Monday, November 19, 2012

Darth Donald and Padawan Mickey -- Disney eats Star Wars

It's a bit late to comment on Disney buying Star Wars from George Lucas, but there have been so many rumors and lies around the project, it's hard to know where to begin.

Item 1: Disney owns Star Wars, Lucas will be the creative consultant on Episodes 7, 8, and 9.  The Schwartz will be with Disney (Mel Brooks joke, ignore me).  Episode 7 is slated for 2015, putting it up against the next Avengers film, supposedly, a Justice League Film, so that'll be fun.

On the one hand, Disney seems to know what they're doing when it comes to franchises -- they acquired Marvel without destroying the Avengers Storyline -- no matter what the NYTimes whined about the Avengers film -- and have yet to ruin the marvel movies. So, we'll see.

Item 2: The writer for Toy Story 3 will be penning the script, and we don't seem to have a lock on the director yet.

This actually annoys me a bit.  Star Wars has enough writers with the books to write a whole television series -- were Michael J. Stackpole and Timothy Zahn too busy?  In fact, forget stackpole, I'll take Zahn.  No, I don't need to have The Heir to the Empire series Zahn wrote twenty years ago as episodes 7-9; for one thing, everyone is too bloody old. Unless, of course, you're going to recast everybody, in which case, we can have a party ...

Nathan Fillion as Han Solo anyone? Morena Baccarain as Princess Leia? Sean Maher as Luke Skywalker? Adam Baldwin as Darth Vader?

Oh, did I not mention that?

Item 3: THEY'RE BRINGING BACK DARTH VADER......

Ahem....

I'm really, deeply, seriously hoping this is a joke. A bad joke. Told by Fozzy of the Muppets.  Where's the "Wokka Wokka"?

Item 2 (Reprise) -- if you want to talk about writers, were Zahn or Stackpole asked? Were the writers of the Bioware videogames (who have made the best Star Wars stories outside of Zahn for the last 15 years) even considered? Or did they have the writer in mind when they started negotiations to buy the series?

Conclusion: I'm wary, but hopeful. Lucas is being shoved out of his own company. Creative consultants are what happened to Joe Quesada when he was replaced.

Disney may not screw up Star Wars even more than it already is. Here's hoping.

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