Star Wars trilogy: Round 3

[Denmark]

ask me in 3 years

[The Man]

Disney Deal: George Lucas Will Use $4 Billion to Fund Education - Hollywood Reporter

So this pretty much eliminated my reservations with this. Good on him.

[Quindiana Jones]

Bollocks. Now I can't describe Lucas as "that fat, beardy ".

[charliepanayi]

Don't be fooled! What people don't know is Lucas will fund schools with lessons like 'Greedo shot first' and 'Why The Phantom Menace is just misunderstood'.

[Agrias]

This just reeks of bad life decisions.

[fire_of_avalon]

I'm with Ouch! here. I'll at least give this a shot rather than spamming the 'n' and 'o' keys for five minutes. I do love me some Star Wars and Disney has shown success with Pixar and Marvel.

I'm also with Ouch!

I was rather surprised when I heard the news and wasn't really sure what to make of it. How well it will pan out will be interesting, but I'm certainly willing to give any new films a watch before I decide what to make of them. If the new film(s) pick up the trilogy from after Return of the Jedi (when quite a lot of interesting stuff happens!), and perhaps deal with the Yuuzhan Vong, it'll be quite interesting to see how they do it. Han, Luke, Leia and the like all have big roles to play in that timeline - I wonder who they'll get to play them.

How is this a bad idea? If there's anything that recent years have proven is that the best stuff happens in the Star Wars universe happens when one of two criteria is met:

1. Someone is around to give creative oversight to Lucas's imagination (the original trilogy)
2. Lucas lets other people run wild with the world (books, The Old Republic story line, etc.)

Pixar has done very well since the full Disney acquisition, and they've done a damn good job with Marvel (case in point: your own damned avatar and signature). Is nobody else excited that this could mean a good Star Wars trilogy?

I'm with Ouch! here. I'll at least give this a shot rather than spamming the 'n' and 'o' keys for five minutes. I do love me some Star Wars and Disney has shown success with Pixar and Marvel.

I'm with you for a few reasons as well. First off, I hated the prequels so if Lucas is less involved then I say its a good thing. Second, maybe this means we'll get blu-ray releases of the original versions from before Lucas started to cock them up.

I agree with all of this except for the Lucas involvement. There's nothing wrong with the storylines of the prequels, except for the stuff that was added to appeal to children. They made some bad casting decisions - that's not all on him. There are some awful lines, but there are also some really cool things in the prequels.

People just knock the dude because they can't recapture they mysticalness of their childhood anymore and want to blame him. Do you think the original trilogies are the epitome of film-making? I think everyone looks at them through the eyes of nostalgia-fog and can't stand that they can't connect with the newer ones in the same way.

I guess that's why it's good that I was in my teens when I saw the original trilogy and I saw them close together with the prequels.

[Slothy]

I agree with all of this except for the Lucas involvement. There's nothing wrong with the storylines of the prequels, except for the stuff that was added to appeal to children.

I think we saw two different sets of prequels then.

People just knock the dude because they can't recapture they mysticalness of their childhood anymore and want to blame him. Do you think the original trilogies are the epitome of film-making?

Here's the problem for me; despite having some pretty big problems in places, the original trilogy is still enjoyable and still watchable for a lot of reasons. Was the acting always the best? No. Was it the train wreck of the prequels though? Certainly not. Let's face it, when you're the writer and the director, and you're getting some pretty terrible performances out of people like Christopher Lee, Natalie Portman, and even to some extent, Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson, that's pretty much only on you. When the story barely makes any sense, that's all on you. When the scenes are poorly directed, CG sequences are so busy that they're nearly impossible to watch and understand what's going on, it may not be all on you, but at some point you gave that the green light and said it was good enough. Hell, it's pretty telling that Star Wars improved dramatically after episode IV in the original trilogy, because Lucas neither wrote the script (at least not alone) nor directed Empire and Jedi. Back then he still had people willing to say no to him when he was trying to do something stupid.

Now are the prequels complete train wrecks devoid of anything to enjoy? No. They have their moments when they're downright watchable, but they're pretty few and far between, and do not make up for just how bad the rest of each one is.

And this isn't just some nostalgia fueled rant. I may love the original trilogy, and I certainly grew up watching them, but I'm not blind to the issues they do have. Nor do I hate the prequels for failing to "recapture the mysticalness" of my childhood. I never went in wanting that to begin with. I just wanted movies that were actually enjoyable to watch. We really didn't get that though.

[LunarWeaver]

I'm a huge nerd for Star Wars. I lap it all up! I'm excited for more. It could go either way, of course. Only time will tell how they turn out, but I choose to hope for the best than assume the worst. Ugh, optimism. It hurts. But this once I will do it.

[DMKA]

Finally, Star Wars isn't in the worst possible hands. Seriously, they could have sold it to Lionsgate and it would have been great news, but Disney? Hell yeah, pure awesome. It's only up from here folks.

I'm extremely curious as to what the new Star Wars film will be though. A prequel to the prequels? Episode VII? Some more crap like The Ewok Adventure?

I suppose this also opens up the possibility of Star Wars in Kingdom Hearts, which just makes me squeal with delight thinking about.

[Mercen-X]

Hoping Disney's influence doesn't mean all of the future movies will be in the vein of Clone Wars. I like the series, but I prefer my films live-action.
Storyline provided by "Shadow...something" (I know Shadow was in there... or was it phantom..?) sounded good up until mentioning lightsabers that cut through other lightsabers... that seemed a bit of a stretch.
It would be cool if the new trilogy revolved around the NJO. Maybe episode VII could be a summation of the events of YJK whereas VIII could be of NJO and then IX would be for LotF. Or VII could be NJO, VIII could be LotF, and IX may be an original story altogether.

Then again, it may be nice to branch off in a new direction and stop talking about the Sith and the Jedi as balance was supposed to have been brought to the Force. Maybe they should make a film version of Crimson Empire. My dad is in love with Kir Kanos.

[The Man]

[Bolivar]

I'm just honestly shocked that he really sold it... Lucas always seems so depressed though so I guess he's liable to do anything.

I've said before, I don't hate the prequels, I enjoy them for what they are. I think part of what disappoints us is how promising the source material could have been and when the end result is a lighter, kiddier version it can be disappointing.

But what ruins it is that it's just not good science fiction. I enjoy reading sci fi, but with film, there's just this whole eeriness you get from the classics, even modern ones, that bizarre feeling when the acting and photography convinces you that this is another world. Admittedly, the prequels go beyond that. I saw Phantom in 3D and I realized that the story just wasn't well written or explained. Personally, I wonder if this happenig would put us closer to the possibility of a do-over, another director's re-imagining of the prequels. I'd rather get a proper Dune movie or Book of the New Sun instead, though...

[Jiro]

[Chris]

Hohohoho! That's pretty scary, yet strangely intriguing.

[Kirobaito]

I'm fine with it so long as they don't make Yoda a muppet and have Grover voice him or something.