To confirm what other comments have expressed, most jobs aren't as much fun as working on your own projects. Maybe you knew that but you feel that this job goes

To confirm what other comments have expressed, most jobs aren't as much fun as working on your own projects. Maybe you knew that but you feel that this job goes over and above standard levels of banality. Fair enough. The main thing I'd add is that I hope the alternative you're considering is a paid research assistantship funded by a grant, which should be no problem for such a famous professor to organize. It's easy as a student to be convinced that your professor's research is the next big thing, but funding is a reasonable proxy for whether anyone else thinks so. Otherwise, it's quite possible to do a lot of great innovative and interesting research that is met with indifference by future employers and academics because you've misjudged the way things are going due to spending too much time on your own.