Film Friday: Darth Disney

Okay, so you've all seen the goofy (no pun intended) pictures that have suggested the implications of Disney's buyout of the Star Wars franchise.  (Here's my fave:) 




But what does this really mean for the franchise that started out as an homage to the cheesy Flash Gordon serials of George Lucas's youth and became thanks to clever merchandising and Joseph Campbell's mythologizing the epic tale of the late twentieth century? 

Well, for one thing, Star Wars won't simply be a line of toys or amusement park rides; they will re-boot the series and presumably finish the tale, which Lucas had originally conceived as a nine-part serial.  (His original intention was to make the second trilogy, Episodes I through III, right after the first trilogy was finished, allowing the actors from IV through VI to get old enough to play their parts at the right time to film the last trilogy.  Obviously, that's not how it went down.)  

But Disney didn't buy Lucasfilm to profit from the creative forces behind the company, the way they did with Pixar.   The Star Wars deal is much more like its buyout of Marvel, or the Muppets: Disney gets a built-in brand with lots of possibilities to work with for a generation.  They're not relying on Lucas, who sees this deal as passing the torch.  

Disney is not just going to finish the final trilogy; it will produce additional films, possibly a tv series or two, and obviously, sell a lot of toys. Some of it will be great, and some trash, but I bet all will bring in a profit.  And in some respects, Disney will return Star Wars to its roots. 

At its heart, Star Wars is a Saturday afternoon serial, complete with cheesy dialogue and black and white heroes and villains.   Watch the original film on a small screen; it's pretty lifeless.   Part of the impact of the film is the experience of it on as large a screen as possible; there, it's overwhelming, and it makes up for the weak writing and uneven acting.   A lot of factors went into the film's becoming THE event of the summer of 77.   Joseph Campbell explained it through his understanding of myth, and a little old blockbuster  became an epic that "spoke" to an entire civilization.   Such mythologizing is ridiculous, of course -- for some perspective I recommend the writings of Robin Wood -- but one cannot escape the reality of the epic's influence.  

If Disney is serious about an all-out expansion of the brand, then Star Wars will no longer hold its place in a mythic pantheon of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.   It will be another piece of real estate, like Pirates of the Caribbean, the Muppets, and the all the tv networks it owns.   Yes, a special piece of real estate, but  still one that knows its place.