Book Review: 'Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia'

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(C) 2017 Dorling Kindersley/Penguin Random House and Lucasfilm Ltd.
May 25, 2017 marks the 40th Anniversary of the theatrical premiere of Star Wars, a space-fantasy film written and directed by a young filmmaker named George Lucas. It was financed and released by 20th Century Fox, a studio led by a board of directors that was skeptical of the movie set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" that theater owners who wanted to screen The Other Side of Midnight (Fox's expected hit movie for 1977) could only do so if they booked Star Wars during the summer. (Only 40 theaters in the entire U.S. had agreed to show Star Wars when Fox tried to market the film before May 1977, so the studio decided to play hardball and made the theater owners an offer they couldn't refuse.) The 33-year-old Lucas's "space movie" would only be a modest hit, and Fox would be lucky to get back its $11 million investment. 

 The "suits" were wrong. Star Wars was not only a box office success; it was a phenomenon. In 1977 alone, Star Wars grossed $195 million during a 30-week theatrical run (May 25-December 16-18, 1977), and finished its 43-week-long reign in July of '78 as the top movie hit of the decade with a total gross of $225 million (and change).  

 Now, nearly 40 years later, Star Wars (renamed Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope) is just one part of a multimedia franchise that is made up of three Skywalker Saga trilogies, a series of standalone "Anthology" films that includes Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, two animated television series, novelizations, radio dramas, comic books, video games, and a Star Destroyer's cargo hold's worth of collectibles and other licensed Star Wars merchandise. 

 One of the latest Star Wars reference books is Dorling Kindersley's Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia. Written by Adam Bray, Tricia Barr, and Cole Horton, this lavishly-illustrated book gives readers a detailed look at the worlds, characters, cultures, vehicles (from Rey's speeder to the Galactic Empire's two dreaded Death Stars), clothes, weapons, and other artifacts seen in such films as The Phantom Menace, Rogue One, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Force Awakens. 

 Take a stunning visual tour of Star Wars with DK's comprehensive pictorial guide to the galaxy far, far away!From lightsabers to beasts to food and clothing, Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia is a virtual museum in a book. Explore beautiful galleries with more than 2,500 images, and discover facts about Star Wars culture, science, and geography. - from the back cover blurb, Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia.

 Published just a little over a month ago, Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia takes its cues from other DK Star Wars books, including Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary (2008) and Star Wars: Year-by-Year (2016). Its 200 pages are light on text but heavy on graphics; like Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary, the emphasis is on giving Star Wars fans information through photos and computer-rendered illustrations with just enough written material to explain things. 
This two-page spread depicts various types of armor seen in the feature films and animated TV series. (C) 2017 Dorling Kindersley and Lucasfilm.
Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia is divided into five sections:
  • Geography
  • Nature
  • History
  • Culture
  • Science and Technology
Each section varies in length, the shortest being Geography and the longest being Science and Technology. As you can imagine, there are many entries that cover different topics that shed light into the backstory of the entire saga. In the History section, for instance, readers can get a crash course on galactic politics, the workings of the Senate, the rise of the Empire, the birth of the Rebellion, and the origin of the shadowy First Order. The book includes a map of the galaxy, a timeline, and fully-illustrated pages about armor, droids, blasters, and even clothing worn by both the meek and the powerful denizens of the Star Wars galaxy. 

Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia also features an introduction by Dennis Muren, a well-known special effects expert and senior creative director of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). A veteran of all of Lucasfilm's live-action Star Wars films, including the upcoming Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Muren explains the impact of George Lucas's insistence that Star Wars had to have a certain "look" in order to sell his space-fantasy universe to moviegoers:

Part of the beauty of Star Wars is that it is at once familiar and brand new, and that is no accident. While you've likely never traveled through space, you've probably played board games with friends that ended with someone a little bent out of shape. It's that shade of the familiar - the kind that brought to life the memorable dejarik, or "holochess"scene in Episode IV - which makes countless shots in these films personal for us. Yes, the Star Wars universe is massive, but its these purposefully designed objects, based in our reality, that also make it more intimate; we love the spectacle, and we can relate to it, too. 

Bray, Horton, and Barr's text is written in a style that is accessible to young readers (DK Books' target audience), but adult Star Wars fans from the 1977 Generation (and older) can enjoy Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia. It covers canonical material from the eight existing feature films and the two Lucasfilm Animation TV series, so readers can find interesting bits of data about everything from Alderaan to Z-95 starfighters. 

The Star Wars Visual Encyclopedia is not a substitute for the three-volume Star Wars Encyclopedia, which was published in 2008 and is badly out of date.  However, it is less expensive than that Del Rey offering and can be used as a supplement to DK Books' Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary, which was also published in 2008 and only covers the six films personally created by George Lucas between 1973 and 2005. Like all of the Dorling Kindersley Star Wars references, the Star Wars Visual Dictionary is a book that many fans will read and re-read time and time again.

   

Sources:

 http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=starwars4.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/trivia
https://www.dk.com/us/9781465459626-star-wars-the-visual-encyclopedia/

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