May ‘The Force’ Be with Us!
Disney’s recent $4-billion acquisition of Lucas Film—and with it the money-printing press known as Star Wars—has forced many a Star Wars fan to embrace a diet and a lifestyle that would allow them to live another decade in hopes of seeing the Star Wars sequel trilogy, of course!
I’ve also evaluated my cholesterol level and my BMI in a bid to assess my own durability for this major forthcoming event. But before I deliver a platter of speculative morsels regarding what the sequel trilogy may or may not be, perhaps I should take the opportunity to explain to people why this acquisition may either dig open the shallow grave of Star Wars or finally place a fitting tombstone thereon.
George Lucas is both the radiant genius and drooling idiot behind the enormous pop culture hit known as Star Wars. George spent his early filmmaking career as most up-and-comers do, with his testicles firmly clamped in a vice operated by the big wigs at Warner Brothers.
After the mammoth success of ‘Star Wars – A New Hope’ George made his most brilliant business decision ever: to keep the merchandising rights to Star Wars, something that allowed him to take back control from the unimaginative bosses of the movie industry who knew nothing about creativity and art and who only wanted to produce templated films—similar to what we see from Hollywood today!
However, two decades later, the power and control George had gained with this checkmate move simply bought him a bunch of vices, which he then use to clamp the balls of other creative geniuses that work for him at his Death Star-like studio Lucas Film. This is how we got George’s greatest creative cockup: the Star Wars prequel trilogy!
At Lucas Film, when George enters the room to pick a face for the next major alien, to appear in the next Star Wars blockbuster film, a room of experienced, egotistical, and proud professionals goes dead silent! They stand there like teens that were caught smoking in the schoolyard. These people are paralysed with fear and address George as if they are a bunch of illiterate, babbling fans that bumped into ‘the maker’ as he exited a convenience store! The whole scene is vomitus, man!
It seems to be a trend that wherever a rich and egotistical boss lurks, the final product always suffers for it. From that point onward, whatever they produce can never live up to the hype and expectation generated by what they did when they were nobodies fighting for a bit of recognition and financial success! It is one thing play boss; it is a very different thing to be a leader. It is similar to the difference between having offspring and being a parent.
I don’t understand how people did not foresee this, though. When ‘Star Wars – The Phantome Menace’ got released, fans about the planet simply waltzed into theatres, lightsabers swinging, in expectation of an epic moment in pop culture. It is not as if after the release of ‘Star Wars – Return of the Jedi’ George didn’t try to milk the brand a bit with some side projects—over which he had total control. Who can forget—its memory scarring properties not counted—the ‘Star Wars – Holiday Special’? What about ‘An Ewok Adventure’? Both of these side projects were disastrously bad representations of the Star Wars universe and solely the work of George and his band of puppets at Lucas Film!
George has also demonstrated that he will resort to any excuse his limited creativity and embryonic linguistic ability force him to conceive. When told about how childish and immature a choice Jar Jar Binks was—by fans, not those spineless puppets at Lucas Film—George simply succumbed to his own genius again and explained that he made Star Wars for children. Wow, that one stumped the fans of your earlier work, George! He also contradicts himself in every decade he persists. When confronted of the total mess that is the prequel trilogy, George has always justified the style of it by saying that if something bears his name then he wants it to reflect his ideas. How then does he wake up one morning and sell Lucas Film? Oh, he is ‘retiring’, so only now does he take STAR WARS seriously again.
George can only be condemned and criticized for his egotistical and dismissive attitude that he developed after he became financially independent from the film industry. In his very own words, George likened himself to Anakin Skywalker and his metamorphosis into Darth Vader. What George is basically saying is that he started out as a ‘good guy’, but once he suffered under the oppressive rule of his masters, he broke away, got a new, evil master (money, I guess), and then went on to cause misery and pain to everyone he could reach through his rapidly inflating sphere of influence.
I guess this selloff of Lucas Film is supposed to mirror the redemption scene near the end of ‘STAR WARS Episode 6 - Return of the Jedi’ where Luke says, “But I’m here to save you,” and Darth Vader responds, “You already have, Luke.” Perhaps George will now die and corporeally reunite with his former masters from Warner Brothers, and the whole lot of them can smile and hold hands—Ewoks dancing and fireworks popping in the backdrop—as if nothing had happened. Or perhaps the selling of Lucas Film to Disney is George’s attempt at a postnatal abortion.
Sadly, I don’t hold much faith in Disney’s credentials or ability to revive the magic of the magic of STAR WARS. With films such as John Carter, Disney’s imagineers have shown that they lack the artistic and technical supremacy of real creative engineers. Making great films is not all about imagination, after all. Disney has already announced the first of the three sequel trilogy Star Wars films to run in theaters as early as 2015, and this gives me the impression that they have foregone proper planning and are essentially following George’s example: RELEASE THE CRACKEN!
In the construction of the next-gen Star Wars films, I fear the commerciality of Star Wars will result in the dominance of the marketing executives over the creative professionals. This can only end in disaster and shame! The Star Wars brand cannot survive another bad trilogy. That would outnumber the splendid Original Trilogy by 2:1 and seal the fate of the series to the history room that houses all literary and cultural flops!
I hope The Force intervenes to save this franchise. Therefore, I’ll try my best to stay alive for the next installment of STAR WARS.
-THE END-
Daaam, daaam, da da da daa daaam, da da da daa daaam, da da da daaaaa…
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