The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Let me start off by saying that The Empire Strikes Back is one of my favorite movies of all time. As I am writing this review I am about halfway through the book, but I feel somewhat compelled to write a review due to the recent passing of the director, Irvin Kershner. One of the included quotations from Kershner regarding his approach to the making of "Empire" illustrates why this movie is so well-loved by Star Wars fans, and in my opinion reflects what exactly was so frustrating to many fans about the Prequels: "The thing that you learn in directing is that when you're on the floor, no matter how complex the shooting is...you have to remain absolutely sensitive to every nuance of the behavior of the people around you. Because, ultimately, if you don't keep in mind the overall humanity, then the machine takes over and suddenly all you have are technically fine shots, technically good performances. The story's being told, but something's lacking, something mysterious, indefinable." --Irvin Kershner "Empire" had this "indefinable humanity" in spades, and the book really shows how the director was able to craft such a tale. Kershner really played with the tensions between Luke and Vader, and between Leia and Han. He (along with Frank Oz and Mark Hamill) made us all believe there is a soul underneath that puppet (Yoda). The lack of this "indefinable humanity" in the Prequels is what made me so sad about how the those movies ultimately came out (but perhaps this should better be saved for another review). Back to the book: I highly highly recommend this. From the inclusion of amazing archival behind-the-scenes photos, gorgeous concept art and sketches (most notably by Ralph McQuarrie), to in-depth first-hand accounts by most of the important cast and crew, it really brings you so close to what everyone went through in the making of the movie.

Covers the nuts and bolts of making the first successful Hollywood sequel. The downs and ups and mostly the gory details

A book well worth collecting. This behind the scenes book of The Empire Strikes Back is a classic.

This book is everything that everyone says it is, so if you're a fan and behind-the-scenes stuff interests you in general, go ahead and pick it up. Watch out for it being a little bit of a bummer, though, because the picture it paints is that everyone had a pretty terrible time making the movie. The film crew was exhausted and miserable; George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, and Gary Kurtz (who were under tremendous pressure because Lucas bet the whole farm on the movie) eventually burned their bridges with one another; screenwriter Leigh Brackett and 2nd unit director John Barry both died during production; Mark Hamill is depressed, insecure and lonely (there's a fleeting but telling mention of him being in therapy) and Carrie Fisher is constantly getting sick (going by her later admissions, it's hard not to suspect that "sick" was code for "coked out of her gourd"). Harrison Ford is his typically cynical self and while that probably helped keep himself sane living in the world of Hollywood, it's not exactly feel-good reading. The book is put together nearly entirely from contemporaneous sources from the studio archives that lend it a fantastic fly-on-the-wall perspective, but that also means a lack of introspection and hindsight, especially on the one subject I was most interested in specifically: ** When, why and how did Lucas come up with the greatest plot twist in all of history? ** Because it was the utmost secret at the time, all the book can tell us is that the plot turn simply first appears in some of Lucas's early plot outlines. As far as I know, since the movie came out all Lucas has said about the matter was some vague notion that he had "always" planned the story this way (which is at the very least a massive exaggeration). It remains a mystery. 'The Making of 'The Empire...'' makes it plain that at its heart the movie was mostly a business move by Lucas (who point-blank states that he hates writing and hates directing) so he could make enough money to build his ranch, retire there and make little films for himself and his old film school buddies to enjoy as a hobby like building model trains. Deep down I think we all kind of knew this was the case but staring the truth in the face like this still feels a little like a kid learning Santa Claus isn't real (or that Darth-You-Know-Who is our You-Know-What). The book is a treasure of rewards, but prepare yourself for the disillusionment. >>>EDIT: I decided to upgrade from 4 to 5 stars. While in some ways not as enjoyable as I might have hoped, I do appreciate the book being completely honest about the whole affair. I also missed that the 'Darth Vader' twist appeared earlier than the second script draft and corrected that.

If there's more information to be made available about the making of this film, I'd be shocked. This is an exhaustive account of the pre-production, production, and post-production of The Empire Strikes Back. Everything you ever wanted to know about the film is most likely here...and then some. It sounds like the making of this film was arduous, and, as such, the book can be an arduous read at times. Every time it got back to the topic of developing the character of Yoda, I thought, "Oh no, not Yoda again." That having been said, the book does what it sets out to do, and gives the reader what I can only assume is the complete story of the making of this film. It's a well-written book and definitely worth your time if you're a fan of the film. A warning about the embedded video and audio clips: they're a worthy addition to the book, but did not work for me on anything other than my iPhone -- not my Android tablet, and not my PC. At the time I purchased the book, the description stated it would work on Android (and I think PC as well), but this was not the case.

