Now if you paid even the slightest bit of attention to your Facebook feed or your Twitter feed yesterday,you probably would’ve noticed a little bit of news in the nerd and film world.
Disney, probably one of the biggest companies in the world, has made the move to acquire Lucasfilm Ltd. in a transaction estimated at over 4 billion dollars.
George Lucas is ready to hand the reins over, saying that he knows he won’t be around forever and that he has built this up to where he wants it and now its time to put it in the hands of someone he trusts, namely Kathleen Kennedy, formerly the co-chairman of Lucasfilms and soon to be President of Lucasfilm, working under the Disney company.
This means that Disney will have control over anything to do with Star Wars, past or present.
I love Star Wars.
I wanted to be Princess Leia when I was growing up. I still kind of do.
I have the Rebel Alliance symbol tattooed on the back of my neck.
This is crazy, huge news for me.
The cherry on top of the cake of crazy news is that there is to be an episode 7, slated for release in the year 2015.
OHMYROWLING.
I seriously don’t know whether to be excited or upset about this.
So let’s talk about this for a moment.
The Good:
The good is this: Disney has already made some integrations with the Star Wars franchise (and the Indiana Jones franchise) to begin with. They have the uberly popular rides at Disneyland with Star Tours and the Indiana Jones ride. They have integrated them into their other parks around the world. They sell really cool Star Wars merchandise and I get a kick out of the crossover Disney-Star Wars merch. Come on, Minnie Mouse as Princess Leia? Pretty cool.
Disney acquired Pixar many years ago and look, that place is rocking it. The only movie I’ll leave out is Cars 2 (ugh) but they have given me some of my absolute favorite movies like Up and Wall.E and all three Toy Story films. Obviously a Disney buy-out didn’t ruin this company, though I don’t know how that could be possible whenever John Lasseter is involved.
Disney also acquired Marvel a few years back. I was prettttty wary about that one too. I just wasn’t sure how two iconic franchises/companies could suddenly come together. Obviously this hasn’t hurt Marvel at all, at least in my opinion. Since then, they’ve released Ironman 2, Captain America, Thor and the extremely awesome and popular Avengers movie. There is an Ironman 3 coming out soon, and sequels for Captain America and Thor in the works and the talk of a sequel for the Avengers. I have enjoyed all of these movies and they’ve all done extremely well.
Let’s face it, George has lost his touch a bit. The original trilogy is amazing, the first movie is my favorite movie of all time (No, my favorite movie of all time is not Harry Potter. My favorite books of all time are Harry Potter). They are fantastic and a true epic. He nailed it so well. He has the unlikely hero and the old wise man and the princess and the scoundrel and the evil figure and the battle versus good and evil. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher rock those movies. But come on, those prequels were just…horrible. Little Anakin annoys the heck out of me. Jar Jar Binks annoys the hell out of me. Come to think of it, Adult Anakin annoys me too. I never thought Star Wars could be butchered so badly but there you go.
So many somebody does need to take the reins from George Lucas. Maybe he needs to go home and bathe in his money and leave Star Wars (oh god, and Indiana Jones, lets not even get into that horrible Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie) alone. Just leave it alone, George. Maybe in the hands of Disney and Kathleen Kennedy, we can have a revamp of the Star Wars franchise that is actually GOOD. Don’t misunderstand me, I said revamp, not reboot. If they ever reboot the original trilogy, there will be some hell to pay and definitely some suicides in the nerd world. But maybe this episode 7 won’t be so bad with George out of the captain’s seat. They’d have to cast all new actors; let’s face it, Carrie, Harrison and Mark are way too old to play their characters ever again.
The Bad:
I tend to like things to end as they should end. I like the original trilogy. They introduce a story, there’s conflict, there’s a resolution, there’s an ending. Now, don’t get me wrong. I do like the idea of Han and Leia marrying and have little twin Jedis, and Leia being trained as a Jedi. Don’t get me wrong. That’s awesome. If they would’ve thought of doing that when the actors were still young enough to play the characters, sure, maybe. But when a story is great, leave it alone please.
I don’t want any Harry Potter sequels. Those seven books are amazing and perfect the way they are. Leave them alone.
I hated that the Mortal Instruments went past City of Glass, especially since I loathed City of Fallen Angels. If it weren’t for the fact that City of Lost Souls was pretty decent, I would’ve never felt excitement for the last and sixth book. But the first three were perfect.
So I don’t like the idea of an episode 7. Maybe it’ll be good. Maybe. But it worries me. I just feel like, what if I get my Star Wars nerdy fangirlness alllll excited and I count down the days til the release and wait in line for the midnight premiere and what if it sucks? What if after all the waiting it disappoints me like the prequels did? I just don’t know if I can handle that!
What if they reboot the original Star Wars? I mean, I don’t think they’d do it any time soon but what if they did? OH HEAVENS NO! That would be the biggest sort of blasphemy possible. I mean, its bad enough that George went back and changed stuff and its so hard to find the original versions anymore. But it could happen, couldn’t it?
I also don’t want to see Star Wars get Disney-ized, with the twinkles and the sparkles. I love Disney, don’t get me wrong. I practically live at Disneyland. However, Disney stays Disney. One of the reasons that the first two Harry Potter movies aren’t my favorites are because of how sparkly and twinkly and Disney they feel. Ugh. Star Wars is Star Wars and kids love Star Wars the way it is so just leave it alone.
I’m nervous about Indiana Jones. So far in all the things I’ve read, no one has mentioned Indiana Jones. I don’t know what the deal with that is, maybe because Steven Spielberg is involved and whatnot and its in a deal with Paramount Studios. It most likely doesn’t factor into this deal at all, actually, I’m sure it doesn’t so we’ll see.
Right now, I’m super mixed feelings about all of this. I feel like it has the chances to be both good or bad. Sometimes things need to be left alone; they were great and they can stay great. Sometimes you can take something great and make even better. I guess the only thing that we can do now is wait to see what happens.
What do you think of this guys? Do you like that George is handing the reins over? Do you like/dislike the idea of an Episode 7? As always, let me know in the comments.
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