A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Image Credit: www.toonzone.net Why did Disney decide to end The Skywalker Saga, instead of leaving open the possibility of continuing it after "The Rise of Skywalker"? First of all, The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) does not have that level of micromanaging editorial control over any of its subsidiaries (ABC, ESPN, Marvel Enterprises, National Geographic, Lucasfilm, or 21st Century Fox). I don’t know why people keep on assuming that Alan Horn and Bob Iger are omnipresent and omnipotent and that “Disney” execs have their fingers in every pie, ostensibly ruining franchises and people’s childhoods just for grins. If I seem to be a bit annoyed at this question’s basic assumption, it’s because I  am  annoyed about how intellectually lazy people get, especially when it comes to Lucasfilm Ltd., its leadership, and its role in making decisions as far as its biggest intellectual properties,  Star Wars  and  Indiana Jones. Second, Star Wars needs to grow b...

Do you think Disney has done a better job with Star Wars than Lucasfilm? Questions such as “Do you think Disney has done a better job with Star Wars than Lucasfilm?” reflect either willful ignorance or a misunderstanding of the corporate relationship between The Walt Disney Company (TWDC or “Disney”) and Lucasfilm Ltd., especially when it comes to the topic of  Star Wars. The relationship between TWDC and Lucasfilm is no different from that of Sony and Columbia Pictures or the “old” 20th Century Fox Film Corporation and Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox (and before that, News Corporation). TWDC is the “corporate parent,” while Lucasfilm is an editorially-independent production company with its own President. Lucasfilm, for the most part, has free rein to decide how to handle its two major franchises,  Star Wars,  and  Indiana Jones.  TWDC has the right to decide  when  and  how  movies are scheduled for production  and  ...

Someone on Quora asks: Why would Disney trust Kathleen Kennedy after the way the recent Star Wars movies were received? My reply: Well, it would be  most ungracious  if Bob Iger and Alan Horn fire Kathleen Kennedy after producing three of four financially successful films in a series that its creator, George Lucas, had once declared would consist only of the six “Tragedy of Darth Vader” Episodes (and, later, those six films  plus  the  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  series). As of this writing, the first two installments of the  Star Wars  Sequel Trilogy ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens  and  Star Wars: The Last Jedi ) have earned $$3.4 billion worldwide.  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,  earned $1.056 billion. The only underperformer in the new post-George Lucas “era of Disney” Lucasfilm slate of movies in the  Star Wars  franchise is  Solo: A Star Wars Story,  which made “only” $392 million. Solo’s...

© 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation Would audiences be interested if Disney-Lucasfilm remade Star Wars Episodes IV, V and VI with modern film-making techniques? Judging from the reaction of many  Star Wars  fans to the changes that franchise creator and founder/retired CEO of Lucasfilm, George Lucas, made when he decided to improve 1970s-era special effects shots that he felt fell short of his vision with late 1990s-era CGI effects for the 20th Anniversary Special Editions, I’d say…”No.” The  Star Wars Trilogy  is already one of the most “tinkered with” movie series in the history of the industry. Since 1977,  Star Wars  alone has undergone many adjustments, ranging from necessary fixes to its audio track, accidental deletion of scenes and re-insertion of said scenes, a 1981 title change from  Star Wars  to  Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope,  a tweak that was first previewed in 1979 when Ballantine Books published Caro...

Is  The Rise of Skywalker  the last  Star Wars  movie? No. While  Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker  will bring the curtain down on the Skywalker Saga that began with 1977’s  Star Wars,  it is not going to be the  last  feature film set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” To be sure, it is the swan song, as it were, of the film series that bears - for good or ill - the DNA of George Lucas’s  The Star Wars.  The Big Three - Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher have moved on: Harrison and Mark have had their characters killed off or transformed into Force ghosts, and Carrie died in late 2016, so her role in  The Rise of Skywalker  has been minimized into scenes that can make use of existing footage shot for  The Force Awakens  and (perhaps)  The Last Jedi.  And, as George himself once said, the only characters that are in the entire Skywalker Saga are C-3PO ...

Did Solo: A Star Wars Story prove that people are losing interest in Star Wars? No.  Solo’ s failure at the box office  doesn’t  prove that people are losing interest in  Star Wars. If  Solo: A Star Wars Story  does prove anything, it is that: Bob Iger, the Chairman of The Walt Disney Company, erred badly by greenlighting too many  Star Wars  films back-to-back Lucasfilm erred by hiring Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in the first place, considering that  Solo  co-writer Lawrence Kasdan did not like their approach to the material Releasing  Solo: A Star Wars Story  on May 25, 2018 was a bad idea, even though it was meant to commemorate  Star Wars’  41st Anniversary Even worse, releasing  Solo  without giving much thought to mounting an effective publicity campaign, and on a date that was close to another Disney-owned studio’s blockbuster film’s premiere, was a bad move Star Wars  is...

If someone actually bought Star Wars from Disney, would Canon and other things change once again? Sure,  if  there was a company or individual with enough money to buy Lucasfilm Ltd. and the  Star Wars  franchise from The Walt Disney Company, and if  Bob Iger and the stockholders were willing to sell either the franchise or Lucasfilm. Whoever owned the  Star Wars  brand would then decide: What “canonicity” means under the new regime What new content would be created, in what format, and which venue (theaters, television, or Internet) Whether or not to re-release existing movies in their current form, or (in the case of the Original Trilogy) their original (as released) editions Which video game companies would get licenses to create new games Whether or not licensed printed media original works (novels, comics, anthologies) are canonical After all, that’s what ownership entails. If The Walt Di...