New Star Wars, Movie #7

October 30, 2012 By 16 Comments

DrB-

 

THIS:

Disney is paying $4.05 billion to buy Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company behind “Star Wars,” from its chairman and founder, George Lucas. It’s also making a seventh movie in the “Star Wars” series.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/disney-says-it-is-buying-star-wars-maker-lucasfilm-for-405-billion-from-george-lucas/2012/10/30/dc0ace18-22cc-11e2-92f8-7f9c4daf276a_story.html]

 

Good? Bad?

 

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Filed Under: Dr. Burger says... 16 Comments
  • John Horstman

    Well, Disney can’t do much more damage to the extended universe that grew out of the property in the 22 years between the release of A New Hope and The Phantom Menace than Lucas himself did, so… good news!

  • invivoMark

    And with this, Princess Leia is now a Disney Princess.

    Let’s hope this endeavor tanks. I don’t like the idea of rewarding people for handing $4.05 billion to George.

    • kagekiri

      Haha nice observation on Leia, hadn’t thought of that.

      Another possibility of Disney owning Star Wars could be adding a Star Wars level to Kingdom Hearts sequels in the future…though that might only matter to gamers like me.

  • Mark

    You do realize that the central message of Star Wars is faith, right?

    • http://teethofthebuzzsaw.blogspot.com Buzz Saw

      No, not completely. Bionic Dance, a YouTube vlogger, has tackled this, I am quite sure. She pointed out that they have evidence for their “religion.” But I grant it is true that, in A New Hope, Luke hadn’t seen a lot of evidence by the time he was trying to take out the Death Star.

      • Nate Frein

        Luke’s faith was more of the sort that I have when I hold a pendular object to my face and let go, having “faith” that it will lose energy on the way back and not give me a bloody nose, despite my instincts wanting me to duck away from the incoming object.

        By the time hew as going up against the death star, he’d successfully used his powers. Old Ben had demonstrated the force to him. His only problem was that he was still using a tool that he wasn’t very comfortable with.

    • Dorfl

      I’m pretty sure that the central message of Star Wars is “Lightsabers are awesome!”, closely followed by “Spaceships are also awesome!”.

      • RuQu

        You forgot the most important part of the Trinity: “Explosions are awesome. Especially really, really big ones.”

  • http://eternalbookshelf.wordpress.com Ani Sharmin

    This is one of those situations when I think something along the lines of the following: “I’m basically going to watch this movie because it’s part of a series I love, so let’s hope it’s not too bad.”

    If it’s really awesome, I’ll be happy, of course, but I find that unlikely to happen. Really, it’s one of those times when a company’s making another movie because they know there are a whole group of people (myself included) who will want to see it just because it’s Star Wars, so they know they’ll make money from it … so, let’s hope they at least do a somewhat decent job.

    (Incidentally, related to what John Horstman wrote, I’m one of the fans who actually likes the second trilogy more than the first …)

    • Stogoe

      Well of course you do. Everyone does.

      Wait, do you mean you enjoyed the soulless cash grabs by a man too powerful for his editor?

      Weird.

  • Sithrazer

    I dislike the massive consolidation of entertainment properties that seems to be happening, and I worry that Disney will be litigious towards fan-made things, events, props, etc. where lucasfilm/arts tended to turn a blind eye so long as no money was changing hands.
    I personally worry that Disney would file a cease & desist against the team working on the Star Wars Galaxies emulator.
    Although, I do suppose it depends on what assets, properties and rights accompany the company name in the purchase. I wouldn’t put it past Lucas to retain various IPs and rights for himself. Don’t know that the company would be worth 4 billion without them, though.

    • unbound

      This ^^^

      Disney has been leading the charge for a long time in changing copyrights so that they expire in 95 years to 120 years after creation. This is nothing more than a consolidation of more IP under one roof. I keep hearing this nearly imaginary concept called competition…

      • http://www.twitter.com/WCLPeter WCLPeter

        While Disney et al are desperate to have governments the world over extend copyrights yet again, I think even they see the writing on the wall.

        Copyright can only be extend them so far. Once it becomes obvious that long terms make it impossible for people who’ve seen something, and been inspired by it, to actually take advantage of the public domain, the more likely a court challenge will survive and the term extensions declared unconstitutional. As it stands now Star Wars *should* have entered the public domain in 2005 (1977+14+14 – the original copyright law allowed for 14 year term, renewed once for another 14), but with all the changes to copyright law over the year everyone reading this post will likely be dead before that happens.

        Since the goal of copyright was originally to allow for a rich public domain that could be accessed and utilized using something you’d experienced in your current lifetime, someone will eventually get the extensions overturned.

        Hollywood knows this. Ever wonder why there are so many remakes, reboots, and sequels now? If the extensions get redacted in successful court case I can use a “property” that’s in the public domain, but now I have the added burden of proving that I’m not borrowing from one of the reboots. The remake craze cashes in on nostalgia, certainly, but its also a protection to muddy the waters and make it hard for anyone wanting to make use of a “public domain property” should the laws ever be repealed through a successful court challenge.

        And don’t kid yourselves, it’ll have to be a successful court challenge. No politician is going to touch copyright reform that benefits the general public, Hollywood donations to their reelection funds would dry up faster than a puddle in the Tatooine dessert.

  • MathMike

    Seventh? I’m sorry, but there are only three Star Wars movies. Now I’ll admit that a few years ago some hack tried to leach money off the Star Wars theme, but these were obviously just off shoots and can be easily dismissed.

  • Drew

    just because no one else has posted the link to RLM and the Plinkett reviews of Eps. 1-3 I’ll do so here.
    Star Wars: Episode 1, The Phantom Menace is probably the worst movie ever
    Star Wars: Episode 2, Attack of the Clones is probably the worst movie ever
    Star Wars: Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith is probably the worst movie ever

    I just hope I formatted the links properly.

  • UsingReason

    So this is like a whole new Theme Park complete with nerd condos? (No, this is not any sort of ism as I is a Nerd)