A Flavour of the Book: “The biggest problem – a potentially film-destroying event – had to be counteracted by Lucas during a strategic lunch on one of their first few days back. In the intervening time between Tunisia and his arrival at the studio in London, Guinness had mulled over the death of Obi-Wan, and was not happy at all about it…”
The Authortrek View: This
is a monster of a book about a monster of a film, full of beautiful
illustrations, many of which have never seen print before. Much of the text is derived from
interviews conducted during the making of the film, which have never been
published before, and although the text is very small, due to the sheer
quantity of material, it is well worth persevering with, as there are many
great stories contained within it.
I first noticed George Lucas’s anti-war sentiment in Attack of the
Clones, since the building of the Emperor’s war machine eerily resonated
with the ongoing preparations for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. So I felt quite vindicated when reading
The Making of Star Wars to see that George Lucas had purposefully
equated the VietCong with the rebellion alliance, with his own government cast
as the evil empire… Although, at age 5 in 1977, I was a little too young to make
that analogy with the Vietnam War.
I was also surprised to learn from this book that George Lucas was
originally going to direct Apocalypse Now, and that it was Francis Ford
Coppola who persuaded his protégé that if he really wanted to make films, then
he should write his own scripts.
Rinzler relates that writing was something that George Lucas would never
particularly enjoy, which is probably best shown by his famously clunking
dialogue.
The Making of Star Wars also reveals just how much
the story changed from George Lucas’s original concepts. Indeed, Lucas rewrote several aspects
of the movie while it was being filmed, such as the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi,
which so disturbed Alec Guinness that there was the danger that he would walk
out of the film… You get the sense that George Lucas wanted to write a
particular kind of adventure, reminiscent of the Flash Gordon serials
and the Westerns that he had enjoyed in his youth, and that the plot itself was
secondary, little realising, perhaps, just how big of a universe that he was in
the process of creating. Rinzler
relates that Lucas was also a fan of director Akira Kurosawa, to the extent
that he considered making the film in Japanese, with Toshiro Mifune cast as
Kenobi… This was obviously a crazy idea that would never work, yet Lucas had
other mould-breaking ideas that did really pay off, such as controlling the
rights to the movie, arranging serializations with Marvel Comics, and opening
the movie while kids were still at school so that they would more effectively
generate the word-of-mouth publicity that would propel the film into the
stratosphere. And although Lucas
knew his audience very well, even he grossly underestimated the film’s appeal,
probably because he, as a consummate filmmaker, saw everything that had gone
wrong with the movie, rather than what had gone right. The making of
Star Wars was ultimately a highly frustrating time for Lucas, as Rinzler
reveals, which even led him having to go to hospital with a suspected heart
attack…
The battles with Fox’s executives wore Lucas down, as did
the constant tea breaks of his British filming crew, who were cheap, if not the
most productive. And while Star
Wars is predominantly remembered for its special effects, Rinzler reveals
that they weren’t so groundbreaking as they were originally heralded to be, and
that it was a struggle to really make them work. There are many delightful details in the book, such as the
revelation that Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca, continued to work as a
hospital porter between the first two films. Brian De Palma was very critical of the rough cuts, and
rewrote the famous opening prologue, which Fox executives wanted to ditch for
fear that kids wouldn’t be able to read it. Difficulties also arose in Tunisia,
as the production crew of Jesus of Nazareth had already snapped up all
the best hotels. At the end of it
all, Rinzler tells us that George Lucas was so caught up with the making of the
film that he didn’t realise that it had already opened… The Making of Star
Wars is a more than fitting way to celebrate 30 years of Darth Vader and
co, as J. W. Rinzler successfully warps us back to those halcyon days of 1977,
and beyond.
To find out more about the editor, please visit our J. W. Rinzler page.
If you have any more details about
this book or a review you can send it to
authortrekreview@authortrek.com.
We will not publish your email address, or pass it on to other
parties. Please include the author’s name and the book title in the subject
line of your email.
If you have any further queries, then please read the FAQ
first.
Lisez cette page en français avec
Babelfish Lesen
diese Seite auf Deutsch mit
Babelfish
