George Lucas & Parting Ways With Star Wars

This is terribly sad. It further promotes some speculation that Michael Arndt’s original screenplay was all-but-thrown-out. Arndt, writer of Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3, was brought on-board to reflect the vision of Lucas and continue the story of Skywalker which is THE core narrative component to Star Wars. Disney/Kennedy/Kasdan/Abrams have apparently not only tossed everything Arndt wrote, which led to the removal of the expanded universe canon, but it has removed Lucas’ ideas altogether.

Now this doesn’t automatically mean the franchise is wrecked going-forward. Arguably the best of Star Trek (the later TNG seasons and DS9) came following the dis-involvement and passing of Gene Roddenberry. But the Abrams-led reboots, while mildly-appealing to a general audience, are NOT well-liked by core Trekkies, including my grandfather who refers to them as “a bunch of boom bah.”

I must reserve judgement and remain optimistic until December 18th. But it’s hard to consider that the storied vision of arguably the most influential artist of the 20th century is now completely absent from Star Wars going forward. If things go bad, I really don’t know how Disney is going to handle the power of of the Dark Side. If you thought the backlash over Lost was bad, then you can’t imagine what a real shit-show looks like. Regardless, it’ll probably be the highest-grossing movie of all-time. And then we’ll get another. And another. “I’ll be making these movies ’til the end of time.”-Weird Al