Are you glad Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney or do you wish he hadn’t? — Page 4

I hate that Legends was discontinued in favor of something that doesn’t flesh out the lore as much. I wish Dawn of the Jedi and the potential for similar efforts to flesh out the lore, the Essential Guides, the Lucenoverse, etc. got to continue. I’m sick of everything being “Star Wars: (character name)”. I also hate that the Son of Dathomir and Dark Disciple episodes of TCW haven’t been made and that George’s remaining ideas, whether they’re good or bad, are locked in the Disney Vault. I miss the complete soundtracks for the OT and TPM and I don’t care for Disney’s abuse of copyright laws or their refusal to pay royalties to the authors they employ. Disney has been even worse at acknowleding the existence of the original versions of the movies than George was and has been much more opaque about the production of the movies.

I like Rebels, the Tales of the Jedi episode about Dooku and Yaddle, the episodes of the Bad Batch with Mas Amedda and The Emperor, the references to KOTOR lore throughout The Book of Boba Fett and Andor, and The Acolyte. I like that Disney got Ian McDiarmid to voice Palpatine/Sidious/The Emperor in animation. I like that Tagge leaves the Death Star before its destruction in the post-2014 canon. I enjoyed the hype for the Sequel Trilogy. I enjoyed seeing Nal Hutta in live action in The Mandalorian and Grogu.

As for whether George would have made a Sequel Trilogy if he didn’t sell Lucasfilm or if he wrote the treatments just to encourage Disney to buy Lucasfilm or to get them to pay more, your guess is as good as mine.

It’s worth finally getting the originals if they are on the level, and it’s not some lucy and the football situation again.

At the expense of Star Wars being done as a cinematic franchise because Disney Lucasfilm has mismanaged it to the hilt. Whatever.

So yes, its worth getting things like Andor and the Originals. Perhaps things like Visions.

The output of the tv shows is rather hit and miss. The films less so, all but two made money. Even though the fans think the Disney trilogy destroyed Star Wars. The same thing was said and thought about the prequels.

A lot of people believe the series peaked with TESB and or that ROTJ was the last good movie.

Then a good many younger people seem to think Episode III was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

A niche of defenders of The Last Jedi exist. Not all of them Reylos.

I Kind of loathe the Disney trilogy, except for the odd little tidbits TLJ gives. but we aren’t getting another return of those actors or their characters. Mark, Carrie and Harrison are never sharing a scene together ever again.

Carrie died IRL. They’ll never be another Princess Leia. Not to me there won’t. And Peter was our Chewie. The Mighty Chewbacca.

Harrison wanted Han killed off, and Mark’s character was killed despite wanting to continue, until he didn’t want to anymore. Time is not kind. That OT era is over.

At some point I don’t think it matters because Lucas was going to distance himself from the series. The reaction to the prequels in their time really killed off his motivation and desire to be associated with the story. I don’t blame him. People rejoiced when he relinquished his control. I wouldn’t want to feed that audience either.

Fingers are always being pointed around but the entire industry got obsessed with franchising. The successes of early Netflix and the Avengers put dollar signs in the eyes of every studio executive. If Lucas was not going to do like Zemeckis and lock down his work for dear life then oversaturation was inevitable in the 2010s environment. If Disney didn’t have it then whoever else bought it would have spread it thin all the same.

For the stories themselves sometimes I’ll go through an old EU novel and be sad about what was lost. But other times I’ll remember different EU plots that make me grateful there was an excuse to pull the plug. It had moved so far from the original films yet simultaneously so unable to detach from its characters and aesthetics. Cruel irony though that when Disney killed off the EU one of my first thoughts was that we can now forget about the Palpatine clones…

By now I’m very tired of the franchising rush and am glad it’s starting to retreat. So I mostly focus on the good that I did get out of it. I did actually like the sequel trilogy characters and wished the films had handled them better. I thought Andor was brilliant even if the “Star Wars” part felt like an afterthought (I can live with that). Quite enjoyed The Last Jedi. Got to see a new era of Williams. It’s fun to see how his musical interests evolve over his filmography.

But lastly I remember a couple months after The Force Awakens released. My cousin was still a young child and I let her play with one of my toy plastic lightsabers that I pulled from the back of a closet. She had just watched the home blu-ray with her brother and was now running around pretending to be Rey. And all the childhood memories reopened from when I did the same at her age when there was no analysis nor discourse, just my imagination and an exhausted VHS. I think back to that afternoon when I see the internet getting heated about these space adventures again.

Also… I’m still wondering how far Lucas was gonna go with the Whills…

I also liked Rey, Poe and Finn and Rose. I didn’t like how they handled the OT heroes.

The choices in Rise of Skywalker or Rise of Palpatine were really dumb. So a lot of people didn’t find the Last Jedi their cup of tea. They course corrected a bit too much.

Rey having a found family or being adopted I don’t find to be a bad idea per se, it’s just that the Last Jedi didn’t do that story and Luke never accepted her as his student or trained her.

Palpatine’s return I actually like in Dark Empire. I like Luke and Leia combining forces to defeat him. I don’t think much of the Disney poor adapted version with no Luke Skywalker or Leia as the heroes. or heroines. I also highly dislike Luke being an ascetic celibate monk in the Disney trilogy. I reject the apostasy of Luke in the Last Jedi. The Nihilism. Its only somewhat acceptable because he realizes he made a mistake, and gives his life to save his sister. But he wasted years for no reason.

