Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy

Release Date: September 21, 2004

Watch Date: May 4 – May 5, 2023

 

    This is not a National Geographic documentary.

    But see, it was May the Fourth, and it turns out – well it doesn’t turn out, I knew this already, but I kind of hoped Bob would forget – that Bob loves Star Wars. Loves it. Not a feeling I can relate to, but whatever, we each have our things. That does mean he began insisting on May 3rd that we watch a Star Wars movie on the 4th. So we compromised. Star Wars documentary. Of course, this documentary was longer than most movies we’ve watched thus far, so I kind of feel like he won a game I wasn’t aware I was playing.

    This documentary goes into more detail than you could ever want about the creation of the first Star Wars movie, and very little detail on the second two films in the trilogy, like they’re after thoughts. Now, he didn’t have to work as hard to film them, and there probably weren’t as many challenges, but the build up to and completion of the first film is over half the run time of this documentary. It feels it extremely unbalanced, and makes you really notice the length of the film.

    Bob, like most Star Wars fans, knew most of the trivia. There were a few pieces he’d never heard before, but weirdly I had heard the ones he hadn’t? It was an interesting dynamic really, filling in each other’s blanks. Of course, we did keep telling each other trivia that would be confirmed later on in the film, but that was kind of fun in and of itself.

    So what I’m trying to say is that if you’re a hardcore Star Wars fan, there’s probably very little this film talks about that you don’t already know. It’s not like there’s suddenly any brand new revelations that would completely change your understanding of the film. It’s all just compressed into a pretty well done documentary, again, mostly about the first film. If you’re extremely interested in the other two, or want lots of stories or behind the scenes footage of the other two films, you’re just not going to get them.

    For what it is, and what it’s goal was, it does exactly what it says on the tin, and it does it fairly well. There’s not a lot of re-watchability, unless you are even more into Star Wars than Bob is, which would be a top tier of Star Wars fan. Be prepared to dedicate an entire evening to it as well, but there will be interesting stories shared and you will definitely realize the enormous changes that Star Wars, and the corporations and systems Lucas had to put in to place to create his films and to protect them, made to the Hollywood scene.