Hey everybody, welcome to Rob Observations. I am your host Rob Leifeld. We have so much comic books and pop culture and fun, cool stuff to get to today. There is no slowing us down. We got to get right to it. This is going to be an exciting walk through some very near misses.

I love that stuff.

I love, well, there's actually one for sure miss and a couple of near misses that helped define the comic book history that we know and love.

I always am totally gripped by the idea that every studio passed on George Lucas and Star Wars.

And if you go back and you go through the history books and whether it's the giant making of

Star Wars coffee table books that I have or the Empire of Dreams, which is now on Disney Plus, which for years was only a part of the collected, you know, six movies when he re-finished the sequels.

I mean, the prequels, George Lucas finished the prequels.

After Revenge of the Sith, they put out a box set, a Blu-ray set, and on it was this amazing three-hour

documentary called Empire of Dreams.

And I'm telling you, man, it is my favorite documentary.

I've probably watched it two dozen times in the last decade over that, like 15 years that it's

been out.

It is so informative.

And for me, it's a time capsule of my youth again, because Star Wars was an impactful movie on a generation on the entire world. I mean, again, when I went to answer a question not too far back

about like, what was the number one movie on your birthday, know october 3rd 1977 october 3rd 1977 the number one movie was star wars again the

impact of that movie cannot be measured i mean we live in a world look we're mandolarian the book

of boba fed all these star wars spin-offs are, they're so massively important, and it

all started with this one movie that literally everyone in Hollywood passed on.

George Lucas's friendship with the president of 20th Century Fox at the time, Alan Ladd.

Alan Ladd Jr. said, I'll do it. I'll take a shot on you, George. And all throughout the making of Star Wars, it was white knuckle. Should we shut the production down when it was in England and the crew was turning on George and everyone thought he was making a stupid children's film? His own words? He says it in Empire Dreams. Even his own friends in the editing, you know, the Martin Scorsese, okay?

These guys were not certain.

The only guy who doubled down and told George you got a real gem on your hands here.

...