DrDre said:
Star Wars was always both art, and product before Lucas sold his company, but the only thing that was sold was the product, and the brand, not the artistry.
This seems REALLY un-generous to me, and more than a little inaccurate (and very dismissive) on top of that.
It’s far too obsessed with nostalgia
But your entire read on what gets to qualify AS Star Wars seems inherently rooted in nostalgia. Its your reluctance to allow for other voices aside from Lucas’ that is dominant in your view as to why things might not be “good” Star Wars or “bad” Star Wars, but disqualified from being Star Wars at all. It’s a fundamentally unfair argument at its core, because it seeks not to critique the art on the arts terms, but redefine what art actually is so that the thing you don’t like is delegitimized as being art at all.
Lucas chose to sell his company to Disney. He chose its current President knowing she was going to have to be in control of the story once he sold the company. To suggest that everything done after the sale is being done for the sole sake of commerce, with no intent to create legitimate art that builds from what came before, isn’t a very realistic take, I don’t think. That’s not to say you have to like what was created, much like people don’t have to like the prequels, or really, ANYTHING with the words Star Wars on it.
But to suggest that post-sale Lucasfilm is no longer making Star Wars simply because you feel Lucas is being disrespected in some way… that just doesn’t make any sense to me. It dismisses out of hand all the effort, care, and time the people still at the company are putting into making these movies and shows, for the sake of protecting the feelings of a person you don’t even know and have no legitimate connection to. Again, you’re prioritizing HOW the art was made, and the hypothetical feelings of a previous contributor, over whether the art is actually doing what it was created to do. You’re judging everything that gets made through the prism of whether it’s “Lucasian” enough for you when the definition for that particular term is, itself, pretty fluid and weird and not particularly easy to discern even IF you actually knew the man.
Chaining what Star Wars can be to the narrow definition of what its previous owner may or may not have done with it is needlessly limiting, I think.