I love the experience of opening up the year’s big Star Wars coffee table book. This one’s quite the experience.
The Star Wars Vault, by Stephen J. Sansweet and Peter Vilmur, is The Star Wars Scrapbook on steroids.
Literally from the opening of the cover, this book has wonderful gifts to present. The inside cover holds not one, but two CD’s filled with fun tidbits like interviews that seem basic to us today, commercials in which the narrator is clearly having trouble getting through the text, the soundtrack from Star Tours and, Force help us, Carrie Fisher’s stirring (in a nauseating way) song from The Star Wars Holiday Special.
Pop one of the CD’s in and keep on enjoying the book. Practically every page has some hidden trinket tucked away in a pocket. Reproductions of tickets, promotional items and even George’s first stab at Empire, written in his unique, hard-to-read way.
You’ll go literally from the first stationary through the 30th anniversary celebrations. There are also fun sections on The 501st and the fans who spent a long time in line waiting for the new films.
I haven’t had the chance to actually read the text, yet. I’ll save that for a rainy day when I can curl up under the covers and do it justice. But Steve’s love for Star Wars is well known and is probably up to his usual standards. (Sue me. I was having too much fun looking at all the cool stuff!)
Yes, the retail price of US$85.00 might feel a bit steep, but you can get this on discount very easily. And, honestly, when you see how this book was put together, you’ll be impressed that it made it in at that price point.
In the words of the commercial I just listened to: “Relax. It’s only a movie and it’s all for fun.”
Pete and Steve did a great job on the book. I can’t wait to get my own copy!
Thanks for the review! Could you possibly post the contents of the CDs? A lot of what I’ve heard is on the CDs sounds duplicative of what’s already been released through Hyperspace–I was wonder how much is actually “new” (or, rather, previously unreleased) on the CDs.
The radio ads and George Lucas’ talk from CIII are the only two items out of 15 tracks that were on Hyperspace. (It’s really hard for me to hold up the flap and type at the same time, so forgive me for being a little lazy about it.)