Friday, November 2, 2012

We should be happy Disney got Lucas Films

Disney recently acquired Star Wars. There has been a lot of hubbub around the internet and, as I was surprised to find out, real life. People still care about Star Wars? I mean, I know that nerds cared, but normal people? I was kind of surprised.

Anyway, being the king of nerds within my social circle, everyone wanted to know what my opinion was. I hadn’t given it much thought so after considering for a couple seconds my initial reaction was that this was good, though I couldn’t really nail down why beyond the fact that Lucas was getting kicked upstairs to creative consultant. Now that I have had some time to think about this, I feel that I can give a much better explanation of why this is a strictly good thing for the IP.

Star Wars is a deeply damaged IP. Star Wars has been bad for at least 10 years, and nothing truly great has come from the IP since the conclusion of the original trilogy. There have been a few decent books and videogames, but by and large nothing worthy of the Star Wars name. 95% of all things Star Wars related are terrible, and the sequels were especially awful. It has gotten so bad that I actively avoid anything even related to Star Wars. Anytime I break this rule I regret it. No one should be wasting their time with Star Wars.

However, get Lucas out of the picture, bring in new creative talent, and focus on the core of what made Star Wars great all those years ago and you might just be able to overcome all the baggage of the last 13 years.

Disney cannot ruin Star Wars. The only question is if Disney can fix Star Wars. At worst we are going to get more stuff we should just ignore, so there is no downside to this. In fact, we might even win if this is bad for Star Wars. Maybe people will finally realize that Star Wars is dead and move on.

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