Secrets of the Force

The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Wars

By: Edward Gross, Mark A. Altman

Narrated by: Dan Bittner, Mark A. Altman - introduction, Natalie Naudus, Natasha Soudek, Sean Patrick Hopkins

Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

This program includes an introduction read by Mark A. Altman

From the authors of The Fifty-Year Mission and So Say We All, comes the first and only comprehensive oral history of the Star Wars movie franchise.

For the past four decades, no film saga has touched the world in the way that Star Wars has, capturing the imaginations of filmgoers and filmmakers alike. Now, for the first time ever, Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, the best-selling authors of The Fifty-Year Mission, are telling the entire story of this blockbuster franchise from the very beginning in a single exhaustive volume. Featuring the commentaries of hundreds of actors and filmmakers involved with and impacted by Star Wars, as well as writers, commentators, critics, executives, authors, film historians, toy experts and many more, Secrets of the Force, will reveal all in Altman and Gross’s critically acclaimed oral history format from the birth of the original film through the latest sequels and the new televisions series.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

©2021 Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

Excellent book--with production and concept issues

I'm a huge fan of Gross and Altman and their two-volume oral history of Star Trek. So, I was very much looking forward to this book. And for the most part, it's very good. Any fan of Star Wars will gain by listening to it, especially if they're interested in the franchise as part of cinema history--which, after all, is what you listen to an oral history of a film for.

But there are two issues to be aware of in deciding whether to listen.

First, there's one conceptual issue. This is an oral history; we're here to learn what the folks involved in Star Wars over the decades have to say about it. So, it's a little surprising how much authorial interjection there is. In the authors' similar Star Trek oral history, authorial commentary was limited to providing contextual detail only, bridging sections of the narrative. Here, in contrast, the authors actively review and critique the various films and shows, sometimes quite scathingly. This ends up being irksome as the joy of an oral history is learning about things, warts and all, from the mouths of the people who were there. The authorial critiques frustrate particularly because they are voiced as being blindingly obvious when in fact they are, naturally, very much subjective.

This tendency flows over into the interviewees' work, too: some sections become more like exhausting takedown of one film or another rather than examinations of how the film was made, which made me throw up my hands and think, "Well, I guess I'm wrong to be interested in that movie or to have hoped for insight there!" This could maybe have been controlled during interviewing or through editing.

Then there's also the production issue. For the audiobook version of Gross and Altman's Star Trek oral history, there was a voice actor for the authorial bits. Here, there isn't. Instead, the authors' words are simply voiced by the last voice actor to speak. So, the actor voicing George Lucas will be reading Lucas's words, and then suddenly taking about George Lucas in the third person. You can infer when the switch happens, but it's disorienting because we, the listeners, can't see the invisible line between interviewee's words and author's worxs. That seems like an easily caught issue that could have been addressed.

That said, this is still quite a worthwhile book, largely for its discussion of the original films and prequels. Like many works of this type, the closer you get to the present, the less insight you're going to get from people involved from the thing. But I really did enjoy the first half in particular. Just be aware of the issues above.

This Is The Book You’re Looking For

This book is way better than expected. It is very thorough and well researched. I bought it mainly to read about the movies I love (Star Wars and ESB) but I found the stories about the episodes I don’t love (the majority of the others tbh) to be almost equally as interesting. Some of the imitations of the interviewees was a little distracting but that’s minor. If you want to deep dive in the franchise, I recommend this book and A Secret History of Star Wars. Both are great!

Excellent history of Star Wars!

I have thoroughly and completely enjoyed this audiobook. Through the years I have read or listened to several histories of the Star Wars saga. This includes biographies, autobiographies, authorized (and unauthorized) histories, and "making of" books. That said, there were several gems in "Secrets of the Force" that make it well worth the listen/read. Indeed, there is so much information that this will likely be a book I go back and listen to (either parts or maybe the entire thing). There is so much great material that it sometimes feels like trying to drink from the proverbial firehose.

The organization of the book is terrific and makes complete sense. The authors have mined interviews and histories from a variety of sources and pulled them together to give the listener what feels like a true behind the scenes look at one of the most iconic film series in the history of cinema. The interviews and histories are drawn from cast, crew, producers, directors, film buffs and critics, podcasters, and others. There are both positive and negative comments on a wide variety of topics. The information not only includes the Lucas-involved films (originals and prequels), but also the sequels and beyond. There is even a section of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

The cast of readers is great, too. The producers of the audiobook have different readers represent different contributors. For instance, sources that are women are performed by women. Sources that are Scottish or American are performed by Scots and Americans, respectively.

I truly enjoyed this book and found it incredibly entertaining and informative. I hope you do, too.

A Solid 3 Stars

Here in this massive tome you’ll find everything you need to know about Star Wars.

•I went into this knowing it was an oral history so the fact that it was mostly compiled of interviews and excerpts from books and such didn’t bother me. But if you go in thinking it’s a “story”, you’ll be disappointed.

•If you’ve already read George Lucas: A Life (I have and so should you, it’s fantastic), a lot of this is repetitive. While the authors certainly take interviews with a ton of people involved in the span of the Star Wars Timeline, it relies heavily on Brian Jones’ book.

•The authors have very few positive things to say once the original three movies are discussed. It’s pretty obvious that they think the only thing possibly worse than the prequels were the sequels. The seem to fanboy over Rian Wilson, while throwing some serious shade at JJ Abrams. There seem to be a lot of hurt feelings on the part of the authors over Disney’s take over of their beloved movies.

•The narration was great, loved the variety of voices which made it possible to distinguish who was the focus of the interview.

•I’m extremely glad I listened to the audio of this book as I don’t think I would be able to handle 600 pages.

•As a Star Wars fan, I found it a good and informative read, entertainment value was a little stiff, and it was very, very repetitive.

Star Wars full secret.

If you're looking to achieve the Mount Everest badge this is the book for you. But if you what the full history of Star Wars from live action to the animation to television listen to these story.

In a galaxy far far away…

This book It’s very long. Some thing I wish I really never got into but had to get to the end. Very glad that I did so that I could say that I finished it. Thank God it was an audible book and that’s something that I had to read. I had to put the book down probably within 20 pages in if I was actually reading it. It’s packed full of minutia about making of every Star Wars movie from 1977 to 2019. Lots of information that a typical fan would not really be interested in. The book is definitely for the fanatic. Lots of names I didn’t recognize or even cared about. It’s really not a written book per se. The book is actually made up of a bunch of interviews from the last 50 years. If you want to learn more about the Star Wars saga in the making of it I would definitely read more books about George Lucas than anything else.

Excellent!

A very in-depth look behind the scenes of Star Wars.
This book covers everything from the original trilogy to the animated and live action shows currently streaming.
This is a must listen for any Star Wars fan.

24 hrs of reviews

I wanted Star Wars content, not people talking about the history of the film industry when Star Wars came out...

Not what I hoped

Very disappointed, did not receive what I hoped for. disillusioned by this. no pass

Putting today's political BS ruined it!

I don't want to hear somebody's political views in a book about Star Wars that's what this author did in this made me not ever want listen to it again.