“The Star Wars Sketchbooks”

 

“The Star Wars Sketchbook”, Joe Johnston

96 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345273802

“The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook”, Joe Johnston & Nilo Rodis-Jamero

95 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345288363

“The Return of the Jedi Sketchbook”, Joe Johnston and Nilo Rodis-Jamero with additional material by Ralph McQuarrie and Norman Reynolds

96 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345309594

The three Star Wars Sketchbooks – The Star Wars Sketchbook, The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook and The Return of the Jedi Sketchbook – are awesome. AWESOME, I tell you. Each is filled with preliminary sketches of the various vehicles, characters and equipment that were made for the relative movie in question, and it is absolutely fascinating to see how each evolved under the artist’s pencil. Just seeing how the TIE fighters were originally imagined, or the development of the ATAT’s heads, or how Boba Fett’s armor changed through the process, or how Death Star II changed during production – and then imagining how different the movies would have been had earlier ideas had made the final cut. And to have them all at one’s fingertips made my childhood nighttime reading that much more memorable.

It is rather humbling, too, seeing the sheer creative power that these films brought together and how these artists were just as responsible for the look, feel and success of the original and best franchise (yeah, I said it). In addition to poor writing, forgettable characters and woke politics, I believe that another reason the prequels and second trilogy failed so badly is that the various vehicles, characters and equipment were boring as all hell. I can’t remember the look or the vibe of a single one from any of the other movies and suspect that nobody else can, either. From the Millennium Falcon to the X-Wings and TIE Fighters to the Snow Speeders to Slave 1 to the B-Wings to the TIE Interceptors – nothing in the new movies compares to these unique and brilliantly rendered creations, and the world knows it.