Listen, this is a very good book. It just wasn’t the droid I was looking for. Well, more accurately it was the droid I was looking for, but he brought along his annoying protocol droid buddy who bothered me with information about himself (wow, I think I just made a reference that equates a book about George Lucas to C-3PO… I am such a nerd).
After reading the great reviews of this book by emmalita and narfna, I quickly added it to my library waitlist. After my viewing of The Force Awakens, a book that explored the cultural aspects of a fandom which spread from a galaxy far, far away sounded truly interesting. This book absolutely delivers on that promise, but I also got an incredibly comprehensive accounting of the life of George Lucas and his creative process. You know what I discovered while reading this book? I don’t give a damn about George Lucas. It’s not something he did (Special Editions not withstanding), but more that I don’t find the man very interesting. His creative mind has brought me some of my favorite things, and some of my most despised (THX 1183 anyone? I just don’t get it). It’s more that I find him dull and his apparent inability to create without suffering, or refusal to create for others, to be a less than satisfactory read.
What I ended up doing was skimming the Lucas-focused chapters, because I actually knew a lot about his personal history and famous friendships which impacted his career (Coppola and Spielberg, notably). But, there were always nuggets of interest in each chapter.
However, this book won me back to singing its praises in its second half. What I discovered, and what author Chris Taylor lays out on the page, is that the time period I was really interested in didn’t truly start until the mid to late 1990s. Ah-ha! Problem solved. Here’s the explosion of fan interest which I grew up with. I wasn’t alive for the first two Star Wars movies, and I never read anything in the Expanded Universe (I know! Novelizations have not been something which was ever really on my radar), but the 501st? Now we’re talking.
But I am only rating this book three stars, compared to higher ratings you’ll see nearly everywhere else. Why? Because while Taylor obviously spent a great deal of time crafting *the* work on the subject, it was just too dense for me and moved too slowly (I probably would have been served waiting to listen to this on audio as emmalita suggested instead of lunging into it in hardback). You will most likely enjoy this book much more than me, but I suggest thinking through the following criteria: 1. Do you LOVE Star Wars? 2. How much George Lucas is too much George Lucas? And finally, 3. How in the mood are you for a very detailed 400-page book of non-fiction? If you answer those three questions with: 1. SO MUCH, 2. I can stand a lot of Mr. Lucas, and 3. That sounds like the best thing ever, you’ll enjoy this book. I suggest reading it soon, as the secretive nature of the lead up to Episode VII led to a lot of forecasting and “who knows?” from Taylor, and now we do know – so his book is going to start to become dated as the Anthology movies start rolling out this winter.
I think listening to it really helped get through some of the less interesting stuff about George Lucas. Because you are right, he really is the least interesting part of Star Wars.
My favorite parts of this book were all the bits surrounding the initial creation of the first trilogy and its release. And although I don’t find Lucas interesting in himself, I definitely thought reading about all that stuff surrounding him was interesting. Ha, I actually would have liked it to have *more* detail.