Disney Acquires Lucasfilm

Disney Acquires Lucasfilm

In one of the most ‘where the hell did that come from’ moments in the history of entertainment, it’s been announced this evening that Disney has acquired the rights to Lucasfilm for over $4billion, and they’ve pledged three new Star Wars films every few years from 2015. My initial reaction was ‘Oh for the love of God, why can’t they just leave the franchise alone?’, but after giving it a bit of thought, maybe this isn’t the end of the world. Here’s why:

·         Now I’m not about to partake in the internet’s favourite past time and rant about the injustice of the fiddling with the original Star Wars trilogy that has taken up 96% of internet debatery for the last 15 or so years, but essentially this means that George Lucas can no longer make any edits to the original films. This is huge news, firstly because the universe can only take so much more Lucas-bashing before it explodes in a time-ending apocalypse of despair, and secondly because there’s a decent chance that Disney will recognise the potential cash cow that a full-quality re-release of the original un-fiddled trilogy would make. I genuinely feel as if a million nerd voices that have been raging and crying out in pain for 15 years have suddenly been silenced…

·         You’re not going to find any love from me for the prequel trilogy. I can’t, and I won’t, give any praise for Episode I. There’s no justification for an article that looks back on it and tries to claim it wasn’t as bad as we remember. I don’t even think the pod racing is that great, which is what people usually cite as its saving grace. The only praise I will give to Episode II is that it isn’t Episode I. Episode III had so much potential, and to be fair it does have an awesome fight scene at the end, but the horribly unrealistic way Anakin suddenly becomes evil (‘Oh no, I killed one of the people I look up to most in the world! Well, no coming back from that now, might as well go the whole hog and kill some children’) detracts from anything positive it has to offer. I do genuinely feel sad that a filmmaker who has been involved in several of the best films of all time (the original trilogy and Indiana Jones original trilogy – we’ll get to Crystal Skull, don’t worry) wanted to continue to bring fans something to enjoy, but couldn’t make the films to honour that. With Disney now controlling the storylines however, it’s the chance for people who love the franchise to be in charge of the direction it needs to go. And make no mistake, the actual filmmaking teams at Disney will be geeks just like you and me, and geeks just like you and me love the original trilogy of Star Wars, and want to recreate its brilliance.

·         There isn’t a single person out there who doesn’t have several Disney films in their lists of favourite films from their childhood, and they probably still count those in their lists of favourites today. Since acquiring Pixar in 2007 they have given us Wall-E and Toy Story 3, both fantastic, Disney are also responsible for one of the best action films of the past 10 years, in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. True, the next few films in the series have been panned, but they have the chance to plan a whole trilogy a few years in advance here, rather than try to come up with one out of the blue when the first Pirates film proved a surprise hit. I’m also very fond of the three Narnia films, and felt they should have gotten more praise than they did. On top of all this, Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, and oversaw the fantastic and incredibly successful Avenger film this year. Basically, there aren’t many companies with safer hands. (As a friend has pointed out to me whilst I’ve been writing this, if Joss Whedon can write and direct The Avengers, and has good links with Disney, then surely he has to be the first choice for the new Star Wars films. The more I think about this, the more I’m certain it should become a crime if this doesn’t take place. Seriously, think about it for a second...

Amazing prospect, isn’t it?)

·         Forgetting Star Wars for a minute, this also spells out great hope for the Indiana Jones franchise. If the rumours are true, and Indy V is made, then my worries about George Lucas’ influence on the plot of it disappear. George Lucas apparently insisted on the aliens concept of Crystal Skull, and although the removal of them wouldn’t have solved the film’s many problems, it would at least have left it still feeling like an Indiana Jones movie at the end. Again, I’m not trying to start more Lucas-bashing, but it seems to me that four of the worst or most disappointing films of the last 15 or so years have had major influences from him. Remove that influence and maybe things will be put right again. Or maybe it’ll still be awful and people will cut him a bit of slack. He did help make 6 incredible Star Wars and Indy films after all.

I’m still worried. I, like a lot of people, feel that the Star Wars (and Indiana Jones) franchise has been dragged down and down for a while now, and I don’t know if my geeky little heart could take much more should these new films turn out to be dire. But at least if they do go wrong, then we can’t fall back onto just blaming George Lucas. If Disney don’t get it right, then we can say ‘Well, of course this wasn’t going to work – they’ve taken on somebody else’s vision’, and we can see them as not really being true canon, even though they will be. I’d urge you all to go into this with an open mind. And although we can’t forget Episodes I-III (or Crystal Skull), maybe this is the time to finally forgive George Lucas, and say thank you for the happy memories.