Let's just say that these three books are the reason i still love Star Wars. Like the A new hope and the Return of the Jedi , this Empire strikes Back edition pulls you right into it. So many details,day to day experience,you feel like you're with the cast and crew.from selling the pitch to the first showing , you will learn so much. I never get tired of reading them.

Introducing my daughter to the Star Wars universe seemed like a good idea to me, after all it features a princess who can fight and even repair space ships. So I ordered this book because I thought it would be a good idea to show her how movies are (or better, were) made. And we read it before I showed her those parts of the movie which I found appropriate for her (excluding Wampa and Darth Vader choking scenes). So she knew that there was a small person inside of R2-D2, and important things like this. Most importantly, she now nows that princesses can fight, too. But back to the book: When I opened it for the first time, I was overwhelmed by the amount of text and information and I was wondering whether my choice was a good one. After all, it looked very "nerdy" to me and I could not imagine that someone could fill so many pages and keep the reader interested at the same time. "Will I ever read this?!" I asked myself. But that was very wrong! The book shines a light on *every* aspect of film making, from financing to sound engineering. And it puts an emphasis on how much dedication, talent and hard work is needed to produce something that is "just" a movie. I learned a great deal about movie making in general from it while feeling entertained from beginning to end. Great stuff! The only negative is that I kind of expected more reference material such as "blueprints" of the hardware in the movie. There is, e.g., a top view and a side view of a Rebel transport ship in one (too) small photograph, which is exactly what I was looking for. More and bigger images like this one would have been great. But this should not distract from an overall five-star rating.

Piękne wydanie, bogate w unikalne zdjęcia z planu filmowego i koncepcje artystyczne. Wydanie oczywiście anglojęzyczne. Szkoda tylko, ze w Polsce nie są wydawane takie piękne albumy filmowe.

