Hello loyal reader(s), or Mum as I like to call you, I'm back after a long absence. I'd love to claim it was due to my beavering away on writing projects but I've mainly just been teaching my son to roar like a Zombie. What's dragged me back to the blog is possibly the biggest piece of Geek News since 2009 (when Disney bought Marvel); Disney has bought Lucasfilm.
What's funny about this deal is how is exposes the interesting relationship that fans have with Star Wars. If you're a fan of the Wars (I never call it that, it sounds ridiculous) you're usually in one of two camps. Either you just like the original trilogy and think everything else is Bantha Poodo, or you like pretty much everything. It's become a geek cliché that the prequel trilogy is despised and Lucas sold out, yadda yadda, yadda. So, with the Disney deal, you'd expect consistency with these opinions. "MORE SELLING OUT!" some would shout, or "Great, more money to make more Star Wars!" from the other camp. But what's strange is, people don't know how to react.
Given the complex relationship that the public has with Star Wars, there's a paradox; they're making more films (OH NO) but Lucas isn't writing them (OH YES). The internet is confused, and I blame the bandwagon.
I'm going to make a declaration: I like the prequels. In fact, I really like them. All three have a soft spot in my heart. Look, they're not the original films, but they have merits. I'm not going on about episode one having that fantastic lightsabre fight, episode two introducing Christopher Lee, and episode three being just great; this is just one fan's opinion. Yes, there have some horrible lines, and JarJar can be annoying (but I love that Lucas' reaction to the hate is to make him instrumental in the formation of the Empire), but even the original trilogy has crap bits (Death Star 2 anyone?) What the bandwagon has done is snowball (an alarming mixed metaphor), so rather than being uncool for liking Star Wars in general, you're uncool if you like the prequels.
I've grown up as a Star Wars fan and have enjoyed and not enjoyed lots of ancillary stuff. The Dark Horse comics in general are quite good, and some of the novels are ok. The Clone Wars TV show is brilliant as well. It makes me laugh when 'true fans' talk about how all this stuff is selling out. Lest we all forget, Star Wars was the first film with proper merchandising. It set the bar with its early bird action figure offer, and even then we had novels and comics. So, all these toys, and lunchboxes have been around since the beginning.
And let's face it, you'd have to be some sort of moron to have a bad word to say about Star Wars Lego, unless of course you've just come down stairs in the dark and stood on some.
Look, it's not perfect and some bad choices were made, but in general it's a great universe and I'm happy that Disney has bought it. Why, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you; stop interrupting me, imaginary voices in my head.
Disney's first big purchase of note in the last decade was Pixar, and when that happened Disney changed for the better. John Lasseter was given his big role and the quality of their cinematic outputs improved massively. They were given a creative direction that meant that we've got to today, and Frankenweenie has been made.
The care that they take with their big stories fills me with hope for the touted Episodes seven, eight and nine. I expect they'll be set long into the future and not feature your Hans, Lukes or Leias (but still have R2-D2 because he's the real star.)
The other brilliant thing is that the money behind Disney means that the live action TV series might actually get made, Lucasfilm having claimed that cost was holding it back.
I'm also salivating at the possibilities for crossovers (much like we all did with Marvel). I long for classic style Disney shorts with Disney mainstays as Star Wars characters. We've seen the toys, now I want the animation!
So, if you're a fan of some, or fan of all, give this a chance. You never know, you might be pleasantly surprised.