How Disney Ruined Star Wars II
Episode II - Revenge of the Mouse
When last we left our intrepid hero he had just gone through his storied history with the Star Wars movie franchise and all the other types of media that went along with it. Now we will look at the ultimate catastrophe and the beginning of the end for the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
In May of 1999 the first of the prequels Episode I - The Phantom Menace was released. The hype surrounding the movie was enormous and despite bad reviews from critics it smashed box office records, showing that the public still had a real hunger for the franchise. May of 2002 saw the release of Episode II - Attack of the Clones followed by the May 2005 debut of Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.
In 2003 George Lucas was involved in creating a Star Wars - Clone Wars cartoon for TV. In 2008 it was re-booted and a cinematic movie was released to set up the series. It ran for seven seasons and was set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, in other words Star Wars was still going strong. On a personal note I was very sad that my Star Wars journey with Luke, Leia and Han had come to an end and I was left wondering if they would ever make some of the books into movies.
Then in 2012 disaster happened, it was announced that George Lucas sold the entirety of Star Wars and all the rights, for $4 billion to Disney. The disaster isn’t that Lucas sold everything but what Disney believed about themselves, the franchise, the fans and their plans moving forward. At first I was happy since Disney announced that there would be more movies and other projects, but at the same time I had my doubts, which as it turned out, were justified.
In early 2013 unidentified writers pitched Disney Studio Chief Alan Horn an early idea for Episode VII. Part of that pitch was a cute new droid they had dreamed up called BB-8.
Horn loved the look of BB-8 and he gushed about the amount of merchandising money it would generate. He didn’t comment on the story itself other than to say “we’ll work it out”. All he saw were dollar signs. Another example of this quest for cash is the curious case of Captain Phasma. She was shown in a lot of promotional material and made into a toy as well as being on lunchboxes and in games. However, all she did was stomp around in her silver suit, in fact, her two or three scenes seemed mostly like a joke. Additionally, they cast Gwendoline Christie in the role, who, because of her physical size, garnered comparisons to Boba Fett, but they hid her behind a silver mask the entire time and didn't even give her more than a handful of lines. Now Fett probably said even less in his appearances but he actually had an important role to play in The Empire Strikes Back and his appearance in Return of the Jedi cemented his place as one of the most popular, non-main cast, characters. His presence impacted the plot, while hers did no such thing. This begs the question, why was she really there? It wasn’t about preserving the legacy of the story or the characters at all, it was always, all about money, Disney figured they could sell lots of shiny silver Captain Phasmas, they were never going to safeguard, what many people view as a cultural icon, they were just out to make a buck. That hubris and short sightedness ruined a movie franchise and shook confidence in a company that at one time had been viewed as part of the fabric of our country.
Episode VII - The Force Awakens was released in late December 2015. I saw the movie because it was a Star Wars film and I had to give it a chance, but I came out of the theater crushed. The story was bad but even worse, as far as I was concerned, were the shattering of the basic laws and tenets of the Star Wars universe. To me that proves Disney didn’t care about the legacy of the movies at all. Of course they thought it was ok to do these things because they knew they were going to make their money anyway and because of their next mistake.
In my opinion the move to de-legitimize the Extended Universe is Disney’s biggest mistake of all. The decision meant that everything that wasn't in one the first six movies and selected other works, were no longer canon. In other words, nothing in those 88 books, the video games & the comic books, that were made previous to Disney, officially ever happened. They even changed that name for those stories to Legends to drive the point home. In one swift stroke they just arbitrarily decided to throw away the work of hundreds of people, in the arrogant belief that they knew better than the man that created this galaxy and all the people that had already invested so much time and energy in creating a living, breathing galaxy inhabited by believable characters. Rather than use any of the previous content, they thought their writers could come up with better ideas. Why would they do that? I think there are two reasons why. First, I think that Disney didn’t care what the fans thought about their choices, as long as they bought tickets along with BB-8 and Captain Phasma toys. Secondly. I think that Disney believes that there isn't anyone better at writing a hit movie. While that might be true for traditional Disney fare, they had never attempted to write a “space opera” as George Lucas called Star Wars. The formula might be the same; hero, guide, comic relief, bad guys, quest, final battle etc. but the details are not the same, especially with something that has as many rabid fans as Star Wars does. These fans will intensely watch every plot point and dissect each little thing, comparing it to what it should be. Something that might not be important to the writers could be vital to the fans. For me that small detail was, that in the Expanded Universe, I mean Legends, it was a fact that hyperdrive was used in space and would not work in the presence of a large body of gravity i.e. a planet or sun. In fact there were a whole class of Imperial spacecraft called Interdictor Cruisers that created artificial gravity masses to keep ships from escaping into hyperspace or return them to realspace when they encountered the gravity mass. This became a tactic used by Imperial forces to counter the hit and run attacks used first by the Rebellion and then the New Republic and was also a wide spread plot point used in many of the Star Wars novels. It was brought back into canon when the cruisers appeared in many episodes of Star Wars: Rebels, in 2015. It seems, however, that the writers of Episode VII had not spoken with the Rebels writers because shortly before Interdictors are reintroduce into canon, the writers of Episode VII, not only have Han fly the Millennium Falcon near a large gravity mass, but right into the atmosphere of the planet-sized Starkiller Base. Just weeks later that would be impossible because of the effect of gravity on hyperspace. Why did the writers need to do that? If they are going to move things in and out of canon why can’t they just leave it the way it had been for years? Evidently the writers didn’t want to figure out a better way for Han and Finn to get on the surface of the base. Which brings me to the next mistake Disney made, lazy writing, but that will have to wait for the next installment.
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