The Disney empire strikes back

Disney reviving the ‘Star Wars’ franchise is as inevitable as a Death Star theme park – but there is still one man who can bring balance to the Force

IT’S A GOOD week to bury bad news. With a hurricane eating up the US and some election bubbling to its conclusion, nobody was likely to notice that the Walt Disney Company was about to disinter the moribund Star Wars franchise.

Only kidding.

Thirty-five years ago, George Lucas released a modestly diverting, tolerably energetic update of Flash Gordon. To the surprise of everybody, Star Wars IV: A New Hope – as we were later instructed to call it – went on to transform the entertainment industry. Hollywood rejected the innovations of the early 1970s and embraced empty sensation. Two equally amusing sequels followed. George made a fortune from ticket sales and an even greater fortune from merchandising.

The project seemed to have clattered to an unsatisfactory conclusion in the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 1999 with the supernaturally tedious The Phantom Menace, Lucas wrote and directed a trilogy of prequels that played like the anal, obsessive scribblings of a teenage fan. The new films took in staggering sums – The Phantom Menace still sits just outside the all-time top 10 of box-office hits – but very few people owned up to liking the blasted things. Arriving just in time for the rise of internet punditry, the second trilogy generated more bile than Jar Jar Binks could manage after a Wookie Vindaloo. Lucas duly abandoned his plans for a triptych of sequels to the first three flicks.

“Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?” he told the New York Times just this year.

Happily for Lucas, the responsibility has been lifted from his shoulders. Doing nothing to dispel cheap comparisons with Star Wars’s rapacious Empire, Disney confirmed on Tuesday that it is to buy Lucasfilm, George’s production company, for the perfectly reasonable sum of $4.05 billion. (To put that in perspective, note that, this year, Disney’s The Avengers took in $1.5 billion all on its own.) The benefits for the Mouse House are considerable. Darth Vader already makes appearances at its theme parks, but that hugely profitable wing of the Disney (ahem) empire can now forge ahead and build an actual Death Star in the outer suburbs of Orlando.

Every Star Wars video game sold brings in a few dollars. There are all those boxes of Lego.

What else? Oh, yes, there is the comparatively small matter of the films themselves. To the surprise of nobody, Robert Iger, Disney’s CEO, quickly confirmed that the company planned to release a new Star Wars flick in 2015. The internet broke down yesterday (not really) as speculation surged concerning Disney’s possible strategy. We know little, but Iger’s confirmation that further films would emerge every two to three years implies that there are no plans to halt after completing a third trilogy. Heck, the Bond films are still going after half a century.

Disney’s announcement is akin to BP declaring that it has discovered a literally inexhaustible well of crude oil. It doesn’t matter if the films are no good. The public flocked to The Phantom Menace and it was about as entertaining as spending an afternoon in the local abattoir.

So, to return to our initial conceit: This is terrible, terrible news. Right? The last three Star Wars films were tedious. Any old pap will sell at the box office. We are, thus, doomed to centuries of intergalactic effluent.

Not necessarily. Christopher Nolan’s treatment of Batman in The Dark Knight films demonstrates that creaking franchises can be rehabilitated in ways that please both thoughtful fans and the studio’s most cold-hearted accountants. More relevant still, Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, recently had (as we mentioned above) a critical and financial hit with The Avengers. In an earlier chapter of its campaign to conquer the entire entertainment industry, Disney purchased Marvel Entertainment, creators of that comic book team, and must therefore have Mr Whedon’s number somewhere in its corporate Rolodex.

Here’s what you need to do, Mr Iger. Gather your team and drive down to Whedon Acres. Fall upon your knees and beg Joss to take on the project. Offer him all the money in the world. Offer to have all his enemies killed. Offer to buy him his own continent (Disney can probably afford Antarctica).

Other directors will do. But, with The Avengers, Whedon showcased a gift for respecting the source material while still remaining light on his creative feet. By way of contrast, Lucas became so obsessed with his own mythologies that he forgot to honour the uncomplicated narrative thrust of the first picture. That guff about the Force, intergalactic taxation rates and quasi-druidic dynasties was mere decoration. Star Wars worked because it rattled along like a 1940s serial, not because it introduced the world to a new religion. In short, Star Wars is probably better off without Lucas (although, worryingly, he will remain a consultant).

Let us optimistically assume that Disney does the right thing and – rather than hiring an obedient hack – allows somebody with a nimble mind to revitalise the franchise. It is still difficult to muster unqualified enthusiasm for Tuesday’s announcement. In 1961, the year’s box-office top 10 did not contain a single sequel. Last year, only one film in the equivalent chart was not a sequel and that release, The Smurfs, was based on a popular television series. The news that Star Wars is to return makes the franchise stranglehold feel even more suffocating.

Quality cinema is not dead. Indeed, this year we are being offered a more than usually varied array of fine films: Rian Johnson’s Looper, Michael Haneke’s Amour, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, Ben Affleck’s Argo to name a few. But the greater part of each major studio’s yearly takings is now drawn from sequels, retreads and reboots. These are the engines that drive the movie machine. It was not ever thus. It has recently got a great deal worse.

When did the real decline start? With Star Wars, of course. The horrible wheel is complete. It will still be rolling when most of us are dead.