Having read Rinzler’s excellent “The Making of Return Of The Jedi” earlier this year, I decided I wanted to go back into the wonderfully informative environment he created and asked for this for my birthday. Luckily for me, since I’m so difficult to buy for (apparently), it was gratefully bought. Using mainly contemporary interviews (from late 1977 through to 1980), with a few conducted in the 90s and 00s, this covers the whole of the production from the opening of “Star Wars” (which took everyone by complete surprise) to the opening of “Empire Strikes Back” and touches on pretty much every aspect of the production in between. As with the Jedi book, the research is thorough and extensive, which even extends to captioning pictures and identifying people way in the background. The success of “Star Wars” does help the cause a bit here, since “Empire” benefited from an accomplished unit publicist in Alan Arnold, who later published “Once Upon A Galaxy: A Journal of the making of The Empire Strikes Back”, which I read a couple of years ago. A thick paperback, it was the official making of (there was also a magazine too) and Rinzler quotes from it extensively, whilst also drawing on other interviews Mr Arnold made at the time but which have previously been unpublished. At first I thought this overlap of information might be too repetitive but it isn’t at all, with the longest lift (where Irvin Kershner was miked up on the Carbon Freezing set) being interspersed with later comments made by the principals concerned. By the end of 1977, George Lucas was already at work on the sequel and brought in Leigh Brackett to shape the screenplay. The script conference transcripts published here only have his contributions (no explanation is made as to why) but they’re very interesting, with the bare bones of the film clearly already in place in his mind (though he gets as stuck here with Vader living in a castle as he did the Empire planet during the Jedi conferences). As it was, Brackett died before she could work on the second draft and virtually none of what she wrote was used, though Lucas ensured she retained a screen credit. Instead, Lawrence Kasdan was drafted in - he’d just written the “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” script - and his approach is clearly like a breath of fresh air, as he questions ideas and motives and suggests (on occasion and usually unsuccessfully) that Lucas might not be right. Adamant that he wouldn’t direct, Lucas suggested his old USC film tutor Irvin Kershner for the role with the latter agreeing after several conversations (I imagine the fact that his son was ten-years-old also played a part). Kersh, as he’s affectionately called by everyone, was clearly a different director, keen to take his time on composition and although Lucas had concerns about producer Gary Kurtz’s ability to rein him in, he chose not to air them - a decision he would later come to regret. As well as the pre-production of the film, the book also follows the formation of several Lucasfilm entities, including Black Falcon (the licensing arm, which I only discovered the existence of in the Jedi book), how the various divisions were structured and the plans for Skywalker ranch. Having read “Skywalking” (which is not listed in the bibliography at the back of this), I love that whole late seventies period, as the company sets up and operates out of The Egg Company in LA and ILM hides in plain sight as The Kerner Company in San Anselmo and Rinzler is thorough in his exploration of this period. It’s also interesting to see how the merchandising helped the entire operation, with Black Falcon lending money to both Lucasfilm and ILM to get things moving. Best of all though is the information about the ranch - the plans, the daytrips, the fourth of July picnics - and Rinzler paints a wonderful picture of the era, the atmosphere remembered fondly by all those involved in it, a tight and small close-knit group that felt like a family. But even as the production wore on and the dealings with the banks got more intense and Lucas was pushed into an executive role with his companies (Lucasfilm funded the whole project), things were changing. Lucy Wilson - Kurtz’s assistant and one of the original employees - comments that where once she and Lucas could say hi and chat, she soon had to book appointments to see him. As it is, this seems as troubling to Lucas as anyone else. Production began with the main unit at Finse in Norway and it seems to have been a disaster from the beginning. Weather delayed shooting, Kershner took his time and things got away from Kurtz, leading to his eventual estrangement from the Lucasfilm group, with Howard Kazanjian (who would go on to produce Jedi) getting more involved. Things were more settled at Elstree Studios in London, though Kershner, working with his DoP Peter Suschitzky to produce the best work possible, played havoc with Lucas’ plans. As his pace upset the schedule and pushed the film over budget, issues with cashflow and the banks kicked in, adding further to the stresses that Lucas was trying to hide from his director. Rinzler covers every aspect of the production in equal detail (I loved the discovery that the filming was juggled to fit the sets - since the Falcon was built full-size, it pretty much stayed where it was and new sets were built aruond it) and doesn’t shy away from some of the more candid conversations. Lucas was a large presence on set (but not to the extent that he would be on “Jedi”) and although he takes every opportunity to point out he’s not the director (he didn’t do any of the publicity tours), the very thought of it clearly annoys Kershner, who bristles with journalists who suggest it. For his part, Kershner comes across well, imbuing the material with depth and emotion and working hard with his cast and crew to make things are good as they possibly can be. Working in the moment, having already planned thoroughly, he liked to leave enough room for conversations and discussions with his actors (the Carbon freezing sequence, as mentioned above, shows this brilliantly) that clearly benefit the film. Of the actors, Mark Hamill comes across very well, though he does comment he and Carrie Fisher clashed a few times. In fact, Fisher also clashes with Kershner and Harrison Ford (in the miked-up section) and Billy Dee Williams later tries to be diplomatic, in saying that her mind perhaps wasn’t on the job all the time. In fact, with the production keen to film her scenes and