Tuesday 30 October 2012

A New Hope?

Well, who saw that coming? Earlier today the news broke that Disney is buying Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, setting fire to Twitter, sending the forums into apoplexy and generally melting the internet. I know it's trivial and silly, but to people born after, say, 1965 this is staggering news. The original Star Wars trilogy is such a bedrock of our collective childhoods (not to mention adolescence and, hell let's face it, adult lives) that the sudden, unexpected prospect of a seventh episode (let alone an eighth or ninth!) quickly distracted minds that might have been preoccupied by post-tropical storm Sandy, the Presidential election or even the general shitty state of the world.

After the announcement, the immediate shock gave way to an air of suspicion and disquiet. Although the original films are still almost universally loved, successive 'special' editions, tweaked releases and prequels have left generations of fans largely dubious and predisposed to disappointment. The knee-jerk reaction was that Lucas was 'selling out' and that Disney could only make things worse: many people, it seemed, had a very bad feeling about this.

Well, phooey. This is surely the most exciting thing to happen to Star Wars since Lando flew the Millennium Falcon out of the Death Star. Everyone knows that the best Star Wars film is The Empire Strikes Back: the only one that Lucas neither scripted nor directed, just as everyone knows that it was Lucas's control-freakery that strangled the promise of the prequels. Why not let a new creative team get their hands on that galaxy far, far away - it's not as if they can ruin it, is it? That already happened and we're all completely over it and ready to move on, yes we are.

And if you're not, well, tough. I ran and found my kids and told them the news. Aged nine and seven, it blew their tiny minds, their delight and excitement only tempered slightly when I explained they would have to wait until 2015 to see it. But they wanted the chance, like the children of 1999 and 1984 before them to go and see their own Star Wars movie at the cinema. Above all, that's who this film is for: the next generation, both viewers and film-makers.

Nor does it bother me that Disney will be in charge. Yes, as corporations go, it's a little scary - show me one which isn't? But I think they can handle Star Wars. If nothing else, the Star Tours ride is fabulous proof that they know their Alderaan from their Endor and goodness knows how the amount of Star Wars wonderfulness at their theme parks is going to shoot up over the next ten years.

So, nerds of a certain age, be not afraid. And non-nerds needn't fret either. This is a sign of the times. Just this week, Random House and Penguin announced they are planning to merge to create the largest publisher in the world. Everywhere, matter is coalescing. Individuals like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs build tiny idiosyncratic companies that swell into world-conquering behemoths. Others create killer ideas that become franchises and are eventually swallowed up by the biggest of fish: the product of Ian Fleming's typewriter is now the juggernaut 23 movie property of MGM/Sony; Joanne Rowling's scribbling in an Edinburgh cafe became the Harry Potter movies that saved Warner Bros.; Disney already own Pixar, Marvel and even those lovable non-conformists the Muppets. And now young arthouse director George Lucas's unexpected movie smash of 1977 joins them.

All those different companies and creations started as insignificant little rebellions, given little hope of success against the dreadful galaxy-spanning status quo that they dared to question. But somehow they bulls-eyed their womp rats, navigated the asteroid fields and toppled the opposition. Now they are in charge.

The question we are all suddenly dying to have answered is - what will they do next?



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