I liked the idea that there is a wider view of the force. Beyond the Sith and Jedi but the movies don’t explore this. Just the its vanity to say the light dies if the Jedi die off. I also like Luke’s astral projection, not dying of too much force.

With the First Order on the march killing all he loves and defended, and the rise of the dark side and return of the Sith, saying its time for the Jedi to end, seriously? Its crazy. Its like someone tells you the Nazi’s are going to conquer the world, let Hitler win. Don’t fight back. The Empire/First Order are space Nazis. It’s beyond irresponsible of a Jedi grand master to leave the galaxy to evil. To let the new republic fall to ruin. And let chaos reign. Let Democracy and your friends die. Why? Rian doesn’t explain why letting everything happen and for Luke to stand by makes sense. Cause it doesn’t.

Anakin Skywalker sacrificed himself to save Luke and Yoda says pass on what you have learned. restore the Jedi order. Train Leia. And this is what happens. Ben had a bad dream so kill him in his sleep, or attempt to do so. Luke staked his life and his friends and the fate of the rebellion on the spark of Anakin within Vader. But Kylo irredeemable even though Rey was proven right?

It’s obvious on some level that George Lucas sold it to get his bags before retiring.

He already had all the money in the world of course, but that doesn’t stop the desire for more.

Disney Star Wars is an objective failure, it can be measured and quantified: 2 box office bombs (Solo, Mando & Groku) and no toy line for Episode 9. These 3 things illustrate that Star Wars is no longer special within the zeitgeist. If you had told me 15 years ago that Star Wars would have box office bombs and that there wouldn’t be a toy line for the last episode in the Skywalker Saga,I would’ve laughed in your face, but here we are. Regardless of how you feel about the prequel era; things still felt special. Disney is over saturated assembly line movie making and television production. Rogue One and the early Mando stuff was great but NO, I wish Lucas never sold to Disney. It will never have that special feeling ever again.

Plus Rise of Skywalker or Rise of Palpatine had no return on investment at over 500 million budget. And Dial of Destiny and Solo both lost money Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Now Mando flopped or severely underperformed.

But since its Disney the flops don’t matter because they have a theme park and other merchandise and such right?

Well INDY got one movie a flop. A videogame well received I suppose, and a comic book limited series is coming. Willow one season of streaming tv and erased. Depending on who you ask Disney destroyed 3 IP. Star Wars, Willow and Indiana Jones. They cancelled two animated shows in development and one live action series because of Dial of Destiny.

Lucasfilm isn’t known for a deep bench of IP and they aren’t creating new ones. THX 1138 and American Graffiti don’t exactly lend themselves to franchise potential. Howard the Duck reverted to Marvel. Aka Disney.

Since INDY is mostly a bust and Harrison says he is Indy and Disney Lucasfilm refuse to recast. That leaves only Star Wars as their sole IP they can grind the mill on or keep going back to that well, ran dry perhaps long ago?

I have mixed feelings. Out of the new movies, I quite liked Rogue One and appreciated The Force Awakens for what it was (basically original Star Wars with a fresh coat of paint). In the game sphere, I liked Jedi: Fallen Order quite a bit more than I would have thought possible. That said, most of the surrounding material were complete failures. TLJ was just a complete disaster of storytelling, and ROS just piled more garbage on top.

It would have been un-Disney, but I would like to have seen what a more experimental buyer might have done with the IP. Instead of arguing about what’s G-Canon, or Legends, or New Canon, why not just abolish the entire concept of canon? Star Wars is a galaxy of possible stories, and that’s an aspect of it that has never been truly explored. Use the Galaxy Far, Far Away conceit to be infinite versions of stories that have been passed on from that world; embrace the chaos of pre-literate storytelling.

I for one think it was a dreadful mistake to sell off to Disney. Lucas has been open about the reasons that he sold:

“I made that decision because I looked at the future, I looked at the fact that I was going to have a baby, I looked at the fact that I was married, and I looked at the fact that I wanted to build a museum, and I looked at the fact that I wanted to make experimental films,” he told CBS This Morning in 2015. “So my life was going on a different track. So that started that ball rolling.”

That said, it is a pity that there was no one in his camp to further explore his alternatives to an arms-length sale.

Perhaps he could have put his Lucasfilm properties into a trust, to be helmed by his then-three children plus a couple of well-placed additional trustees. Who would then as a trust be able to carefully license out productions of discrete projects to third parties, on a project-by-project basis.

The Lewis Estate had the creative “guardian” of step-son Douglas Gresham when the film productions of the Narnia books begain.

The Tolkein Estate had the (admittedly fierce) guardian in the form of his son Christopher Tolkein; and with the Lord of The Rings films, the great good luck of having Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens producing those films.

But who would there have been for Lucas? I don’t know if his then-three children would have been up to the task, even as co-trustees or something along that line with a couple of trusted industry pro’s as additional co-trustees. Indeed, who could Lucas have turned to at that time, as a trusted industry pro?

I don’t have answers to these questions. But hope that some of the Esteemed OriginalTrilogy Panel of Experts can shed some light on this!