As Friedrich Nietzsche once famously said, the Force is dead.
Who killed it? Hard to say, really. An Oct. 31 Associated Press article said “A decade since George Lucas said ‘Star Wars’ was finished on the big screen, a new trilogy under new ownership is destined for theaters after The Walt Disney Co. announced Tuesday that it would buy Lucasfilm Ltd. from him for $4.05 billion.”
So George Lucas is to blame? The Walt Disney Co.? It doesn’t matter; my rage is quite capable of encompassing both groups.
Perhaps rage is too strong a word. With Lucas, at least, it’s more like disappointment. After the controversial prequel trilogy turned much of a single generation of fans against him, I can understand the man’s willingness to flick them off, say “Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home!” and sell out to the highest bidder.
Lucas gets half-rage then, the rage I reserve for a lousy journal article or a crappy pint of beer. The Walt Disney Co., though, shall feel my wrath. That’s right, my words will transmute my anger into their pain. The company may make great animated movies and may be one of the precursors of Wayland-Yutani along with Wal-Mart, but announcing a new “Star Wars” movie after years of Lucas denying he’d ever make one again?
What. The. Hell.
Sure, Lucas said he’d never make another “Star Wars” movie. Sure, he isn’t making this one; Disney is. He’s going to work on it, but it isn’t his ship. Which is good, because if it sinks he can wash his hands of it and laugh all the way to the bank, driving a car fueled by the tears of his weeping former fans.
Artists owe their fans a lot. Without those fans, the artist has work, but what else? Without their fans, writers, photographers and painters are unemployed yutzs hawking cheeseburgers at the nearest fast food chain. You can argue about “art for art’s sake” until the Final Trump, but that’s not the point here. Lucas and Disney have both betrayed the fans of “Star Wars.” Then they sodomized them with a baseball bat made of hundred-dollar bills. Then they charged admission for the sodomy and called it an animated short.
Lucas should have known whomever he sold Lucasfilm to would milk it until it was a dry, husky cow unworthy of even the cheapest steakhouse. Disney should have known that announcing a new “Star Wars” movie was about as smart a move as making “Godfather III.”
So a generation of fans has been betrayed by their “Star Wars” creator. On top of that, they’ve been betrayed by a company that has no business making a “Star Wars” movie. Seriously, Disney, stick to animated movies based on bastardized fairy tales.
I won’t say the new movie will suck, because the last time an Eastern Echo writer predicted something, they had to eat their hat over the Detroit Tigers making the playoffs.
I will say that, success or failure, the mere idea of the movie has done far too much harm to “Star Wars” fans to be ever considered worthy of their adulation.
