 Roger Ebert described the film as the strongest and "most thought-provoking" film of the original trilogy.Writing for Empire Magazine, Ian Nathan gave the film a five-star rating proclaiming "it's generally agreed that The Empire Strikes Back is the best film of George Lucas' initial trilogy (despite a latter-day shift toward the original's storytelling purity).Not a sequel as such, but the next part of a continuing story, Empire marks enormous progression both in terms of the mythos of the series and in the filmmaking quality itself."