George Lucas, director of the famous “Star Wars” films, sold his company Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion on Oct. 30, making this the largest buyout by Disney, according to The New York Times. Lucasfilm joins the list of companies bought by Disney which include Marvel and Pixar. In light of Disney buying the film company, Lucasfilm announced that another “Star Wars” trilogy was on the way, and Episodes VII, VIII and IX will be in the works in the coming years. The newest movie is said to be released in 2015, according to the Washington Post.
CEO and Chairman of Lucasfilm, Lucas, 68, told USA Today, “For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see ‘Star Wars’ passed from one generation to the next… it’s now time for me pass ‘Star Wars’ on to a new generation of filmmakers.”
However, I think there is no purpose in creating more “Star Wars” movies. Other franchises may have had a positive reaction to a reboot, most notably “Star Trek” with a 95 percent approval rate on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes, but “Star Wars” should not get the green light to create more movies. Let’s not forget what happened when “Indiana Jones” got another movie. While the film got a critic review of 65/100 on the movie review website Metacritic, fans had mixed opinions on the movie, overall getting a 5.2/10 fan review on Metacritic and a 59 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Even Shia LaBeouf and Harrison Ford felt the movie was inadequate. LaBeouf told the Los Angeles Times, “We (Ford and LaBeouf) had major discussions. [Ford] wasn’t happy with it either. Look, the movie could have been updated. There was a reason it wasn’t universally accepted.” This goes to show when something has finished, it has finished. Do not resurrect what is already dead. The results of how the new film is received may not be what was intended.
While Lucas has positive outlooks on the expansion of the franchise, Mark Fisher, who played Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy, has doubts. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he stated, “I was just gobsmacked. ‘What? Are you nuts?!’ (Laughs) I can see both sides of it…there was a beginning, a middle and an end and we all lived happily ever after and that’s the way it should be… on the other hand, there’s this ravenous desire on the part of the true believers to have more and more and more material.”
It’s apparent that Hollywood does not have any original ideas in movies anymore. Many movies in the past couple years have been either remakes of other films, adaptations or sequels. The top grossing movies this year, according to boxofficemojo.com, fall under that category, including: “The Avengers,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “The Hunger Games.” While some of the movies have been very well done, an original concept once in a while would not hurt anyone.
As an avid fan of “Star Wars,” I do not see why more movies should be created. “Star Wars” has been completed for a long time, noting that “Return of the Jedi,” the last “Star Wars” movie in chronological plot, was released in 1983. Darth Vader is dead; the story is over. The “Star Wars” universe has expanded into books, comics, TV shows and more. There is no reason to create more when all of this has already been done. It is time to move on to other ideas and projects rather than attempting to get more money out of older movies. I would not, however, disagree with a “Star Wars” theme park.
Sarah Garrity can be reached at sarah.garrity@spartans.ut.edu