Chris Taylor - How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

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HOW STAR WARS CONQUERED THE UNIVERSE

Its impossible to imagine a Star Wars fan who wouldnt love this book.... It really is hard to imagine a book about Star Wars being any more comprehensive than this one. Its full of information and insight and analysis, and its so engagingly written that its a pure joy to read.... There are plenty of books about Star Wars, but very few of them are essential reading. This one goes directly to the top of the pile.Booklist, Starred review

Chris Taylors How Star Wars Conquered the Universe is the definitive guide to the first forty years of the Star Wars galaxy. Part biography, part history, part fanboy gossip, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe is an accessible, fun read for any lover of Star Wars.Ian Doescher, author of the William Shakespeares Star Wars trilogy

With a deft hand and a talent for words, Chris Taylor gets to the bottom of what propelled Star Wars into the zeitgeist and what has kept it there for nearly 40 years. A must-read, even for casual observers trying to understand what they might be missing about the worlds biggest movie phenomenon.Bryan Young, StarWars.com blogger and author of A Childrens Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination

Whether they read the novelization of the first Star Wars before the film came out, like me, or were blown away by Revenge of the Sith, anyone touched by the most enduring space fantasy mythology of the past two generations will thrill to Taylors passionate telling of the saga behind the saga: How a lonely tinkerer from a backwater town changed the world via interplanetary heroism. To Star Wars obsessives and those wanting to understand modern pop culture: this is absolutely the book you are looking for.Brian Doherty, author of This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground

Finally, fans get the full history! The Force is strong with Chris Taylor, who gives us enough stories and juicy details to impress even Darth Vader. This book belongs in every Star Wars collection.Bonnie Burton, author of The Star Wars Craft Book and You Can Draw: Star Wars

HOW STAR WARS

CONQUERED THE UNIVERSE

For Jess, The True Chosen One

Copyright 2014 by Itzy

Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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Designed by Pauline Brown

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taylor, Chris, 1973

How Star Wars conquered the universe : the past, present, and future of a multibillion dollar franchise / Chris Taylor.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-465-05693-4 (ebook) 1. Star Wars films. I. Title.

PN1995.9.S695T39 2014

791.43'75dc23

2014023580

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

G eorge James Sr. was eighty-eight years old when I met him in July 2013, but in the crimson of a setting desert sun he seemed almost timeless. He wore a white Stetson and had leathery skin, a thin build, and deep-set, coal black eyes; he stooped a little from the shrapnel that has been in his back since 1945. James is Tohtsohnnii, part of the Big Water Clan of the Navajo people, and was born where he still lives, in the mountains near Tsaile, Arizona. When he was seventeen, James was drafted and became that rarest of World War II veterans: a Code Talker. He was one of five Code Talkers who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima and transmitted more than eight hundred vital messages back and forth between the island and the offshore command post in their native language. Their code was virtually unbreakable because there were then fewer than thirty nonnative speakers of Navajo in the entire world. For an encore, the 165-pound James helped save an unconscious fellow privates life by carrying his 200-pound frame across the black sands of Iwo and into a foxhole. His calmness under fire helped determine the course of the horrific battle, and arguably the war. Were it not for the Navajo, said a major in Georges division, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.

Jamess wartime story was enough to make my jaw hit the floor when I met him. But there was something else about him that was almost as incredible. George James was the first person Id met, in a year of searching, who seemed to genuinely not know the first thing about the movie we were about to watch: something called Star Wars.

When I heard the title, I thought, The stars are at war? James said, and shrugged. I dont go to the movies.

There havent been any movie theaters here in Window Rock, Arizona, the sun-bleached capital of the Navajo nation, since the last one closed in 2005. Window Rock is a one-stoplight town with a McDonalds, a dollar store, a couple of hotels, the eponymous natural stone arch, and a statue honoring the Code Talkers. There are plenty of screens here, but theyre all personal: teens thumb through smartphones in parking lots; there are iPads and TVs and Wi-Fi in Window Rock just as in any twenty-first-century western town. But theres no large public screen where the peopletheyre called Din (pronounced deenay), Navajo, or just the Peoplecan get together and share a projected dream.

But for one night in 2013, that changed. On July 3, the first movie ever dubbed into a Native American tongue was screened at the rodeo grounds on a giant screen bolted to the side of a ten-wheeler truck. Just outside of town, on Highway 49, sat the only poster advertising this historic event, on a wilderness billboard that for a time became the hottest roadside attraction on the ArizonaNew Mexico border. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope translated into the Navajo language, it said, alongside a 1977 poster for the movie.

I must have seen that Star Wars poster a million times, but on this highway from Gallup, out of my element and surrounded by brush-covered mesas, I could almost make myself see it through fresh eyes. The kid in white robes appears to be holding some sort of flashlight to the sky; a young woman in strange hair buns holds a gun and poses by his side. Behind them looms a giant gas-mask face with dead eyes and a Samurai helmet. What a strange dream this movie must be.