George Lucas sell Star Wars to Disney

By Connor Doyle
[contributor]

On Oct. 30, Disney announced its purchase of Lucasfilm from its chairman and founder, George Lucas. The $4.05 billion buyout centered on the transition of Lucas’s seminal Star Wars franchise to the Walt Disney corporation, whose previous acquisitions include Pixar Studios and Marvel Comics. 

In a statement announcing the buyout, Disney revealed it plans to release a new chapter in the Star Wars film series, the seventh part overall, sometime in 2015, with subsequent films being released every few years afterwards. For his part, Lucas commented: “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of film-makers.”

What does this mean for fans of Star Wars, an unrivaled cultural phenomenon that has already produced two trilogies collectively spanning a 30-year period? Some definite shifts in narrative and structure due to the transition of creative power are coming, but perhaps we’ll find an altogether new way of looking at the beloved series and reexamine its role in cinematic storytelling.

The first three Star Wars films were released in the late seventies to early eighties; conceptualized by George Lucas, each movie benefited from an entire crew, hundreds-strong, lending their talents and vision to a single product. Massive rewrites, meticulous details, and engaging characters made the first trilogy a landmark in cinema history. The second trilogy, however, suffered from Lucas’s singular vision; with complete power over his franchise, he did not accommodate the collaborative process that made the first three movies so spectacular. As a result, the prequels were poorly written and lacked significant direction or cinematic excellence. Many fans felt alienated after the second trilogy, and the phrase “George Lucas ruined my childhood” became a rallying-cry for those opposed to the direction of the franchise.

But now, free from the hands of its creator and primary antagonist, Star Wars will become a new creature under the Disney banner. Disney has an impressive track-record of producing some of the most electrifying and consumable movies in film history, from the earliest animation efforts such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, to modern box-office juggernauts like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Avengers. Additionally, it’s long been discussed that Lucas’s original concept was to have a nine-part series, three trilogies in all, and now with a new screenwriter/director at the helm, the final three installments can avoid the pitfalls of the prequels and ideally match, or even exceed, the acclaim of the first three.

It’s possible that Disney may decide to extend the series beyond a ninth chapter, turning Star Wars into a film cycle that, like the James Bond franchise, continuously adapts and re-imagines the movies’ universe. Perhaps Star Wars will become our culture’s Arthurian Cycle; stories handed down from the ages, with some of each generation’s finest authors contributing to the mythos.

Rampant speculation has already sprung up over who will lead Star Wars into a new era, with many of Hollywood’s leading filmmakers already attached to direct. Though little is yet known about Star Wars Episode VII, the Disney buyout of Lucasfilms should encourage a moderate hope that the best years of the franchise are not entirely behind us.