The New Star Wars Movies

When I initially heard of the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, I knew then that the bad times were coming. That George Lucas had finally given up hope and sold off everything to a multi-national company who cared little for the Star Wars franchise.

But after thinking about it for long enough, I couldn't think of anyone I'd least like in charge of any future Star Wars films than George himself. He has royally ruined the Star War universe and franchise with his prequel trilogy, and firmly shown himself as being inadequate when given total control over every film making element. The Phantom Menace is a textbook example of how not to make a film. Every preventable element that could have gone wrong went wrong. If George was at a crossroad and one direction was success and artistic integrity, and the other direction was commercial cash in and vapid content, he always choose the later. Rick McCallum (his executive producer) was from the outset a terrible yes-man who proved his worthlessness in helming the new trilogy. I am happy to see that with the acquisition by Disney his services are no longer required and is nowhere near the Star Wars franchise, and has hidden himself away in an Eastern European country.

I was always aware that Star Wars success was founded on one good idea that was "hi-jacked" by British film-makers who took over the film from a fairly useless American director and actually made a half decent film. Apparently that experience haunted George and he gave director duties to other directors for the remaining two films.

With the advent of digital technology it gave him a chance for total control, and the prequel trilogy is perfect evidence at how poor his talents really are.

So in retrospect, now that Disney have taken one of the biggest movie franchises away from the one man who has the power to ruin it, Im very happy.

We are promised one Star Wars movie every year, a continuation of the story one year, and the next year a one-off film about supporting characters ad finitum.

The only sad point is the closure of Lucasarts and all their development on games. My only hope is that they teams and personnel responsible move on to develop news games or carry on with projects they already were working on.