Empire of Dreams: The Story of the 'Star Wars' Trilogy (2004)

This documentary chronicles the making of the original Star Wars trilogy from start to finish. We get some background on George Lucas' start in the business and then continue with the making of Star Wars (1977), Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). The visual/special effects and financial problems are explained as well as casting, editing, scoring and releasing the films with tons of archival footage and interviews with plenty of cast & crew members.

Keywords: audition, behind-the-scenes, colon-in-title, making-of, movie-connection-in-title, out-take, screen-test, ten-word-title

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James Earl Jones: George had hired David Prowse, but he said he wanted a so-called "darker" voice. Not in terms of ethnic but in terms of timbre. And the rumor is that he thought of Orson Welles. But he probably thought that Orson might be too recognizable, so what he ends up doing is picking a voice that was born in Mississippi, raised in Michigan, and was a stutterer. And that happened to be my voice.

Mark Hamill: [Archive footage; reading a line] Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is much greater than on Appalyer-Sullust and what there is is most likely directed towards a large scale assault.::Mark Hamill: [the present] And I read that line and I thought, "Who talks like that?"

Narrator: Just one day into filming, the Sahara was pelted with its first major rainfall in fifty years.::Robert Watts: We were going out there to shoot. I came out in the morning and the rain was going horizontally down the street this way. I thought, "My God!" I just called a rest day on the crew and told them to go back to bed, because there was no way we were going to shoot on that.

Peter Mayhew: [as Chewbacca] That old man's mad.::Harrison Ford: You said it, Chewie. Boy, where'd you dig up that old fossil?

Harrison Ford: I think George likes people, I think George is a warm-hearted person, but... he's a little impatient with the process of acting, of finding something. He thinks that something's there. "It's right there, I wrote it down. Do that". You know. Sometimes you can't just "do that" and make it work.

Carrie Fisher: I had one outfit for the first movie and as George taught me, there is no underwear in space. Instead of that, there's gaffer tape. So I was taped down. And I used to say we should just make up a contest on the call sheet to see who's going to rip it off. But we didn't do that.

Bill Moyers: Timing is everything in art. You bring out Star Wars too early and it's Buck Rogers. You bring it out too late and it doesn't fit our imaginations. You bring it out just as the war in Vietnam is ending and America feels uncertain of itself, and the old stories have died, and you bring it out at that time and suddenly, it's a new game. Plus it's alot of fun. It's a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.

Gareth Wigan: George was enormously farsighted. The studio wasn't. They didn't know that the world was changing. George did know the world was changing. I mean, he changed it.

Carrie Fisher: You're not really famous until you're a Pez dispenser.

Harrison Ford: [on the success of Star Wars] I was like this - [rubs his palms together] Great. Terrific. Now I can go to work. I have an opportunity to take advantage of the success of this film and go to work.