release her, it appears her well-documented foray into addiction was already taking hold. Ford, for his part, comes across as occasionally stroppy but always keen to do a good job. As production released cast members to move into the Dagobah set and the schedule goes ever further over, you can almost hear the rankling in Lucas’ comments as the pressure being put on him - as the financier - must have been incredible. That’s not helped by the whole Yoda situation and it’s worth noting that whilst the world readily accepted the puppet as a living, breathing character, at the time it was an enormous risk. We watch “Empire” now, we see Yoda everywhere and we take him as read but back in 1978/79, nobody had tried anything like it before. I was surprised to read that Frank Oz only worked on the film for 12 days (he was lent out by Jim Henson’s company as they were gearing up for “The Dark Crystal”) and completely agree with Kershner’s observation that the Dagobah sequences are made by the sincerity of Mark Hamill’s acting. Another thing I discovered is something I’ve long wondered, that the second and third films can’t have been as much fun for Hamill since Luke was often split up from the other characters. He’s quoted as saying, “It was almost like two separate films were being made. I got nostalgic for the grand old days on the Death Star, when Harrison, Carrie, Chewie and I were all together in the trash compactor.” Hamill ended up working on the film for 103 days. Production complete, the action moves back to California. ILM was put together again in San Anselmo, moving away from LA and the original building and leaving John Dykstra and several colleagues there. In between designing shots (far more than the original film) and creating new worlds and ships and creatures, the team also had to design and build new equipment and the schedule very quickly becomes constrictive. Everyone keeps their sense of humour though - especially effects supervisor Ken Ralston - and by the end of the period, they’re even changing original shots (the Wampa monster) because they don’t want anything “crappy” popping up in ‘their film’. Rinzler, as with every other aspect of the production, is exhaustive in his approach to the ILM work, with shots often mapped out by the frame so that they fit into the already fine-edited final cut of the film (which Lucas would add a few shots too, between the initial limited-run 70mm release and the wide 35mm one). Phil Tippett and Jon Berg quite rightly get a lot of attention for their stop-motion work with the AT-AT’s (another risky visual image) and Tauntauns, but it’s clear to see that ILM was a more harmonious place with everyone being given a chance to shine (Lucas later says he was very pleased with the work they did). Hoth seems to have been the hardest work in terms of technical difficulties (not only colour matching snow and hiding matte lines, but also trying to comp stop-motion creatures into it), with a lot of effort put into them - Bruce Nicholson, head of the optical department, shrugs away his successes by saying he used a “Norway filter”. Towards the end of post-production, Alan Ladd jr left Twentieth Century Fox, which didn’t help Lucas with the studio or the banks since Ladd was their key supporter. Lawrence Kasdan was also caught out, since Fox was going to make his noir-thriller “Body Heat” and once Ladd left, the film was put into turnaround. Ladd set the film up at his new Ladd Company and Lucas was sponsor on the film, with the proviso that if it went over budget, the funds should come from his fee. As Kasdan says, “this was a generous, supportive thing to do”. Rinzler examines contemporary interviews and one, from Time magazine in 1978, seems particularly pertinent. When asked about his future directing ambitions, Lucas says “I will go back and direct another [“Star Wars”] film, but it will be toward the end of the cycle, about 20 years from now”. The Phantom Menace was released in 1999. Rinzler also details how perceptive Lucas was with future technology and how it would assist the film-making process, especially with digital images. Sprocket Systems (later renamed Skywalker Sound) had a Computer Research and Development Division set up within it, headed by Ed Catmull, to develop computer aided visual and sounding editing equipment. They also developed the Pixar system, which would later become the Pixar Division and be sold off to Steve Jobs. The post-production part ends with a section on the matte paintings which Harrison Ellenshaw, Ralph McQuarrie and Michael Pangrazio created. Showing them in progress and often against the final frames, these are gloriously reproduced and a real sight to behold. As with Jedi, the final part of the book deals with the release and reception of the film, as Lucas’ risky venture proves a hit with the paying public (he made his money back in three months), if not all of the critics (though some would change their tune over the years) though it did win several awards in 1980 (including a special Academy Award for the visual effects). Reading some of the reviews back - again with the benefit of hindsight, knowing that this sequel is generally considered the best film of the trilogy (I prefer “Star Wars”, as it happens) - it’s interesting to see how people’s perceptions changed. Candid, thorough and superbly researched, this is painstakingly extensive and never less than readable and filled with beautifully reproduced photographs. I thought the Jedi book would be the benchmark but I think Rinzler has excelled himself here. I’m a huge fan of the original trilogy and Making Of Books and this is pretty much perfect, to the extent that I dragged out the last few pages because I didn’t want it to end. Very highly recommended.

The Making of the Empire Strikes Back è una vera chicca per i fan di Star Wars e per gli appassionati di cinema in generale. Il libro racconta cosa si cela dietro la creazione del capitolo più bello (almeno a mio parere) della saga, attraverso le testimonianze degli attori, produttori, creatori e chiunque abbia lavorato al film, arricchito da interessanti immagini del dietro le quinte e i bozzetti illustrativi di Ralph Mcquarrie che hanno visivamente creato la galassia di Star Wars. Mi ha stupito moltissimo la sincerità con cui sono raccontati i tre anni di preparazione al film, senza tralasciare nessuno dei tanti problemi affrontati, dagli intoppi tecnici alle liti fra gli attori. Davvero un ottimo libro, una lettura fondamentale per i fan.