Harrison Ford, as Han Solo, and director Irvin Kershner in the Millennium Falcon hold. From The Making of the Empire Strikes Back, by J. W. Rinzler.

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, Lucasfilm is releasing a comprehensive history of the making of the groundbreaking film, aptly titled The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The book is packed with hundreds of rarely seen behind-the-scenes photographs which you can preview here. Today marks the last installment in a series of interviews coinciding with the release.

George Lucas gets all the much-deserved praise for creating the Star Wars galaxy. But with The Empire Strikes Back, director Irvin Kershner added a level of character depth that is not always present in the other installments. Kersh, as he’s called on set, is the perfect complement to Lucas. He’s a dreamer, and doesn’t shy away from what if he had directed another Star Wars movie—which, as he told VF Daily, could have happened.Over the last few weeks, corresponding over email, Kershner and I discussed a wide array of topics, ranging from the alternative reality of a Kershner-directed Return of the Jedi, the most difficult Empire scene to shoot, the news of Star Wars being released in 3-D, and why a cartoon rat may be the most important movie character of the last ten years.

__Mike Ryan: The initial reviews for Empire were mostly positive, but they were the most mixed of the original trilogy. Is it satisfying to know that, years later, Empire is the critic and fan favorite?__

Irvin Kershner: I have not given much credence to reviews of my films. Sometimes they’re wrong, but it didn’t matter to me. I have not been a follower of how many millions my films made or did not make. In this case, I wanted very much for the film to succeed because I knew that George was spending his own money on it. I think the critics felt that they were going to see an extension of Star Wars. In other words, they wanted another Star Wars. I decided that the potential was much greater than a rerun of Star Wars. When I finally accepted the assignment, I knew that it was going to be a dark film, with more depth to the characters than in the first film. It took a few years for the critics to catch up with the film and to see it as a fairy tale rather than a comic book.

Why do you think the reaction is so overwhelmingly positive today as opposed to 1980?

Fans have written over the last 30 years telling me how eagerly they awaited the second film of the trilogy. I hadn’t realized how many young children would be seeing the film, and how it would effect them. I think the kids responded to the movement, the characters, and the fairy tale quality of the film. The humor helped make the film appealing to more mature audiences as well.

Because of the cliffhanger, do you think Return of the Jedi had to be released before some people fully appreciated Empire?

I knew in the making of Empire that this was to be the second of a trilogy. Therefore I considered it the second act, the second movement—but it wouldn’t have the same climax that an ordinary film would have, where it sets up a premise, moves along, there is a payoff with a grand climax of some kind of action. The action in this film came at the beginning because it is a continuation of the first film.