more time setting up future sequels of the Avengers and Iron Man 3 rather then telling me an interesting Tony Stark story.