Empire of Dreams (2004)

I was pretty sure I had seen every film about Star Wars and the making of Star Wars, but some how I had missed this film, which was released 16 years ago.

The film is largely about the struggles George Lucas had in making the Star Wars films, and how he was about to remain an independent film maker.

I was a bit surprised at situation in Hollywood leading up to the release of Star Wars, as I was completely unaware of those conditions at the time when Star Wars was released.

Lucas himself said in this film that Hollywood had changed it's attitude, getting away from having the marketing department make all of the choices regarding what films would get made, and elected to back young directors.  This, in part (the other part being Lucas' great success) which allowed the backing of original and creative ideas, leading to large number of incredible films to be made in the late 70s and 80s.

Unfortunately, we have gone back to making films dictated by the marketing department, as Hollywood is no longer willing to take any risks, meaning that we only get films that are sequels, 'reimagining' or brainless action or superhero films, featuring b-list superheros.

This is a spectacular film, as it covers all the relevant events, has interviews with every person who made contributions to the films but never delves into the criticism of Lucas regarding the prequels (which I felt was unjustified) nor did it get into the problems his company faced with the release of Howard the Duck, which lead to his selling off Pixar.