The movies that got us all hooked on the galaxy far, far away have essentially died as far as official policy is concerned - that is my point. Disney has the power to resurrect them, but they are either unwilling to do so, or just can’t be bothered. Star Wars should have been allowed to die in peace, to just exist for what it was without having to be continually revisited. And yet the commercial exploitation continues and shows no sign of ever stopping.
George Lucas, for all his infuriating stubbornness, at least had personal and artistic reasons for doing what he did, misguided though it was. Disney, on the other hand, doesn’t care about anything except money.
Are you actually saying that George didn’t commercially exploit Star Wars out the wazoo before Disney got a hold of it? Because I seriously beg to differ. Star Wars was merchandised like mad since the very beginning.
Of course Disney cares about making money, but you say so with the assumption that George did not. Plus, you actually sound apologist for George refusing to release the OOT. That is George’s fault, not Disney’s. It may very well be true that the powers-that-be at Disney are not releasing the OOT because George asked them not to, if what’s-his-buckets who commented about it on twitter recently was to be believed.
Artistic reasons or not, George is not of lesser blame than Disney, and he certainly did not care less about making money than they do.
Finally, you accuse Disney of wrecking Star Wars by changing characters into people for which you don’t like their portrayal. As though Disney, as an entity unto itself, was making those artistic decisions as opposed to the particular writers and directors involved. I would certainly say that to blame Disney for story and character elements you don’t like is definitely misplaced. Blame Lawrence Kasdan, J. J. Abrams, Michael Arndt, and Rian Johnson because you don’t agree with their artistic interpretations of possible events. Just because someone is working on a Star Wars project at Disney, it doesn’t mean Disney as an entity is making those artistic choices.
It’s also not like Disney cares so much about money and so little about art that Disney itself is purposefully crapping on Star Wars for the sake of the almighty dollar. And even if they were, George had already been doing that for decades.