Tags
Disney, George Lucas, Han Shot First, IP, Lucasarts, Phantom Menace, Star Wars, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars The Old Republic
Apparently for George Lucas, it looks like $4.05 Billion dollars. That is what the Star Wars IP is still worth after he raped the living hell out of it.
I have mixed emotions about this. Actually no, I have very negative emotions about this and my mind and heart are still in shock that George Lucas still had one more card to play when it finally came to FUBAR’ing the entire franchise:
Just When It Couldn’t Get Any More Pathetic..
Really? I mean.. Really? It’s like “Jar-Jar’s Revenge” or something. I think this is what hell is supposed to be like. Where some guy who gave you one of your most lasting childhood dreams comes and proceeds to steal every one of them and abuses them until they are not only dead, but spread out in his front lawn while he makes pumping actions in his underwear and eyeing his Indiana Jones franchise. Maybe we need to have a court order for him to undergo psychiatric evaluation.. I really didn’t think it could get any worse until they said:
“Disney plans to release another Star Wars film in 2015.”
Okay… my reply:
Stop
Name one thing that doesn’t already have a “Star Wars” version of it. The only things I can think of are a line of automobiles and airliners. This IP has had every bit of usefulness squeeze out of it, suffocating every last bit of legitimacy and quality until there is nothing left but a dried up, evacerated husk. Disney, do you REALLY think that people like me, who DESPISE what George Lucas did to his own story will EVER forget?
The problem is that you Disney AREN’T DARK ENOUGH to handle this IP like it NEEDS, PLEADS to be. I have odds that what you are going to do is target the 10-13 year old market, make a silly, low-intellect, overly moral story that is simplistic to such a degree that a teenager will ignore it. Either that or you will make it so action-packed that it will lack the sophisticated character development that it will be little more than pointless eye candy strapped on a now dead carcass of a once great movie tale. You should have spent time watching the other company’s who got involved with George Lucas and the Star Wars IP.
Let’s look at how BADLY the Star Wars IPO has been handled by George Lucas:
- Phantom Menace – Do I really need to say more? And if I do.. you have no business walking around without a helmet and riding in anything other than a short, yellow bus.
- LucasArts Games – Once the cream of the gaming industry, now it has to subcontract all its games out to other developers and IT STILL CAN’T put out a good game. Or if it does, it botches it on the sequel.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic – Probably the newest failure in a long line of bad ideas. This game was supposed to be the “WoW-killer” everyone in the vanilla MMO industry thinks exists. However, they spent WAY too much money on unimportant details and failed so badly in its release that it actually now has less players than the game it supplanted, Star Wars Galaxies. They are going to make it Free To Play next month, and the guy who pushed this to EA no longer works there.
- Star Wars Galaxies – Oh, you knew this was going to be mentioned. A revolutionary game from Sony Online Entertainment.. until George Lucas saw that WoW was making more money than he was, so he demanded that SOE change the format to something similar to WoW. That debacle is now LEGENDARY, and is known as “NGE”, or the “New Game Experience” that totally remade the game.. and subsequently caused them to lose most of the playerbase forever. It took until just a couple years ago before it recovered (though it was a much different, more WoW like playerbase), when George Lucas decided to end their contract with SOE and shut down Star Wars Galaxies for good.
- Star Wars cartoons – Lame, predictable cartoons aimed now at the pre-teen set. This is because everyone in their teens and older has a sour taste in their mouth from all the crap Lucas has done.
- Han Shot First. – That stupid, ignorant choice by George Lucas should have lopped off at least a billion off of the purchase price. If it didn’t, fire the guy who did the negotiation.
- Ewoks and Jar Jar – Really. What he did with those should be considered a crime against nature. He got away with the Ewok in Return of the Jedi only because the Empire Strikes Back was so good. But Jar Jar.. no. Only hard time in a Pakistani or Indian prison will bring any measure of relief to us who got our dreams kicked in the nards.
You have one good thing going for you Disney.. and that is how well you handled the Marvel franchise. But then again, no one screwed the Marvel franchise as badly as George Lucas screwed the Star Wars Franchise.
2nd Anomaly From the Left 
“Either that or you will make it so action-packed that it will lack the sophisticated character development that it will be little more than pointless eye candy strapped on a now dead carcass of a once great movie tale.”
What Star Wars film has this? The characters are archetypes through and through. Lucas was never a sophisticated filmmaker or screenwriter. He might have sophisticated taste in films (he is a Kurosawa fan, after all), but that doesn’t translate to his own abilities.
I was referring to what Disney has done thus far with some of the other IPs that they have acquired (namely Marvel).
I reacted badly myself last night, along the lines of this
A couple of tweetfleet people and http://thissortofthing.com/ gave me a little optimism, if only from the slender chance that Disney will give the project to Joss Whedon. If this happens we can get busy forgetting Episodes I to III.
I agree, that is the ONLY light at the end of the tunnel for me as well. I am a huge fan of Joss Whedon and he did a stellar job with the Marvel franchise. My respect for him is enough that I wouldn’t be opposed to him redoing the I thru III again.